Best summer ever

    Oldsters love nostalgia, if one is to judge from the shameless non-profit funding appeals featuring music groups from 60 years ago. Nostalgia is not a bad thing although it sounds vaguely like a medical condition. I think what we mean by nostalgia is the reflection on a period, a day, even an instant when things were going our way. Never mind that the actual experiences of the era of the music appeals may have been fraught with insecurities, broken hearts and teenage or coed angst. Taken to this extreme, we can concoct a sappy sentimentalism totally unmoored from reality; yet the upwelling of images, feelings and impressions can be calming and reassuring if they are of an affirmative nature. Let’s not dwell on unpleasantness, I say, past or present. Taken in its literal sense, nostalgia is a form of homesickness; that undefinable yearning for things as they were when one had a comfort, security and predictability in one’s home life, no matter at what age. I don’t think growing up in a chaotic, noisy, competitive and uncertain home can engender nostalgia but then that was not the childhood I experienced. For me dangers were at least at arm’s length and a caring embrace was as close as a casual glance around.

      For me the sweet anchor of at least one summer was associated with our Tastee-Freez ice cream stand, located along the road between my home and downtown Euphoria. It really was a stand, four-sided with a slanting modernist roof and a great glass front soaring up and into the heavenly future. Mr. Goober, the manager was a little round man who wore very wide ties clipped to his always white shirt and who had a weakness for ice cream and pretty young girls, with whom he flirted constantly and hired exclusively. I was lucky enough to make the grade as counter help and the summer was passing with delightful regularity as I observed more extended tongues than a sore throat clinic and spent considerable time cooling myself over the open chest freezer.

      It happened that our supervisor, Miss Emily, of the dimpled smile and cheerleading enthusiasm found herself in some biological difficulty in July, well before the end of the season. Mr. G. turned to me as the next in line. Was I ever flattered! The importance of the “TF”, as everyone in the know called it, cannot be exagerrated. For my age group it was the galactic hub around which everything revolved. This wasn’t just because we had the best dip-top cones with sprinkles or not. After dark it might be a deserted neon yellow beacon but only because the gangs, groups and cliques had already met there and moved on to wherever summer’s distilled essence (whether liquid or not) was to be quaffed. The “TF” allowed me an entré into a rarified popularity I might not have enjoyed otherwise. People wanted to be my friend, wanted to know what I thought, wanted to invite me to pool parties, wanted be around me and in short sought me out and included me in every teenage social ritual. It was a dream and the best summer ever.

     Even my coworkers over whom I held complete sway treated me with respect and I daresay some affection. By the end of the season as we closed for the last time they all came by to say goodbye. They presented me with a stuffed polar bear with a card attached. “You’ve got a Brrrrright future!”, it said. I remember.

Kisses,

Celeste