Back in the good ol’ days, summer fun was whatever we made it

By Lynne Cope Hummell EDITOR

Our Sun on the Street feature in this issue (page 6A) asks the question, “What was the best thing about summer when you were a kid?”

We got some good answers, and I wasn’t surprised to see that three of them were simply “swimming.”

Growing up in the middle of South Carolina, my siblings and I did a fair amount of swimming too. For starters, we had the 50,000-acre Lake Murray 30 minutes away.

For many years, our mother’s annual Poe family reunions were held there, on Dreher Island, a huge park on the lake that was owned by SCE&G. My uncle worked for the electric company and he had access.

I have dozens upon dozens of pictures of those reunions, especially of Mom and her seven siblings standing in front of the picnic shelter for their yearly photograph.

The picnics featured lots of the same dishes every year and they were always delicious. The men pitched horseshoes while the women talked. The kids just wanted to be in the water.

Most years, someone would bring a boat for leisurely rides and waterskiing, and someone else was always willing to teach us kids how to ski. That’s where I learned.

Sometimes we went to Silver Lake, a much smaller lake in another part of town. It had a fake beach, a dock out to the high diving board, and a couple of platforms the teenagers would swim out to in order to get away from the adults.

The lakes weren’t our only option for swimming, though.

When I was a teenager, our next-door neighbors had an inground pool built with brick sides. The dad worked at the local brick company, so I suppose he got a good deal. I was a regular babysitter of their two little boys, so of course I was invited frequently – along with my younger siblings.

An aunt and uncle lived in Charleston, and it was fun to visit them in the summer because they would always take us to Folly Beach. Dad and Mom took us younger siblings to Myrtle Beach a few times over our teen years.

But summer was so much more for me than swimming.

Once I started school, I longed for the first day of May – Barefoot Day, as sanctioned by the school district, when we didn’t have to wear shoes. (Girls still had to wear dresses, however.)

The days of summer seemed to last extra hours. My siblings and I – and the occasional cousin or church friend – would spend the entire day outside, making up games, playing a million versions of “chase,” riding bikes, climbing trees, and stopping only for some fresh-squeezed lemonade. Some afternoons, Dad would come home from work early and bring a watermelon. I didn’t mind eating them warm, but they had to have plenty of salt sprinkled on each slice. Summer evenings were for tomato sandwich dinners and the whole family heading out to our big front porch to enjoy the last light of the day.

Mom and Dad sat on the porch swing and watched as we kids ran around the yard catching lightnin’ bugs. Occasionally, Mom would allow us to use her ice pick to punch holes in the top of one of her empty Duke’s Mayonnaise jar lids so we could “keep” our bugs.

I’m sure Dad let them go as soon as we were ushered inside for bed. I still get excited and squeal when I see lightnin’ bugs. And I get excited for summer vacations. It might not be exactly like the “olden days,” but summer fun is still what we make it to be.

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PUBLISHER

Kevin Aylmer, kevina@blufftonsun.com

EDITOR

Lynne Hummell, editor@blufftonsun.com

GRAPHIC DESIGNERS

Melanie Dodson

Wendy Price

OFFICE MANAGER

Melissa McCullough

CONTRIBUTORS

Jon Black

Amy Coyne Bredeson

Mark Deloach

Chris Dewey

Collins Doughtie

Jada Gaines

Jean Harris