The Five Summers of 1979

“It never turned out the way it was supposed to.”

“What?”

“The Summer of 1979.”

“What do you mean by never?”

“I mean never. If there was only one Summer of 1979, I’d say: ‘The Summer that didn’t turn out the way it was supposed to.’ But there were five of them, and they never turned out the way they were supposed to. So....you know...it happened five times over, so, then, it becomes ‘The Summer that never turned out the way it was supposed to. Which was really about being able to time travel. But that’s a different story.”

“Tell me that one.”

“Remember old Mr. Welliver? The neighbor guy with the long white beard and that huge shop that he was always working in at night. Well, one night I tip-toed over there to see what he was doing. It was late Spring of 1979. The shop door was open a crack so I peeked in, like any self respecting 15 year old would do. And he’s working over this...pod. It looked like a glass pod, hooked up to all these wires. There was a body shaped burnt orange colored upholstered area inside. Like a car-seat, but reclined. Anyway, he looked up and yelled at me and I would have just ran, but I was too curious to run.

So he ends up spending most of the night explaining it all to me, and showing me his library of books about time travel. Including some he had authored and co-authored. Unbelievably, he agreed to let me try it out...not that night...but soon. I had to make arrangements with mom and dad so that I appeared to be staying with friends for the weekend first. 48 hours is the maximum time you could be gone because longer than that and your body would start crumbling or something creepy like that. But you know, I’m 15 and invincible and I’m not afraid to try this out.

So he asks me basically ‘where and when’...you know, the night I was going in. And I love history, you know, so I’m thinking maybe the turn of the century, 1899 for good measure, and why not Nebraska? So I get into this thing and it seals me up like a jar of hot peaches and that part was weird. And then I felt electrified, but not in a bad way. And then complete darkness, like a pitch black vacuum. No sound, nothing. And then....like a ploop. Like a gentle fall...into an alfalfa field. Dead silent at the break of dawn. My heart beating out of my chest with excitement.

I wandered down some old red dirt road as the sun came up. I was waiting to see horses and buggies or something. Cornfields at least. Pretty soon an old farmer with tobacco stained beard came up to me and asked me who I was. I made up a name and asked him where I was. I explained that I’d fallen and hit my head and didn’t remember much. Turns out I was in Northern California in the mid 1950‘s. I ended up staying with the farmer....he was a pig farmer...and his wife and half a dozen feral wall-eyed children, until I woke up back in the pod at the end of the weekend. I mean it was interesting...but.

So that was my summer’s of 1979. I ended up in Kentucky the next time, 1971 and the police thought I was some missing kid and they had found me, so that was stressful. We tried five times in all. I never did make it to Nebraska, but the strangest thing is that the Summer of 1979 played in a loop after that, from June through Labor day. I lived that Summer over five times. Don’t ask me how that happened. But also, don’t mess with time, lest you end up telling someone later about the Summer that never turned out the way it was supposed to.