Southern Summer Nights

That phrase likely brings to mind several scenes from movies. Most filled with genteel folks drinking lemonade on porch swings living simple lives. Movies don't get the whole picture right. Even in the South life is decidedly complicated. Life in the South doesn't warrant a person a free pass to life. The thing that movies to get right though is the lazy, slow moving, haze of a humid night here.

Some of my fondest memories are of sitting on the porch on a humid night like that. I developed a love for storms as a child. Not violent disastrous storms ala Twister but static charged thunder storms that move in slowly and stake claim on an area for hours at a time. My mother and brothers and I would sit on the porch and watch these storms roll in and roll out taking comfort in knowing that this storm would be wild but not dangerous.

Another fond memory of Summer nights is gathering around a big ole watermelon. There were four of us so we would each get a quarter of the melon to our self. My middle brother taught me how to spit a watermelon seed from the steps of the porch all the way to our mothers car. I could hit the bumper of the car but he could hit the back glass. I was always very jealous. We had watermelon vines growing in our front yard every year.

Southern life is not the easy carefree life that movies portray. But like life everywhere else it is full of simple, easy, carefree moments that make the complications easier to bear.