Hollis Baker’s Blog

            I guess June is our favorite month of the year.  Vacations for one thing.  A whole week to do whatever we want to do; sleep late, drive to some far and distant place just to get sunburned, work in the garden, and celebrate the end of the school year.  Kids especially enjoy June. The kids are drawn like a magnet to the pools, and lakes around the area.  They can’t seem to get enough of splashing, swishing, laughing, pushing and swimming in whatever water they can find.

            I looked up the reason we call this the month of June.  It is named for the Roman goddess Juno, the wife of Jupiter.  I guess that is about as good a reason and any we might come up with.  June is also the favorite month for weddings.  Wedding bells ring out all across the area. Think of all the rice and confetti that is wasted this time of the year.  June the 6^th is the anniversary of D-Day, when the Allied forces landed on the Normandy beaches to finish of the horror of World War II.  And June 21 marks the summer solstice, the beginning of summer.

            But vacations are the main activity of June.  I remember one vacation our family took all too well.  I rented a small camper to pull behind the family car and we headed for the beach.  The kids were ecstatic, I looked forward to the few days from the daily grind and Alice steeled herself to cooking in that little camper.  We swam in the salty water, dodged jellyfish, and picked buckets of pretty seashells.  Alice did a marvelous job of cooking and enjoyed wading in the edge of the ocean.  The kids and me were all covered with salt and sand, and sunburn.  The salt and sand we washed off easily, but the sunburn stayed.  I felt I was encased in a wool blanket that itched and scratched my tired body.  I asked Alice to drive us home.  She demurred.  I insisted, explaining my physical bodies plight.  She relented.  I explained the ways of driving with a camper hooked to the back of the car.  I retired to the camper.  I removed all my clothes except my shorts and went to bed.  Alice drove north towards home, gritting her teeth all the way.  Somewhere along the road we came to a small town with signal lights.  By now I have merciful gone into a troubled sleep.  A signal light flashed red and Alice slammed the brakes, coming to a sudden stop.  All the cooking pans in the camper were thrown to the floor with an enormous clatter and crash.  I awoke from my troubled sleep, fearing Alice had hit something expensive.  I leaped from the bed and out the door to see the wreck.  At that time the light changed to green and Alice sped quickly away.  Now here I am, standing in the middle of the street with nothing on but shorts and sunburn.  I gave chase and would have caught the runaway camper if the police had not caught me first.  He was kind and took me in the squad car and stopped Alice miles down the road.  She was surprised to see me sitting, nearly naked, in the police car.  I think she blushed as red as my sunburn.

            We did make it home.  The kids were exhausted, but happy to have splashed in most of the water at the coast.  My sunburn healed, but the memory of that vacation lingers on and on. 

This entry was posted on Monday, June 8th, 2009 at 5:32 pm and is filed under Short Stories, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.