Do you remember 16?

Summer was the best...

Drinking beers by the river, Marlboro costing $1.00 per pack. Waking at 4am to detassle, home by 9am. Just in time for a nap some days. Most days I would throw on my swimsuit, and a shirt and I would collect my girlfriends. And we would go to the river, or the lake. And we would sit quietly sunning ourselves, one hand in the water.



I can recall wind in my hair and cruising through town in my girlfriends 1974? Yellow mustang with white leather interior, and t-tops. We would smoke cigarettes, hoping they would make us "sophisticated", only to find we loved smoking.

Drinking cheap beer, bought by a cousin, or someone from work. Sitting by the river, sitting in the sun in swimsuits that would never even fit my arm now...Tanned... Gloriously tanned skin. Unmarked by days, the occasional scar from some crazy stunt, that required drinks and a certain amount of bravado.



No responsibility in the summer with the exception of my 4am detassling gig, and the 4pm-close at Bonanza. Wearing that horrid bonanza wrap around Burgundy bibbed skirt things. A cap I had to slide my pony tail through the back. I wonder if I have a picture....? I ended up learning every job in the place. It was very easy work, I learned to balance the books, grill, fry, prep cook, and run the damn all you can eat salad bar...Only working there, because all of my girlfriends did.

So nightly we would close, clean, everything. Then I would go home, take a shower, dry my hair upside down, put on brand new clothes, and head out again. Replacing a pack of cigarettes, and the cheap beer with a bottle of rum...And head out into the night, with my girlfriends.

First kisses, drive in movies, skinny dipping, late nights, street dances, first loves.




Being ignored by mad crushes, and dating nice boys from surrounding farm towns...Nice boys. Boys that thought smoking and drinking were naughty, and wrong.

A t-shirt with Sex Pistols, black chuck taylors, and going to town to get "the flop" cut into a Mohawk.....

And now I am wondering what happened to all of those girls, some of them got married, one of them had triplets, one had a miscarriage, most got married and moved far away. The guys? I do not know what happened to the guys. I know I married one of them....I told them I would. They didn't believe me that day at the pool. I was 15, and I told them. "Ya know, I am going to marry him someday"...and there was giggling, and a general 15 year old eye rolling.

And when I look at the Christmas cards they have sent and read the notes. I read about diets, minivans, a knee surgery, a parent that has passed, and a job....And it makes me smile....