SUMMER AFTERNOON, SUMMER AFTERNOON

"THE PERFECT SUMMER AFTERNOON" by Holly Powell

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Summer's here at long last! Wait a second, this post should have been written around June 12, not August 12. But we've hardly had summer here at all. Yesterday was only the second day of the entire summer that it has reached 90 degrees or more. Not that I like really blistering temps, but we could have used quite a lot more sun, a bit less rain and fewer cool temps and clouds.

"SUMMER AFTERNOON" by Pino Daeni

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But finally, the weatherman is predicting a spate of warm - no, hot - days for us. Hopefully, the sunflower farmers can stop worrying about when their crops will flower. It is extremely unusual to see these fields still mostly green when they should be covered with thousands of yellow and brown faces turned east toward the sun in the morning then swiveling toward the west in the afternoon.

"SUMMER AFTERNOON" by Anna Good

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Finally, I can trot out the paintings I've saved - the ones that are titled "Summer Afternoon" or include that phrase in the title. I published a "Summer Afternoon" post last year or the year before, but still found plenty of images for this one. Obviously, artists and viewers alike are enamored by summer afternoons.

Both posts were inspired by the Henry James quote "Summer Afternoon - Summer Afternoon . . . the most beautiful words in the English language." And they were also inspired by the wonderful Peter Skager painting "Summer Afternoon on Skagen Beach."

"SUMMER AFTERNOON TEA" by Thomas Barrett

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As you will see by these paintings, the phrase means many things to many people. It means many different things to me. But for us all, it evokes a languorous, somnolent, indolent, quiescent time. When I see the picture above, it brings to mind yet another era. I imagine an English country manor during the 1930s, with afternoon tea on the lawn delivered by servants and children playing croquet in the distance. I suppose I connect those two images in my mind because they both invoke the upper crust - silver services, dressing for tea, dashing motor cars, immaculately groomed grounds, servants dressed to kill, polite conversation and manners.

"SUMMER AFTERNOON" by Carolyn E. Lewis

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Of all the paintings posted here, this one is probably closest to my personal experience - summer on a more rural, much less showy scale. We weren't upper crust, far from it. We were middle class in Grandma's family, lower middle class in Mom's. Whether living in my grandma's house, my parents' house or now, my own home, I've always inhabited small houses with big back yards. At first long expanses of green, the sprinkler-less lawns of my childhood would be burned to a crisp by August. But we still horsed around with the dogs, made hobo burgers over a fire pit, set off fireworks (after the Fourth, too), squirted squirt guns, watched for shooting stars at night, caught grasshoppers, picked wildflowers, played "Starlight Moonlight", walked the creosote-soaked tracks, rode our bikes to the store for pop (one for Mom too).

"A SUMMER AFTERNOON'S REST" by Johan Krouthen

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This painting reminds me of a photo of my Grandmother Julia, my Great Uncle Olaf and my Great Aunt Jennie reclining on the grass after a picnic not long after the turn of the 20th Century. From the photo, I know it is Sunday, for what other day would these young Norwegian immigrants have had free from their nursemaid, kitchen help and laborer jobs? Even the lowest worker was entitled to his or her Sunday rest. How long after they arrived in Canada were they able to purchase their "Sunday Best" clothing?

"A SUMMER AFTERNOON" by Herman Wessel

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Like this girl from the 1920s, in her cool lavender and white dress, I whiled away many a summer afternoon reading outdoors, whether on our potato pit roof, on our concrete stoop, under the caragana bushes or perched in an elm tree. My branch was even higher than hers, and another branch served as a convenient book and arm rest. I certainly wasn't wearing dresses. More likely, my outfit was a t-shirt, shorts and "tennies" or "thongs" (what we called flip flops).

"ONE SUMMER AFTERNOON" by Dhanashiri Athavale

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Everyone, rich or poor, can find a spot for alfresco dining, whether it be a picnic table, a blanket on the grass, or a dining table brought outdoors. And everyone can afford hot dogs, chips and chilled glasses of lemonade or Kool-Aid. Once in a blue moon, the Munros and the Johnsons would pile into two or three cars and travel 100 miles to a lake for a joint picnic.

Or, I would be forced to attend the Johnson Family Picnic at Long Creek Dam, where I hid in a book and tried to be invisible (the only ones I could stand from this step family were Aunt Emma and Uncle Edwin). After we ate, the men would bring out the horseshoes, the women would gossip and we kids were finally released to go swimming ("Wait an hour for your food to digest, or you'll drown!! Do NOT go near the spillway!!)

"SUMMER AFTERNOON ST. CATHERINE CHURCH"

by Theresa Troise Heidel

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Every group of "Summer Afternoon" pictures must include a cool blue lake. It's 98 degrees as I type this; right about now I'd love to immerse myself in its shocking cold waters. Lakes are few and far between where I grew up, but our family had a hand-built houseboat on Boundary Dam in Saskatchewan. We could jump right off the sides of the boat into the algae green but still refreshing water. For a rare treat, we were allowed to walk up to the highway to take the Columbus Recreation bus to the Crosby swimming pool. Ah, I can still smell the Coppertone, that powerful summer sense memory!

"SUMMER AFTERNOON" by Sheri Doty

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What would a summer afternoon be without a couple of children finding some water to dip their feet in, be it a babbling brook, off the end of the dock or a shallow cement pond. In dry, alkaline northwestern North Dakota, we had no such things. Instead, we would hike out to the roadside slough, where the muskrats lived, the blackbirds trilled and the cattails grew.

"SUMMER AFTERNOON BALMORAL" by Gordon Rossiter

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And then there are the "Summer Afternoon" days at a public beach - whether lakeside or seaside. The grainy white sand, the colorful umbrellas, the band shell in the distance, the flags snapping in the breeze, the hot dog and pop stands, changing rooms and paddleboat rentals. The entire scene screams "Holiday" - release from school, work and everyday cares.

"SUMMER AFTERNOON" by Allan R. Banks

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Summer afternoon, summer afternoon: sinking your toes into cool green grass, shirtless kids, melting ice cream cones, row boats, summer Bible or 4-H camp, fishing for perch, Popsicles, peaches, sitting on the front porch, letting watermelon juice drip down your chin, straw hats, canvas deck chairs, warm strawberries, napping in hammocks, the Tastee-Freez, making hollyhock dolls, rubber swim caps, mom and pop resorts, hamburgers at a drive-in, the delightful boating smells of motorboat exhaust and beached fish.

Most of our summer days are not that way. Few of us have servants; most of us have jobs. Lots of you fight freeway traffic and other big city woes. Instead of Adirondack chairs we have plastic deck chairs. Instead of an outdoor lunch with spotless white linen and glassware, we have barbecues with plastic plates and cups and paper tablecloths. Now we live in air conditioning or at best venture out to the deck. Gas prices are high; vacations become less and less affordable. But for a few hours, at least, one can imagine the way it used to be: Summer afternoon, ahh, summer afternoon.

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HOBO BURGERS

Place a raw hamburger patty on a square of aluminum foil (shiny side in).

Add sliced or diced onions.

Cover with raw sliced potatoes (skin on or off, your preference).

Slather all with canned cream corn.

Salt and pepper - lots.

Wrap all in the foil.

Cook on a grate over a rock-rimmed fire pit.