A Little Prayer

The 4th of July weekend is when the seasonal migration of Adirondack summer-lovers really kicks in. The community calendar is off the chart with arts and social events--huge quantities of 2-stroke oil and French's mustard are sold. I was a summer person myself--not here--but in southern Indiana, leaving Potsdam for a few weeks each year to visit my father's Hoosier kin. Serious summer out there, triple-digit hot. You could sweat a pitcher-an-hour of sweet iced tea just rocking on the porch, waiting for the evening's thunderstorm to come over the cornfields from Illinois. After the streets dried, crowds of teens would cruise slowly up and down the main drag, raising a bit of breeze at $.30/gallon. So send up the skyrockets again: one for fireflies, one for iced tea, and one for the bobbing boat. And send up a prayer for a future as easy to love as the velvet summers of the past.