ENDLESS SUMMER August 1, 2011 pat spilseth
Summer seems endless. It’s too hot to do much but stretch out sunning on the dock, read, dream, and watch speed boats and jet skis bounce over the waves and sailboats float across the Bay. Periodically I dive into the lapping waves gently and swim a few laps, trying to avoid the rising weeds and fish nipping at my bottom.
I remember being a teenager back in the sixties: endless days of biking to the beach, playing tennis, talking with friends on the stone wall at Mount Lookout, waterskiing. Summer days in the sun seemed to stretch on and on...
Summertime takes me back to the sixties. My son’s boat, “The Roamer”, is a 1962 vintage Chris-Craft. Advertised on the internet for almost nothing, Andy and his friend T. Cody figured they’d buy the boat and spend their weekends restoring the neglected 36’ boat. It became a three year restoration project. Franco, their Italian mechanic sidekick, has parents who arrived this summer from their home in southern Italy. They wanted to cook an authentic Italian meal for all of us. On the boat, we feasted on Emily’s luscious lasagna, a delicate roulade of chicken and beef, pork tenderloin, and a fresh salad of tomatoes and mozzarella dressed in vinaigrette...amazing food cooked by an Italian mama!
Another summer delight occurred at Mystic Lake’s outdoor concert stage. My husband got tickets for the BEACH BOYS’ sold-out concert. Playing their unforgettable music to a sing-along crowd, the 60’s heart throbs still retain that intangible harmony made only by these ageless surfers. In attendance were plenty of other sixties’ grey heads as well as twenty and thirty year olds singing along to songs harkening back to those more innocent times of our youth. Who can forget those endless summers we remember from the fabulous sixties, seventies and eighties?
I’m stunned to realize that those tanned Californians have been around for 50 years, but even with grey hair and bigger stomachs, the Beach Boys proved that summer with them is still everlasting. Many of us still recall the words to their iconic songs: “California Dreamin”, “Wouldn’t it be Nice”, “Good Vibrations”, and “Be True to Your School”. What a thrilling feeling to sing along, joining Mike Love and his surfin’ pals in “Good Vibrations” and “I Get Around”!
Today’s sunshine still casts a bright beam on my summer days of sunnin’, stretched out on the sand at the public beach and canoeing across Lake Minnewaska to check out the cute lifeguards at the Starbuck beach. And I’ll never forget the icy thrill in my stomach when I swam, racing to the farthest diving tower to swim with friends in the moonlight.
The Beach Boys have been touring every summer since 1962. The feelings their music evoke are as sparkly as sunshine refracting diamonds on the ocean. As beach balls were batted and bounced through the adoring crowd, Mike Love led songs about cars in “Little Deuce Coupe” and “409”, school and hanging out with “I Get Around” and “Be True To Your School”. They sang about the innocence of youth in “When I Grow up To Be a Man,” and “In My Room” and even psychedelic spirituality “Good Vibrations”.
The Beach Boys’ sounds of summer were unique. Fans in Hawaiian leis and Jimmy Buffet shirts, sandals and Bermuda shorts hummed along to their unforgettable harmony. Some gals twisted up their hair into ponytails or donned hats to dance in the aisles, even twisting with the band on stage.
Realizing that this band of once shaggy-haired, golden-tanned boys is 50 years old, I could see that Mike Love is into his 70’s. Hairlines and birthday cakes may tell one story, but the Beach Boy music tells another. It tells the same remarkable tale it did the day they created a tune in a garage and brought it to a studio.
Then I remembered; I too have aged. But at the concert, I was once again a carefree teenybopper dancing to Beach Boy songs of that endless summer of 1966.
Sometimes, summer magic only takes a few minutes. But if you’re lucky, it can last for decades. 700 words
