Iowa Summer

Youthful memories run wild

As the years pass, each summer I spend in Iowa, my nostalgia comes more alive. It clicks and sparkles like the synapsis in my brain while I made the memories as a youth growing up in the country. The thick humid air sat beamed down on our young shoulders, noses cheeks and ears. Our skin turned the color of unripe tomatoes, our smiles as wide as the Chesire cat’s. We rode our bicycles recklessly fast. We jumped gravel piles and built plywood ramps. We skinned our knees, elbows and palms. We broke our arms, legs and fingers. We didn’t wear helmets, and every third child was in a cast of some type. Our bicycles were our most vital means of transportation. Where were they taking us? It didn’t matter, only to a new adventure. We were feral. As long as summer didn’t stop - we headed in that direction.

Each of our parents favorite instructions in the summer were as follows:

“Go outside. Don’t come back until the street lights are on. You’re not going to ruin this nice weather by staying inside.”

So we didn’t. We spent nearly every waking moment outdoors in the summer. The metaphorical push from our parents into the country wilderness of small town Iowa is retrospectively shocking and wonderful. I am unsure if anyone had a more beautiful summer than kids in the 80’s and 90’s than we did. Growing up in a small development flanked by a state park lake and reservoir, we were five miles from the nearest gas station. We were 30 minutes from the nearest hospital. We wouldn’t have had it any other way. We didn’t know any better. Oddly enough, there was a municipal golf course about two miles away. We would walk down the highway on the shoulder made of gravel lugging golf bags, sneak on the course and pretend we paid. We played shirtless and without shoes. We got good at golf. Damned good. We waded into the par 3 pond while dodging gigantic, slimy grass carp to procure golf balls. We didn't think about the countless pesticides and chemicals in that golf course pond. After all, we were going to live forever.

It was unique and wild place to be raised, and we were the untamed. When we grew weary of dips in the lake or playing with neighborhood dogs, we would mount our bikes and take a washed out bike trail into the city of Solon - a sprawling metropolis populated with 800 people. But, there was a gas station with soda and candy. We would raise as much as hell as we could between 9-14 years old. We would then climb on our bikes and ride the five miles back home, racing the sunset and daylight in a desperate attempt to get home before the street lights came on.

Baseball, hunting, fishing, golf, swimming, sandwiches with chips in them and shaved ice at the beach filled our days. Things changed at some point for all of us. I think it was the first time I held a girls hand. Well, she held my hand. It warped me into superspace.

“One moment they weren't there, not in any form that interested us, anyway. And then the next, you couldn't miss them. (Girls) were everywhere.” - Nick Hornby, High Fidelity.

Being near the opposite sex in the summer was high stakes apprehension. We didn't even know what to do when we were around girls. We were awkward and uncomfortable. We were unbearable and ‘cringe.’ We were the furthest thing from cool. Girls were the source of anxiety far beyond getting bit by some animal in the wilderness. And yet, we relentlessly sought their company. For me, there are few memories more vivid than the smell of lake water and prairie grass while desperately trying to figure out how to sit next to a girl named Beth on a dock surrounded by pontoon boats. She asked me to sit down, held my hand, and called me cute. I might as well have been the King of Iowa. After she kissed my cheek I wasn’t the King of Iowa - I was King of the fucking World.

The world hasn’t changed, it’s just different. I look at my son at eleven now and want him to hold onto his youth as long as possible. It’s a completely unreasonable request. It’s projection on my part, of course. I want to go back.

I want to go back to watching lightning bugs dance under the willow tree of a scary neighbors house. I want to go back to the sound of a glove catching a ball as cicadas sang around us. I want to go back to the collective conversation of my friends wondering if a girl named Shay was going to show up down the street to stay with her Dad for the summer. I want to go back with patrolling the neighborhood with my Golden Retriever. I want to go back to dumping my white Huffy in the front yard of Adam Hadenfeldt’s house, determined to get my skinny ass kicked in football once more. I want to drink from a strangers hose. I want to buy a Freeze-Pop that makes my mouth turn red at the beach.

