Just A Gal From Glidden: Summer holidays lasted forever

By Kate Winquist

When I was a kid, summer holidays lasted forever.

Two whole months stretched out ahead of you with no school, no homework and, as far as I was concerned, no particular reason to know what day of the week it was.

Now, as I get older, I swear somebody has put the calendar on fast-forward. Days turn into weeks, weeks turn into months, and before you know it, somebody is talking about Christmas again.

But back then? Summer lasted forever.

Katie rides her bike in front of the family garage, wearing her Kindersley Kobras sweats and a Red Rider concert T-shirt. Somewhere in that garage was her secret clubhouse—at least until a spider showed up.

The coveted Yes & Know Invisible Ink Quiz & Game Book—hours and hours of entertainment before cell phones, the internet and endless TV channels. A pretty exciting purchase for a farm kid on the long ride home from Saskatoon.

Life was simpler, too. We didn't have cell phones or the internet or 500 television channels telling us there was something better we could be doing. Our telephone was a rotary dial on a party line with the neighbours, and you certainly couldn't be on it for more than a few minutes. Somebody else might need to make a call—or, more importantly, somebody might be listening.

We made our own entertainment.

We played outside until dark, until we were dirty, mosquito-bitten and so tired that we actually wanted to go to bed.

The summers seemed endless. Funny thing is, two months apparently still wasn't long enough. You'd finally head back to school in September and one of the first assignments the teacher would hand you was the old classic:

"What I Did on My Summer Holidays."

Mine probably would have read something like this:

My Summer Holidays
By Katie Drummond

I spent my summer holidays on the farm.
We made one trip into Saskatoon and stayed at the King George Hotel. We got to go to McDonald's and play a round of mini golf at the Putt 'n Bounce. I had to share a room with my sisters, but we got to order room service, which was pretty cool.
I like clubhouse sandwiches.
We stopped at Westgate Mall on the way home and I picked out an invisible-ink activity book to do in the car.
Uncle Neil brought out his tent trailer and parked it in our backyard. Carrie and I got to camp out in it.
I saw a spider and wanted to go back inside the house.
The rest of the summer I got to pick weeds between the rows of fir trees and in the garden. I also helped pick and shell peas.
Dad got me to paint one of his wooden grain bins.
I played catch by myself by throwing a tennis ball against the side of the barn because nobody wanted to play with me.
I broke a window on the barn.
I made a secret hideout in the garage attic.
I saw a spider and wanted to go back inside the house.
We played cards and Parcheesi after the dishes were done if it wasn't nice enough to play outside.
That's what I did on my summer holidays.
The End.

Looking back, those summer holidays might sound pretty boring.

There were no big vacations. No amusement parks. No elaborate summer camps. Even a family trip into Kindersley was a fairly rare event.

But I wouldn't trade those summers for anything.

Well, maybe the spiders.

We found ways to amuse ourselves because we had to. If nobody wanted to play catch, you found a barn wall. If you wanted a clubhouse, you climbed into the garage attic and made one. If it rained, you played cards or Parcheesi. If your uncle parked a tent trailer in the backyard, congratulations—you were now camping.

And somehow, none of it felt like we were missing out.

There was nowhere else we thought we were supposed to be. There were no pictures scrolling past us showing other families on better holidays, eating better food and having more fun. We weren't constantly connected to everybody and everything.

We were just kids, on summer holidays, with an entire day ahead of us.

Maybe that's why those summers seemed to last forever.

We weren't counting the days.

We were too busy living them.