1967: The Summer of Ten

Some summers stay with you forever. The summer of 1967 was one of those—caught between childhood and a world at war, between the Red Sox chasing their Impossible Dream and Vietnam on the evening news.

This is my story of being ten years old when parents tried to shield their children from distant battles, and the simple act of pulling weeds with your father felt like the most important thing in the world. Sometimes the most profound memories are built from the smallest details: dirt under fingernails, crickets beginning their song, and the golden light that makes everything feel suspended in time.

The plates were cleared and washed in the kitchen sink. The water ran hot and soapy.

Mom was a teacher. Middle school English. Summer meant she was home with us. No school. No papers to grade. Just summer.

Dad had worked outside all day. He was a telephone man. That's what we called him. He climbed poles and fixed lines.

The war was on the television every night. Vietnam. Walter Cronkite told us about places with names I couldn't say. Soldiers who looked like my older cousins. Mom would turn it off when I came in the room. "It's too far away to worry about," she'd say. But I saw the crease between her eyebrows when she thought I wasn't looking.

I went outside. The screen door slammed behind me.

Dad was in the garden. He had an old t-shirt on. He pulled weeds between the plants. The dirt was dark under his fingernails.

All the neighbors had gardens. You could smell them.

I knelt beside him. The earth was warm. It smelled like rain from yesterday. We worked without talking. Just the sound of weeds coming up. Roots tearing free.

Our setter was in the side field. He jumped at something. Missed. Jumped again. The grasshoppers popped up around him like corn in a pan. He was happy. His tail wagged the whole time.

He caught one. Spit it out. Chased another.

The sun sat low. Everything golden. Dad's face was red from the heat. Sweat on his forehead. He wiped it with his shirt.

"That's enough for tonight," he said.

We stood up. Brushed the dirt off our knees. The crickets started their song. First one. Then all of them.

The setter came back panting. His tongue hung out pink and wet. He flopped down in the shade of the porch.

"Good dog," I said. I scratched behind his ears.

Dad went inside to wash up. I stayed on the porch. The air was thick and sweet. Crickets. One. Two. Then dozens.

From the kitchen came the crack of the bat through the radio speaker. Dad had turned it on. The Red Sox were playing again. This was the summer they couldn't lose. Yaz was hitting everything. Tony C. before the beaning that would change everything, though we didn't know that yet. The Impossible Dream, they were calling it. 

"What's the score?" I called through the screen door.

"Up by two in the seventh," Dad called back. I could hear the smile in his voice.

In the other room the television murmured too. Something about helicopters and rice paddies and boys coming home. But here on the porch, with my dog and the crickets and the cooling evening air, along with the Red Sox winning games they were supposed to lose, all of that war talk felt like another world entirely. A world that belonged to grown-ups and their worried faces.

This was summer. This was ten.