July's Almost Over - Where Did It Go?

This summer is going by too fast.  I haven't even been to a pond, let alone a lake, or the beach.  In my youth that's where you would find me especially on weekends, near the Connecticut shore.  I loved that place, specificially in Old Lyme, CT, more specifically in Sound View, and even more specifically on Hartford Avenue where all the action was and still is.

I need to get myself down there before summer's end.  I will always remember spending two weeks during summer vacations there.  My parents would rent a cottage (actually a two-story house) right on Hartford Avenue from my father's sister who not only owned that property but a smaller cottage right in back.  Being that I'm Italian you can imagine the weekends down there when all the relatives would come down to visit from on my father's side and also on my mother's side.

I remember tomato sauce cooking on the stove and huge pots of spaghetti served to the droves of cousins, aunts, uncles, and friends.

I remember a donut shop that produced freshly baked donuts that melted in your mouth--literally.  Every morning my sister and I would make the short walk up the street from our cottage to buy a dozen of the cinnamon glazed ones.  (My mouth is starting to water now.)

My sister and I became well known during those summers in a sense because we were known as the "twins" who looked alike, dressed alike, sounded alike and you almost couldn't tell us apart.  To confuse people even more our names were the same but switched...I was known as Marie Angela, and she?  You can take a guess.  In a sense I think we felt like one person for many of those formative years.  I still remember us both wearing these yellow sun dresses with spaghetti straps.  We were into our teens then and we looked well..."hot" in those yellow sundresses with the spaghetti straps.  We both wore our hair similarly, long and straight.  We had great tans.  What Italian doesn't?  Yes, we turned heads.  But we also had a very handsome, very rugged looking, very protective father who stood at five foot six yet his voice would make the tallest shake in their shoes.  Not to mention a mother who quiet most of the time knew how to swing that spatula if need be. 

On Hartford Avenue there was the Penny Arcade, the Carousel, the various eateries, and of course the sandy beach and the ocean.  I haven't smelled that ocean scent in years now and realized the other day I miss it.  There's something really organic when driving toward the shoreline where you get close enough to smell the watery brine of the ocean and you get this deep inner sense of connection to all that's around you.  I need to get to the shoreline before summer's end, but not today.

Today is when I pay my property taxes due August 1.  Lets hope the town does a better job of budgeting the monies they receive from the taxpayers than what is happening in Washington DC.