Summer Afternoon, Summer Afternoon

“Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.” - Henry James.

With the promise of beautiful weather, I had taken the day off from work. My husband got the bright idea that we should order pizzas and then go swimming. Around 11 a.m., he picked up the phone to place the order, but all he got was dead air. He suggested I try to place the order online, and so I got on the Internet, and IT went out. So we had to do the old-fashioned thing of actually driving to the pizza joint and ordering our pizza in person, and waiting. I know, so retro!!

And then, armed with our pizzas, we went to a place in the woods we know with a great swimming hole. My husband was already there once this summer, back in May, shortly after the snow stopped falling. This August visit was my very first one of the year. You may recall that last September, when we went there, my husband packed a shower curtain instead of my floatie. This time, we were better prepared: the floatie actually made it into the car!

So we ate as much pizza as we could, and then we packed up all of our stuff and walked out to the pond. As I looked around at the green water, I giggled and mentioned a friend of mine who is afraid of snapping turtles. "I bet she'd think there were snappers in here," I said. "Maybe the Loch Ness monster," my husband suggested. (Hey, this would be the year for it!) "If the Loch Ness monster shows up, he'd better bring his OWN floatie!" I replied.

And then we set our chairs up and got out our towels, and put on our swim fins (you might call them flippers), and I blew up my floatie until I nearly passed out. I remembered from the last time I used it that it had at least one hole in it. So I listened for air coming out, and put a few patches on it with the duct tape I had brought along. T. Tiger sat on the floatie and tried on my flippers, and eyed that patched hole with concern; he was afraid our tiny craft might go down!

So I put Tiny Tiger in charge on shore, and I got on my floatie and set out onto the lake. There was a green shimmer on the water that was just gorgeous. The reflection of trees and greenery. The green shimmer is a sign that it is August: such a wistful month, as waning summer gives us the first cool night or two, and we start to see the initial signs of autumn.

Well, of course you know what happened next. Almost immediately upon setting out upon the waters, I heard a little HISS coming from under my floatie. Yep, it was either a hole I had missed or a brand NEW hole. I discovered, though, that I could stop the air loss if I put my finger over it. So there I was, with my finger on the hole, swimming across the lake.

"JUST sit right back and you'll hear a tale!" I sang, "A tale of a fateful trip! That started from this tropic port aboard this tiny ship!" I sang a few bars more, and then when I got to the part about "The Minnow would be lost!" I saw Tiny Tiger watching me from shore, and his brow was knit, and I could tell he didn't think it was very funny at all. "It'll be OK, little buddy!" I reassured him, as skipper of my ship.

As I approached the other end of the lake, I spied what looked like a little NOSE above the water. I figured it was either a snake or a turtle. As I watched it move, it seemed more turtle-like to me. "Avast ye, lubbers! Turn about!" I hollered out to Tiny Tiger; "There's a snapper on the starboard bow!" And I thought of my friend who fears them, and how she would NEVER swim in such a place! But I was not afraid; turtles aren't vicious attackers, and anyway, with my fins, I am a much faster swimmer.

My husband got out of the water long before I did, and I could hear strains of music as he put some tunes on. "Do you hear anything?" he asked. "TOM PETTY!" I hollered back. And he took some pictures of me in the water on my floatie looking happy; I've put one of those in the extras. Then he took his swimsuit off and mooned me! And followed up by giving me the finger, a communication that I responded to, in stereo. "And so, Miss Nice becomes Miss Nasty," my husband observed. Hey, do we know how to have fun or what?

And then I finally decided it was time to get out, and I floated back over to shore. I toweled off and was sitting in my chair, when I heard a loud SNAP. Well, on this day, my little ship, The Minnow, did not sink. But my chair broke! It did not toss me to the ground, as you might expect, but the chair is now down for the count. Lucky I have a back-up chair at home!

There is a shady spot on the hill above the lake with a few picnic tables, and so we packed up our stuff, walked over there, and sat and enjoyed the breeze for a little while before wrapping up our visit. Then we walked back to the car, and got the pizza out of the trunk and each ate another slice or two. It's the same sort of thing we would have done thirty years ago. Some things never change.

And of course, we laid bets on whether the phone and Internet would be back on when we got home. "I'm going to give us the Scooby Doo happy ending," I said. "I bet one of the neighbors called it in. I think the answer is Yes." My husband cast his vote: "No."

And when we got home, we were EACH half right. The phone was still off, but the Internet was on, and I was able to get online and put in a support ticket with Windstream, requesting that a technician come out. I felt very fortunate that at least we had Internet.

Of course, there was the usual nonsense of "What phone number can we reach you at if we have questions?" Which is sort of a silly question, isn't it? The land line phone was OUT and neither of us has a cell phone. So when the phone is out, the phone is out INDEED. And she threatened us, as they always do, that if the problem was inside the house, it could cost us a bucket load of money.

But as of this writing, we are fully restored. We have Internet and phone again, hooray! The technician called around 9:30 this morning. There was an equipment failure one street over from us, and somehow ours was the only account affected. So nothing was going to happen until WE called it in. The tech didn't even have to visit our property, let alone come inside. "Have a great weekend!" he advised cheerfully, as we signed off. And a good weekend it shall be, indeed!

The soundtrack song for this posting, on what was pretty much a quintessential summer afternoon . . . one of the albums we listened to by the lake was Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (known as TP and the HBs around these parts) with Long After Dark, which I purchased on cassette when it came out in 1982, of course. But that cassette bit the dust quite a few moons ago. And so last summer, I finally bought it on CD, and put it on my iTunes playlist, where I have been enjoying it immensely. Let's let the soundtrack song be this one: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, with You Got Lucky.