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All I know is I was not bleach blonded and freckled ;)

hanifa stole my reply...

i had the good fortune of spending summers in the carribbean. there was lots of playing, splashing and sunburns (oo).

Most of my summers were spent in the carribean too but no sunburns for me.

*Flashes lifetime membership card in Pasty-White Skinny Kid with Glasses who'd Rather Be Indoors with a Book Club.*

I was in between. 10 years in the lushness that is Grenada (Carribean) followed by 7 in the concrete jungle that is Brooklyn.

When in Alabama, I was sent to a type of summer school that was not at all like school, but was at the school. Like day camp. Every other summer I would spend it between NYC, SanFran, Tampa and South Carolina (Greenville). Inside, outside, and all over.

I grew up in Brooklyn and spent most of my summers home, but home was Coney Island so I was either on the beach or at my building's large swimming pool all day.

I grew up on a lake in Indiana - definitely bleached blond and a bit freckled.

I grew up on the Chesapeake Bay and was in or on the water from sun up to sundown. It was a wonderful place to grow up and I visit my family in Annapolis as often as I can during the summer. But I refuse to leave New York on a holiday weekend for fear of spending it on the NJ Turnpike.

There are no other suburbanites? I'm from Long Island so summer meant either playing in the backyard or going to day camp, with the occasional visit to Jones Beach.

Suburbs all the way. The town pool was where it was at. We spent a few beautiful summers in Sweden, in my mother's small town or at my cousins' "on the island" -- a lot of Swedes have summer cabins in the archipelago. There it was sun, swimming, and blueberry picking all day long - and the days were very long!

City Kid here, either on the streets of the Bronx or at a day camp under the Whitestone Bridge in Queens--that was like "the country" if you lived in the Bronx.

I grew up in Halifax, NS and would spend part of my summer there, and the rest among relatives in the Ottawa Valley, Long Island, Montana, Alberta, and rural New Brunswick. The best was the farm in the Ottawa Valley where I had two cousins my age. We all rode well and would split our days between ponies, building forts, jumping out of haylofts, and hiking in the woods. My poor brother was miserable; he was the youngest of the bunch, surrounded by girls, and definitely not into horses. We terrorized him.

Suburbs of Minneapolis, MN. Not country, but not city in the way of NYC. Lots of nearby lakes, trees and mudholes to play in.

i grew up in wv. we're talking so woody we didn't have running water! i went for hikes all day. so, when i moved to one of the largest cities in the country, i felt like i was missing something. don't get me wrong, i love it, but i've found i'm happier when i spend at least 1 day a week at the park. i just recently bought the model of bike (vintage) that i had as a kid. i instantly felt insanely happy.

I probably should have said County Mouse and left it at that, because the Bossier City - Shreveport (Louisiana) "metroplex" is really only a city relative to the idea of the rest of that state, but I did sometimes spend parts of the summer at the zoo and the parks with my grandparents there.

My other grandparents also lived a city (Baton Rouge), but they grew 99 rose bushes and had a whole vegetable garden, including corn and beets and tomoatoes and squash and stuff. But spending time with them in the summers tended to mean going to Bell River to the camp they rented out there and riding with my grandfather in a pirogue putting out a trot-line to catch fish and/or put out crab traps or crawfish traps, although I forget the details. And dear lord, the mosquitoes were awful. And once you've seen my (late) grandmother killing a snake with a cane knife, you'll never be the same again.

I grew up in the Berkshires, but occasional summer weekends in Brooklyn (grandparents and cousins) were not unheard of -- and I loved them!

I have to ask about the picture on the right -- with the WTC under construction in the background. That is SO my childhood! Then again, so is the pond picture on the left . . .

I grew up in Dutchess County, so some of my childhood summers were of course spent there in sort-of-rural-sort-of-suburban Rhinebeck, riding my bike to friends' houses or the town pool or going with my older sisters to Wilcox or Lake Taconic once their friends were old enough to drive.

The other part of my summers were spent with my father in NYC, doing the things you do in the city when you're a kid and your dad is a painter: museums, parks, drawing, painting, museums, movies, and more museums. It was also the only time of the year when I'd get to spend a good amount of time with my brother, who grew up with his mother and didn't visit our dad as often as I did.

I really miss summers. It's just not the same when you're a grown up.

Suburb mouse. Riding bikes all over the neighborhood with friends, playing in the sprinklers, going swimming every afternoon at the local pool, feeding the ducks at the nearby creek. And lots of water gun fights.

It's not the country, not the suburbs, it's . . . a small town! In Iowa. Great place to grow up.

I grew in Orange County, CA as a beach girl.

Summers in the home town of Miami, with a two-week car/trailer trip somewhere else in the US...

I did NOT appreciate those trips then, but would kill to do them over now. Well, maybe in an AIR CONDITIONED trailer.

