I waited all year for the endless summer to begin and hit the road to my summer job

By John Toth

The Bulletin

I was driving up to the hideaway and noticed that school buses started popping up on the streets around noon-ish.

Then I realized that the students inside those buses were having a very special day - the last day of school.

School’s out for the summer. I remember those days.

I stepped outside of the school building, and until September, I didn’t have a care in the world. I was as free as a bird, and summer seemed endless. September seemed so far away. It was time to have fun.

No matter which country I was living in as a child, this feeling was there on the last day of school, which was really wasted academically. But unless I was very sick (which I wasn’t), that last day was not to be missed. It was special.

We didn’t do anything. All the grades were already in the books. We just socialized in each class and went to assembly, or maybe attended a talent show presentation by fellow students who were brave enough to be judged.

I never was, but my daughter in junior high teamed up with a friend of hers to recreate Jack Webb and Johnny Carson’s version of “Who’s on First,” made popular by Abbott and Costello.

The “Tonight Show’s” version was called the “Copper Clapper Caper,” a funny tongue-twister that I transcribed from videotape and gave to the girls. They practiced it to near-perfection. The kids at the assembly never saw the show - or heard of Carson or Webb. The young audience was slow catching on in the beginning, but as the skit progressed, the laughter and clapping increased. It was a hit.

That’s why you can’t miss the last day of school. You never know what can happen.

In Austria, my fourth-grade homeroom teacher really wanted me to take the classroom hamster and some plants. They were well-cared for by the students, but they needed a home for the summer. Mom agreed to take the plants, but she did not want the hamster. Some other unlucky parent got stuck with it.

By the time I got back from summer camp, the plants had withered away. Mom was not a green thumb. Her expertise of forging visas and passports to enable us to escape from communism in the 1960s did not carry over to plant care.

My best summer memories were formed starting at age 15, when I found a job at a summer camp in New Hampshire, washing pots in the kitchen. I didn’t want to stay in the city. All the server jobs were filled already, so I took what was left over, thinking that I’d make the best of it.

It turned out to be the right decision. The job was not very hard, and I enjoyed the camp facilities, which were open to the staff. I kept going back to that camp for seven summers in different capacities and had a great time each year.

I did a lot of growing up there and made a lot of friends. Each year, I had to kick myself in the rear to leave and go back to the big city and school. I wanted the endless summer to be just that.

But the camp closed until the next summer, and I went back to high school and later to college. Each March, I started counting the days left before I got on the bus, and later, in my car to travel back to camp. After my seventh summer, I finished college and got a real job that brought me to Texas.

When school lets out for the summer, my life doesn’t change anymore physically. If I were a teacher, perhaps that would be different, but I chose to go into the business of writing and publishing.

As I drove past the school, other kids were walking away from it on that last day of classes. I  continued reminiscing of the times when one of those kids was me. I didn’t have a care in the world.

The endless summer has begun. It’s a frame of mind. May it never end.