Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 29, 1995 TAG: 9506290025
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETH MACY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Country Time, chock full of sugar, isn't on your diabetic diet, but you stop anyway.
Their hands take turns plucking Doritos from a crinkly plastic bag. They give you a chip - though they're really not for sale. They're very clear about that.
It's the first week of summer. Your brother-in-law, Rich, calls from the Colorado Rockies. It's 7 a.m. his time, 9 a.m. yours.
``I'm wearing a PolarTech coat,'' he says. ``There's still snow on the mountain caps, and I'm freezing cold.''
You're sitting at your home computer, wearing the holey T-shirt you slept in last night, and boxer shorts. You notice that your husband has closed all the windows in your un-air-conditioned house, and cranked down the mini-blinds.
It has the stillness of a country funeral parlor - dark, damp and musty, and not a little bit hot. The first sweat bead of the day surfaces on your forehead.
You throw down the first gauntlet in your annual beginning-of-summer war. You get up, open the windows your husband closed before he went to work, and raise the mini-blinds.
He swears the house stays cooler if you keep the sun out. You say a warm breeze is better than no breeze at all.
There are people in the world who don't love the heat of summer, it hits you.
These are people who can't remember the feel of a sweaty softball stirrup stuck to their heel, who never talked into a window fan just to hear the tinny vibration of their voice, whose best friend didn't stuff 27 Atomic Fireballs into his mouth on a 92-degree day - and live to brag about it.
It's eight days into summer. Think about fireflies in hole-hammered jars, the saccharine smell of powdery pink baseball-card gum, the feel of a cool pillow after you turn it over in the middle of the night.
Don't think about the mosquito bite in the middle of your left shoulder blade that you can't reach to scratch. Never mind the chore of cutting grass, nor the midsummernight dreams interrupted by thrashing, sticky limbs.
Think about the things that happen in summer that otherwise wouldn't. Remember the time your mom took you fishing and taught you how to drive on the winding dirt roads around Muzzy's Lake, and you were 12.
It would have never happened in February.
Think about the way you used to speed from your Tybee Island house to your job in Savannah - to maximize the car breeze. Recall fondly those wonderful little windows on your Dad's '71 Chevy, the triangular kind you could push out in the corner of the front-seat windows. Remember the way they gave you a good breeze, but didn't mess up your hair. Seriously lament those windows' demise.
Consider the smell of Avon's Skin-So-Soft: how it's utterly disgusting in November in the mountains, but somehow tolerable in July at the beach.
And when it gets so hot that you just can't stand it, go visit your brother-in-law, Rich, in Colorado. Take along your PolarTech coat.
After a week, return home to a place where summer's really summer. Return home happy to be hot again.
Open the windows every time your husband turns his back.
Beth Macy, a feature writer and Thursday columnist, looks forward to the new, improved and named-shortened version of The Roanoke Times - especially the demise of that *$%!# jingle, ``The Roanoke Times & World-News ... get it, read it, do it to-DAY-AY!!'' Her number is 981-3435.
by CNB