Need Some Summer Time!!

Alright, we are completely enveloped with a lot of snow. Everywhere you turn are snowbanks and ice. It looks as if grass never grew and the sun never shines in the world. But today when I went down south to get some raw milk (from a farm, wahoo!!) I passed by center street and my little neighborhood by the center street exit. My parents finally moved from the little duplex that I grew up in, not far from the little grocery store called Reams, so I decided to drive around in the neighborhood a bit. It's a good thing that it's winter because there are not very many people out to wonder why I was driving slowly around the neighborhood (plus the ice was a good excuse as well). My aunt still lives in the same house where she and my mom where raised (for most of their lives) and where I lived for about the first 4 years of my life until my Grandmother died (from a drunk driver), they have fixed up the old house and it looks good. Her house is only a block from the duplex that my family moved into after the death of my Grandma. Man that duplex is rife with memories, across the street diagnally from our duplex is the church. About two blocks from that is the river. My cousin would visit every year and man one year when we were about 14 we had the best time of our lives. We were kind of little earth children and used to write songs about mother nature, we also liked to take walks, Shannie and me. We would go for walks down to 900 W. then to center st. We would walk along center to the pet store down town and we would visit other store's down there as well. Our current mayor has revitalized the down town, but at that period of time it was not doing good. We were dressed in our cut off jeans and t-shirts and we would wander in and out of the store's carrying our shoes. There was a little hippe shop that sold hemp fiber purses, incence and jewlery. We could never figure out the name of the place so we called it "The Door," because it was basically a blue door in the side of the building. Man the sun was hot and we got thirsty, so we liked to visit a little chinease restraunt, sometimes with my little brother (who was so close to my age that he didn't seem little). We would order pop and egg drop soup (because it was cheap), then we would walk home again. One time we decided to buy fish for the fish tank in our living room. So we gathered up our pennies and walked down to the pet shop, we bought about 12 zebra fish and started to walk home. When we got to Reams the bag that we were carrying the fish in broke and we started scrambling round to pick up our fish who pretty much died when they hit the hot pavement. Some guy dumped out the rest of his pop and ice and I ran in the store to fill the cup with water. We saved about 5 of them and burried the rest of them in my strawberry patch. My cousin gave them names like Axel and Rose from the band The Grateful Dead (in fact she named my cats, kittens the same names). Things were so green and life looked good that summer, it was probably the best summer of my life. We've just got a bunch of gloom to live through and then the heat will return. Here's to the summer of 2009!! May it be a good one!!

~Strawberry Girl