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The Longest Summer
Sep. 14th, 2019 06:38 pm14 September 1969
This was the last day of the most amazing summer of my young life. Tomorrow would begin my sophomore year in high school, and I would leave carefree boyhood behind me once and for all.
While not the longest in terms of the actual number of days, this summer seemed longer than others, and it was certainly the most eventful – my epic 7 weeks in Europe (I'd never again leave home for so long), men landing on the moon (which to me represented the hope of man's future), the cultural phenom of Woodstock (which supposedly 'defined' my generation, whatever that meant) – and it ended with my father's friend, Arnie Morrow, giving me his prosumer Canon 35mm camera, which kick-started my hobby of photography, and with which I took this self-portrait almost exactly 50 years ago today.
I didn't realize it then, but no summer vacation after 1969 would ever be quite as awesome. Future summers would be spent working, not traveling. And summer breaks in college were definitely shorter than those glorious three months off we got in high school. And after college, of course, no more regular summer time off at all.
So the end of summer in 1969 wasn't just the end of a vacation. It really was the official end of my childhood. My life – and the world in general – did nothing but get ever-more complicated from then on.
This was the last day of the most amazing summer of my young life. Tomorrow would begin my sophomore year in high school, and I would leave carefree boyhood behind me once and for all.
While not the longest in terms of the actual number of days, this summer seemed longer than others, and it was certainly the most eventful – my epic 7 weeks in Europe (I'd never again leave home for so long), men landing on the moon (which to me represented the hope of man's future), the cultural phenom of Woodstock (which supposedly 'defined' my generation, whatever that meant) – and it ended with my father's friend, Arnie Morrow, giving me his prosumer Canon 35mm camera, which kick-started my hobby of photography, and with which I took this self-portrait almost exactly 50 years ago today.
I didn't realize it then, but no summer vacation after 1969 would ever be quite as awesome. Future summers would be spent working, not traveling. And summer breaks in college were definitely shorter than those glorious three months off we got in high school. And after college, of course, no more regular summer time off at all.
So the end of summer in 1969 wasn't just the end of a vacation. It really was the official end of my childhood. My life – and the world in general – did nothing but get ever-more complicated from then on.