Oooh, I loved those summer two week car trips with my parents. Traveling to the West Coast to see relatives, we got to visit variously Yellowstone and the Rockies, Glacier Park and all sorts of scenic lookouts and oddball tourist attractions along the way. No trailer though, we stayed at inexpensive tourist motels and cabins. My father must have been a saint though to do all that driving. I don't think I'd ever be able to do that on my own.

P2 -

A few of our summers involved a trailer with those drawer things you pull out on each side and the tent pops up in the middle, and there's a little table in between the two beds. It was kind of fun, although it was difficult to pull the bed thing out.

Curtis, that's a pop-up camper. My parents still have the one we used, in all its harvest gold and orange glory! The cool thing was that the 4-burner propane cooktop would drop down and then slide out a drawer to the outside, so you could fry eggs in the cool morning air.

i worked at maintaining my nyc winter pallor during the summer by watching old movies on television, playing records, etc.however, i was forced to go the day camp and we went on daily trips in the tri-state area.

We stayed at our cabin on a lake in B.C. No electricity. It was great.

i grew up in NY but in rockaway-- a little beach community. walked 2 blocks to the beach, around the neighborhood barefoot and was outside all summer long... nostalgia!

Connecticut suburbs... moving between climbing trees and living at the beach. I was totally bleached blond, freckled, scratched up knees, and loving it. Those were the days! I had to be dragged out of the water every night when it was getting dark.

Everything from cit,y to suburbs, to occasionally visits to Wisconsin farmland. Our 6yo is so far a city mouse; we will have to expose him to summer life in the country. One of my favorite memories is picking and eating blackberries and cherries in the backyard, and lying in the grass at night, staring up at the stars. On other other hand, our son gets to watch the fireworks right over the Statue of Liberty - that's not bad, either.

Hey Wende - [flashes identical membership card] - me too! Although now I don't mind reading in the back yard when its sunny. I even used to make a list of everything I wanted to read at the start of school holidays! (I still do that sometimes...!)

jimkk--

My favorite trip was to Glacier National Park... partially because no air conditioning needed... we nearly froze our @sses off that trip... in AUGUST.

all over... riding bikes and pool hopping in suburbs, sailing lessons (love-hate, fun-terror relationship with those) and then 2 weeks somewhere like the Cape or Martha's Vineyard. the best summer was on a little fragment of land blown off of Nantucket -- only three houses, tho we were the only one's there, no electricity, an actual hand-pump in the kitchen, sun-heated hot water, outdated Mad Magazines in the lou, and you could walk around the island in about 2 hours.

I grew up in scorching hot Bakersfielf, CA where summers meant sleeping in your bathing suit, trying to fry and egg on the sidewalk, riding bikes, and swimming. In between that, my parents would send me on great trips to NYC or the Caribbean to visit relatives. Now I live in NYC, no bikes, fried street eggs or swimming, just free outdoor concerts, barbeque picnics in the park, and lots of cold beer. I love summer!

What fun to see these tiny snapshos of everyone's childhoods! I was a Bay Area burbs girl. Lots of playing in the sprinkler in the sun-baked back yard, and *luxuriously* soaking in one of those poor little plastic baby pools, popsicle in hand, to beat back the heat. When my mom would get home from work, we'd pack up the car and head to this little man-made lake not far from where we lived. By then most of the crowds had vanished, it was a bit cooler, and we'd swim, eat bbq hot dogs and chips, and relax. As a single, multiple job working mom, she didn't really have time or $ to take us on vacations, but I still smile and feel good all over whenever I eat a hot dog from the grill in memory of those days!

I grew up in the suburbs in Delaware. I spent summers hanging out at the swim club, eating Jersey tomatoes and corn, and playing kick the can after dinner with the neighborhood kids. Trips down the shore, fireflies after dark, and being outside all the time are what I remember. It was idyllic. I miss summers too. I live in San Francisco now, and our summers are cold!

Small town in the South. Second week after school was out we went to Vacation Bible School at the Presbyterian Church where we made bookends with Jesus on them, ate cookies and drank Kool-Aid. I always considered this our transitional week out of school.

Then, I was FREE. I went to the library, got stacks of books and read them in the yard under the spreading maple tree. From junior high on my sister and I did community theater productions every summer where we met kids who were exotic merely because they were from a different small town. The best part of childhood summer was the feeling of utter irresponsibility.

So. Cal beaches for me too. Usually bible camp in the Los Angeles hills, time at gramma's house. Lots of bike riding, building forts, and hanging out wherever there was a pool.

One summer my brother and I got sent off to relatives in Arkansas. We got to ride horses and hang out with troublemaker cousins. I saw my only real-life tornado.

Summer to me is also about the quality of light and the smell of morning.