Summer in Boston May 25 2014
It’s about that time—NHL playoffs are coming to an end, you’ve got over a month until the MLB All-Star break and the weather is breaking just enough where it’s completely acceptable to crush thirty-seven Sam Summers before dusk.
That’s when you know summertime is just about here.
I often think about summer when I was a kid. We didn’t vacation to the islands, take flights to Disney—or even get to many games at Fenway [it ain’t cheap now and it wasn’t cheap then].
Go back 23 years or so…
Summer in my household was all about Little League baseball, riding bikes and fist fighting with my brothers on the front lawn.
I never really understood the concept of a “summer vacation,” but what I did understand…running through a sprinkler was just as good as having a fancy in-ground pool—or at least that’s what my old man led me and my brothers to believe.
We did always look forward to our annual trip down the Cape—holy shit was that an intense process!
Once every summer, the old man and my mother would stuff my two older brothers and I in the back of the 79’ Impala, fly down 93 South, hit the Sagamore Bridge and then pop off exit 9A to West Dennis Port where my father’s good buddy owned a tuna-can sized cottage that we’d make home for the week.
It smelled like stale air, pine needles and moth balls—it smelled like shit. I mean summer--it smelled like summer.
But it was all worth it…
Ah yes, the West Dennis [Public] Beach. This place was packed with 40,000 kids, 10,000 screaming parents…and one friggin’ ice cream man…ONE. We would fry in the sun and freeze in the water—just as long as we got a ‘Pink Panther’ Popsicle with the gumball eyes. Genius.
The point of all this—it was a typical summer for people around Boston.
The Cape wasn’t Aruba or some fancy resort, but it was half a tank of unleaded gas from Boston, inexpensive and it had Kreme N’ Kone. (Tell me you have had better onion rings anywhere else and I will call you a liar.)
That is what the Boston Scally Company is all about. We share a lot of the same traditions like sports, family…and even our summer “vacation.” It is really pretty simple when you think about.
You tough it out all winter and spring, just to catch that 12-inch striped bass off the jetties in June—only to throw it back in hopes you’ve got enough squid in the bucket to catch one you can actually bring home.
For many of us, it was the only beaches we ever had a chance to experience—beside Castle Island of course.
How do YOU remember your summers as a kid?
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