Sunnie sandwiches, Sunburns and Sodas

Summer food for me always tasted of the bug spray, sunscreen, and lake funk that accompanied every meal eaten in a screened-in porch. And all of the salads were primarily made of meat and mayonnaise washed down with copious amounts of Dr. Pepper, later replaced by lukewarm PBR. Everything that came off the grill when I was young seemed to be seasoned with charcoal briquettes and tended to be overcooked yet always cold by the time it reached my plate. It is also hardly a summer memory without the familiar reek of old gold cigarettes that had been snubbed out and relit far too many times. Despite the description, most of my summer meals lack this olfactory component of summer. I find it missed more than I would have ever thought.

My summers smelled like adventure and chainsmoking, which was partly my fault from about age sixteen till I quit. I remember summers with an older brother swimming, riding in the boat, fishing off the dock, and burning marshmallows over an open flame. I still loathe marshmallows; they don't taste the same as I remember, even if I burn them. We ran full speed till we dropped, playing in the sun and rolling in the grass. So all of this tasted so good and tasted like home because every bite of burnt dried-out burger was filling the bottomless pit of starvation we created by our full-tilt antics. We would scarf down food and reapply sunscreen only to have it disperse the next time we flung ourselves headlong into the lake. We were often as overcooked as the neglected meat on the grill.

We used to catch sunfish on the end of the dock with a net and frozen corn, they were hardly ever worth the effort meat-wise, but you could filet a pile of them, sprinkle lowry's on them and put them on the grill on tin foil. They tasted like seasoning and fishy pond scum, but if you put a couple on a bun with some tabasco sauce, they were delicious. That and a gelatinous scoop of some kind of "salad" were almost entirely devoid of vegetables and taste. Tabasco sauce can improve most things; that has stayed true to this day.

When we were on the boat skiing or wakeboarding, there was always an abundance of soggy or stale plain chips. The kind that someone buys and everyone is stuck eating until they are gone or until they "accidentally" get thrown out. Pretzels were also a mainstay or boat time provided fuel for the turns at getting dragged behind the boat. Then, when everyone was sore and tired, we'd hitch up the double tube and get whipped into wakes at high speed, only to skip like smooth stones into graceless faceplants. The only real rival of my Dr. Pepper consumption was probably lake water inhaled at high speed.

These kinds of things seem to only resonate in retrospect. My brother died of a heart attack at the end of my extended youth, and no one smokes or drinks in that house anymore. It is quiet and rotting despite the occasional coat of paint or stains as if the use we got out of the place maintained it. In reality, we probably broke everything enough times that it was in its hay day under a constant state of repair and renewal. The boat and the dock sit idle and unloved. It has probably been a decade since anyone has run down the dock full speed only to slip on the wet boats and sprawl headlong into the chest-deep water. I don't even drink Dr. Pepper anymore. I imagine it would taste boring, missing the sweat and sunscreen that made it unique.

The memories of meals miss the meaning without the people you shared them with. So maybe it's my time to make more with my wife and son, something one day they will miss as much as I miss soggy cheap chips after misadventures tubing.