The past couple of days have brought more than the usual share of challenges. I suppose it's because of this that I've been thinking of quiet summer days as a child.
My thoughts took me back to a hot summer afternoon in the 1960's.
I remember lying on the parquet floor in the dining room. Directly in front of me a box fan miraculously converted muggy ninety degree air into a cooling breeze. Behind me, an iron released a hiss of steam. My mother stood at the ironing board with a basket of freshly laundered clothes nestled into the seat of a dining room chair.
In the adjoining living room, the television was tuned to an afternoon variety show hosted by Mike Douglas or Merv Griffin. I discovered that if I looked at the television through the spinning fan blades the pictures on the television progressed in jerky movements. The effect was very similar to flipping a stack of white papers through my fingers and watching the erratic progress of the stick figures I had drawn on the pages.
Such were the simple but important discoveries of a nine year old boy on a hot and humid day.
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