The beautiful weather continues. It is sunny and 73°. The afternoon will get hotter, up to 77°, but the breeze keeps the feel of the heat at bay. I’m planning on a slow day. I have a couple of house chores but nothing too strenuous. I have an errand, a quick one. I expect to be napping by two.

Saturday has always been my favorite day of the week. When I was a kid, it was exploration day in the warm weather and movie matinee day in the cold. I rode in the summer and mostly walked in the winter. Uptown wasn’t very far. It was the center of my town and had just about any store or shop you might need. The exception was the First National. It was down the street from the square but still on Main Street. We once had a pet store next to Santoro’s sub shop. I bought a chameleon there. It didn’t last very long.

I was born in my town. It was called The New England Sanitarium and Hospital back then. It closed in 1999. It sits atop the hill where the first hospital was built in 1899. It looks a bit creepy now. Some of the windows still have inside window coverings.

I was never scared much when I was a kid. My father’s stories of the man with a hook had me looking behind me if I walked alone at night, but I was young. I really didn’t expect to see anything. I was just being cautious. I have never believed in ghosts. I don’t think of graveyards at night as scary. I used one as a shortcut when I was in high school. Nothing ever jumped out at me. I never believed anything hid under my bed or in my closet. Nothing unearthly moved in the dark. We did like to scare each other by jumping out of closets or screaming at one another when it was least expected. I did jump. I always laughed after.

The day is wonderful. It is 74° which will be the high today. Tonight will go down to the mid 60’s, perfect for sleeping. It is breezy. Clouds are predicted but no rain. I have more house chores today. I seem to be on a cleaning frenzy. I hope it passes quickly.

When I was a kid, summer didn’t start on any date. It started when school ended. The last day of school was a half day. We returned text books, cleared out our desks and got our final report cards. When we were let loose, it was a cacophony of screaming, of pushing each other to get out the door. We’d run down the pathway papers in hand. We were filled with the joys of freedom and of summer hopes and expectations.

In Ghana, school holiday also started in June. Buses usually waiting in the lorry park to fill with passengers came to the school to pick up students heading south. Trunks were loaded on the tops of the buses. I remember students with their heads and arms out the windows screaming goodbyes. They were as joyful at the end of school as we always were. That was my time to travel, to explore more of Africa. Even now, so many decades later, it still amazes me to say explore more of Africa. I think my eleven year old self, the age I was when I vowed to travel, would be thrilled and pleased almost beyond measure.

I joined the drill team when I was ten or eleven. We learned our maneuver all winter in the armory upstairs, usually on a Tuesday evening. I got teased because I used to do a bit of homework when there was a break. I’d bring index cards filled with vocabulary or history I needed to learn. Summer was drill competition time. Our first contest was usually in mid June under the lights in Everett. I remember being a bit nervous when moving from the inspection line to the ready line. One year, the person standing beside me panicked. She said she couldn’t remember a single step because we were at the wrong end of the field. She meant in practice we started at the opposite end of the field. I told her everything looks different under the lights. She believed me. She had no trouble remembering.

My dance card is empty until Tuesday.