One Summer : America 1927 written by Bill Bryson is a  book that highlights all the great happenings of the infamous summer 1927, including Babe Ruth’s rise to fame with 60 home runs, the decisions of Wall Street policy makers that became the fore runner of the 1929 crash, Charles Lindbergh’s flight in a cloth-covered plane (yes) from Paris to New York, television was introduced to the American public, and Henry Ford stopped making the MODEL T. The book also brings in many other savory characters, such as Al Capone and Dorothy Parker, making for a very interesting read. Makes you wonder if there was ever another summer to compare!

Reading the book brought to mind some of my own favorite happenings during summer. Growing up in a small rural town on a farm in central Illinois, the happenings do not equate with those in One Summer: America 1927 and yet those summers are like a movie that replay in my brain bringing me JOY! Summers included riding our horses, going with the family to participate in local parades as dressed up pioneers to ride in the Conestoga wagon my Dad had rigged up,  a Sunday swim in a small man-made lake, picking cherries from our trees in the corner of our front yard, waiting for the mailman each day by the gate at 10:05 AM because he gave us each a piece of Dentyne gum, trips to the local A & W root beer stand (where I eventually had my first job at 15) and helping mom and the neighbor ladies prepare the food on the days the local farmers came to help Dad with our crop of hay (and of course that meant the boys from town would be coming out to work on the farm that day….whoo hoo!). Even though we did not own our farm and had to work the land to live there, times were good and those summer days are close to the most favorite times of my life.

“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.” (F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby)

What was your favorite summer and what memories do you have?