By Louis A. Zona
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – I’d like to think that most people over the age of 60 remember the late, great singer Nat King Cole.
Each summer, one of his greatest and best-known songs is remembered and played on stations throughout the country. I always thought of it as a recollection of summers past and those magical summers of our youth.
The lyrics describe those fun days at the beach and hitting the baseball as far as the wind could carry it. Cole’s lyrics present a beautiful picture of warm nights with fireflies doing their amazing dance against a coal black sky.
Cole’s words remain with us as the temperature rises:
Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer.
Those days of pretzels and soda and beer.
Roll out those lazy, crazy, hazy days of summer.
And wish that summer would always be here.
I absolutely love the summer months and – as Cole sings – I wish they would always be here.
But I have heard more complaints about the heat this summer than any summer in years.
Don’t wish for cool or freezing days, I say. Be careful what you wish for because winters seem to last forever and chipping ice off of my windshield is one of my least favorite pastimes. And don’t you love trying to deal with an older battery in frigid temperature? The sound of a battery trying to turn over in the freezing cold is never a good sound.
By now you probably figured that winter is not my favorite time of the year. But as a kid, I loved the outdoors, particularly sled riding on my favorite sled.
Do you believe that I still have my sled – which I will never give up? Though the runners may be rusty, I look at it nearly every day, hanging in my garage.
The fact that my old sled remains a favorite object of mine hearkens to the classic movie “Citizen Kane,” the masterpiece of Orson Welles.
In the film, Kane kept going back to the mysterious subject Rosebud. And as he lay dying, the great man utters his last word, “Rosebud,” which we see is printed on his childhood sled.
Despite his wealth and fame, what Kane treasured most was his childhood sled.
While most of us could never be a Kane-like personage, we all cling to the memory of our childhood toys. And like Kane, for me it is also my sled that my father so proudly placed under the tree one special Christmas morning. And the snow that fell that morning was so cold that it crunched under my boots.
I think the craziest thing that we warm weather enthusiasts will ever experience is a walk-in freezer made to look like a bar. People are invited to sit in what is basically a freezer room that has been turned into a bar.
These freezer bars are located primarily in Las Vegas, which is known for its desert heat. They invite you to put on a borrowed winter coat and enjoy your favorite alcoholic beverage surrounded by ice. Sounds great? I don’t think so!
I have days of high heat and freezing cold locked in my memory.
I’ll never forget, for example, walking with a teaching buddy on a freezing night in Washington, D.C., searching for a restaurant. I recall mentioning to my friend that I had never been this cold before.
I distinctly remember standing in the cold January air one afternoon when I was about 10 years old, hoping that my friends would want to come outside and play touch football.
I ended up sitting by the window in my living room, longing for a game that would never materialize. My friends were correct in staying put in their warm houses.
A second crazy cold experience I remember came one day when I went fishing with my dad in Little Neshannock Creek. It was so cold that the eyes on my fishing pole were frozen solid, as were the mechanisms on my fishing reel.
It was so cold that, to this day, driving past that creek sends a shiver down my back.
Years ago, there was a very large pro football player nicknamed “Refrigerator.”
That could be my childhood nickname too – except it would have less to do with my size and more to do with the fact that a refrigerator creates ice cubes.
But these days, I’d have to say that I prefer warmth over cold. I am OK with the heat, but I can’t be cold.