The day is already hot. The breeze has disappeared. I sat outside under the umbrella, the coolest spot on the deck, to drink my coffee and read the papers. This morning, for the first time in as long as I can remember, I only had one cup of coffee, a sure indicator of the heat.

In the heat of summer, when we were kids, the boys never wore shorts around where I lived. Little ones did, the ones whose mothers dressed them, but older boys, those around nine or ten, wouldn’t be caught dead in a pair of shorts. My brother wore dungarees every day. He did wear a short sleeve jersey, a Beaver Cleaver type of jersey, but that was his sole concession to the heat of summer. Black high tops were his sneakers of choice. Girls were different. We wore shorts and sleeveless blouses. Our sneakers were white and no higher than our ankles. They were worn with socks, usually white socks. Clam diggers were popular for a while. That’s what we called them. In the 50’s, they were called pedal pushers, and, in the 60’s, Laura Petrie brought them back as Capri pants.

It never occurred to me that the name pedal pushers was literal. They were pants wore higher than the chains of bikes so the pants legs wouldn’t get caught. I wish I knew that back then. I didn’t have a chain guard on my bike. It had disappeared or fallen off. Many times my pant leg bottom would get caught and eaten by the chain. Getting it loose was a process and it took forever. I’d have to try and figure how to get off the bike with one leg caught without the bike falling, the best place to sit down and how to untangle my pants while one leg was immovable. I usually freed myself, but my hands and pant leg were always covered in grease. I usually wiped my hands on the back of my pants and left strange looking prints.

When I was much older and riding to work became quite common, I used to see guys bicycling with their pant leg folded up and held there by a rubber band. It looked a little silly, but I never laughed. I knew exactly why they did it. They had all grown up with greasy right pants legs.