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Are you aware that in a week or so you won’t be able to buy a bathing suit or a pool toy because those things have been replaced by Halloween costumes and Christmas sweaters. The retail people have it all wrong because the ‘dog days of summer’ are when you really need a bathing suit and some cool pool toys. But it ain’t happening.

I remember back in the 50’s when I was in high school, most moms took the kids shopping in August for their school clothes. Well hello, the clothes for sale at that time of year are winter apparel and you wouldn’t be able to wear them for months. I remember going to the opening football game in a skirt and a sweater and nearly melting because it was still very hot in early September and the sun didn’t set till much later.

I have always wondered why we have the Fair and Rodeo in the heat of the dog days. It is too hot and dusty in my opinion. But I hear that it has always been that way and that it isn’t going to change. There might be other reasons, for instance; the livestock for the rodeo is booked up except for these days and have been that way for the last 50 years. I think it’d be more fun if it wasn’t so hot, but that’s just me.

Off the subject, but once again, I wonder what in the world is a SPANGE. And then knowing what that is, what is a spange dangle? Right here I need to insert that my spell check on this computer tells me there is no such word as a spange! I know it is what we call the Fourth of July celebration here but what is it and what does it have to do with July 4th? I did Google it and found a vague reference to begging and another place where it is referred to as a legal term. Is it a noun, a verb or a what? Is it possible it was a ‘typo’ that just never got corrected? Anyhow our Spange Dangle happens in the dog days of summer too.

I know that our dogs especially don’t like the dog days of summer either. All they will do is lie around the porch and drink plenty of water. You’d think they’d like a nice dip in the pool but they don’t. One of the dogs will frolic in the yard sprinkler but the other one will not dare get her feet or her hide fur.

My summers, when I was a kid, would mostly take place at my grandparent’s house. Granddaddy had a filling station and besides the gas and oil he sold a few eggs, milk and sody waters, he called them. In his ice box cooler he would usually have a watermelon down in the deep dark recesses among the cracked ice and sody waters. If we weren’t having watermelon once a day, he and I would crack open a Nesbitt’s orange drink and I’d scoot over to Mr. Parigi’s grocery store and get a pint of ice cream and he and I would make a delicious orange float.

At my other grandparent’s house, my cousin and I would keep busy in the late afternoon catching lightning bugs or mosquito hawks as they’d land on the clothes line. Sometimes Mamaw would let us turn on the hose and play in the yard, taking turns spraying each other. We’d often walk about a mile or so to the drug store to buy an ice cream cone, or if we had enough money between us we’d buy a movie magazine to read.

Mamaw would make us take a sponge bath after lunch and then we’d slip into our shorty pajamas and get on top of the covers, turn on the big old black fan and rest so we wouldn’t get polio. That was a big scare back in the forties. It meant that all kids had to get in out of the heat and take a rest so they wouldn’t get sick and being in the heat of the day wasn’t healthy. If I ever got a leg cramp I was certain I might be catching polio. Well don’t laugh, if you’d seen an iron lung you’d have been scared too.

Not many people had swimming pools back then but a friend that lived just a few houses from Grandmother had one in her front yard. We’d spend about a week, cleaning out leaves and dirt, then scrub it with Clorox, rinse it out and then fill it up, which took about a day. We could hardly wait to jump in. Granddaddy used to provide my friend and me with an old inner tube to float around in. This was the plainest of all pools, no filter, no pump and no chemicals back then and when it became more mud colored than clear we’d drain it, clean it and fill it again. That took up the time in the summer for us.

My husband, Pat, used to spend a lot of time with his grandparents in Bremond, Texas. He had some friends there who had a small pond which provided the perfect swimming hole for the kids. Pat says it was so muddy that you couldn’t see your feet but it was wet and cool. If he wasn’t off finding mischief with the local boys he would be working down at his Granddad’s car dealership. I think he was the chief sweeper there and he was paid a bit of money for the chore. He also worked at the tomato shed there. His job was to put the paper labels on the crates the tomatoes would ship in.

Another good thing to do in the dog days is to eat plenty of good fresh vegetables. My daughter Jenni brought me some southeast Texas black-eyed peas the other week and we feasted on that and some tomatoes from two friends here in Johnson City. I added some okra that was a gift and threw in some ham slices and cornbread and my goodness it made even the dog days of summer bearable.

If it wasn’t for the pesky gnats, I’d be reading for hours out on my swinging bed on the porch. I even bought one of those contraptions that you can hook onto your clothes that is supposed to keep the mosquitoes away. Save your money though, it doesn’t work well for gnats. All in all it hasn’t been a terrible summer but we are not quite out of the dog days yet.

And if anyone knows what a spange is and why we call our celebration a Spange Dangle, will you let me know because as far as I know spange is not even a word in some dictionaries. And there are others who want to know as well. Just wondering.