I remember walking by high school girls sunbathing, pretending not to look; desperately hoping they didn’t notice my visible rib cage (I wish that were still a problem). The smell of baby oil and sun lotion today can warp me back to that beach faster than Marty McFly’s Delorean. I want to go back to watching a thunderstorm form over the Coralville Reservoir on my bike. Watching the clouds swell pregnant with rain, as thin heat lightning danced between the clouds. We knew to run home then, as we were certainly not unwelcome in a summer thunderstorm. There was no tornado siren, there was no sirens of any kind. Hearing one frightened the peace we existed in would be interrupted.

A common phrase said of youth is “things were simpler then.”

Of course they were. I wasn't aware of Kuwait, or a helicopter going down in Somalia. I didn’t know of the HIV outbreak that would kill hundreds of thousands of people. I didn’t know about crack cocaine that was wiping out the wellbeing in a generation of people. I knew about the Cubs score, I knew that the beach opens in late May. I knew the golf course opens around April. I knew my mom was sick, and I didn’t know why. I know my dad was stressed, but I didn’t know it was because my mom was sick. I knew she would go away and come home, but I didn’t know why.

Then one day I did know why. I knew mom was going through hell, and my dad right along with her. I knew about the President lying about getting a blowjob. I knew Magic Johnson had HIV and I knew it he would be dead soon. I knew what sex was. I knew I could drive. I knew that Izuzu Trooper would take me to get CD’s with Andy in Iowa City. I knew it would take us to the Hard Knocks Tour in Moline. I drank, I got high, I had sex, I lived in different places and traveled to countless more. I saw hundreds of Cubs games. I got in fights. I got sick. I got really sick. I had what my mom had. I still do. Things aren’t so simple anymore. In fact, things are complicated and difficult.

Things will never be as calm as swimming the backstroke, looking up the stars. They will never feel as new as getting a smile from your crush, or being overwhelmed by their cheap perfume as they walked by. Things will never feel safer than the isolation of a tiny Iowan community. Things will never smell as rich as popcorn at the high school football game.

And yet, things are better now. I get to see my sons live summer through their own eyes. I get to see them squeal with delight as they go down an inflatable slide in the back yard. I get to see my boy’s face beam as he jumps off the diving board. I get to laugh with my friend in a golf cart as he coughs from too much weed. I get to smile as I watch my son sneak a peak at the sun bathing high schoolers at the pool. I get to watch my son come to me with a scrape on his knee, while he insists on a Bluey Band-Aid. When I kiss my gorgeous wife, I get to smell her expensive makeup and perfume. I get to hold her hand and watch our boys grow up. I get to be a father. I get to watch my parents watch their grandsons run in their back yard, chasing each other with sticks. You see, the story is different, but scenery the same.

A summer in Iowa is wonderful. When you make those memories you never know it. However, I like to believe we knew how special it was. We knew how good we had it. We weren’t exactly miserable sprinting off the end of a dock as we screamed before hitting the chilly, muddy water of Lake McBride. We knew how good it felt to send a baseball into the hot, radiant summer sky. Now that I’m grown I’m more aware. I’m aware of the tragedy in between my ears. I’m aware I have to work hard to stay alive some days. I’m aware of how many millions COVID killed. I’m aware Israel is hell bent on starting World War Three. I’m aware of police brutality. I’m aware of genocide and famine in Sudan.

I’m also aware I’m lucky. I’m aware I was lucky to be raised where I was. I was lucky to have such a wonderful childhood, and I’m lucky to have the means to give these two little boys one as well. You see, as much as my youth seemed like a Norman Rockwell painting at times, I’m aware things are better today. Because even though a the colors of a hot summer’s sunset is a picturesque memory, I’d like to believe I know I’m going to remember this time with far more love than any time in my life.

Because the only thing better than living a wonderful life as a child is watching your child live one too.