The Summer Knows...

Have you ever met anyone so taken with the minuscule and mundane: lawn mowers, lashing rains, little churches on the edge of town?

At weddings, I still dance the Mashed Potato, not because I like dancing, but because I really love mashed potatoes, with a little volcano divot on top … full of melted butter.

Have you ever met anyone so taken with the minuscule and mundane: lashing rains, chili dogs, little churches on the edge of town?

Dear gawd, I hope not.

When I lie in the summer grass, which is often, I harken back to the yards of my Midwestern youth — plush, shag-carpet lawns, the pride-and-joy of Barrington, Illinois, which to this day has the prettiest front yards the world has ever seen.

To run barefoot through such grass was a sacred experience. Your feet turned green. When you fell, your knees and elbows turned green too.

As kids, we’d dogpile atop each other in that grass, all these green kids growing itchy in the neck, till the moms called us home to dinner.

Devon! Dave! Huckleberry!

The lawns of my hometown were the carpets of kings. When I reached a certain age, I started to spot opportunity. Like Vanderbilt, like Carnegie.