County Fair
(c) 2000 Greg Utrecht

When I was a kid the crickets were so loud it sounded like they were right in 
bed with you.  On summer nights we slept with the windows open and the sound of 
crickets in the trees.  We slept with our beds pushed up against the windows to 
get some air.  The street lights cast shadows of tree leaves onto our beds.

Every once in a while you could see the moon come up from the side window.  The 
moon rose over the trees from down by the woods, all yellow and big and moving 
through the clouds till it got white and small.  Every once in a while.  I 
didn't know how long.
               
One summer day it got to be 106.  We stood outside under a tree and looked 
around.  A jet flew high over.  At school they taught us that there was always a 
jet carrying nuclear bombs flying somewhere over the country in case the 
Russians attacked.  I wondered if that was the one.  I wondered how much hotter 
it must be up there close to the sun.  We didn't stay out there long.

At night it got down to 90 sometimes.  We laid there in the heat sweating up the 
sheets.  We had this big attic fan that pulled air from all through the house 
and blew it up out the attic.  When that fan turned on your ears would pop.  It 
made the air move.   

When the county fair came you could see the lights from all the rides and the 
midway.  You could hear the music and the loudspeaker.  I was too young to go 
that late at night but I knew the high school kids were up to something.  I put 
a transistor radio under my pillow and listened to Cincinnati Reds baseball 
games or the top ten.  The girl at the dentist's office had a class ring on her 
finger.  She said it was her fiancée's ring.  He was in Vietnam.  One year we 
got a small color TV.  After that we got air conditioning.

In the winter we moved the beds away from the window. I had to ask why that was.  
Sometimes there would be freezing rain and in the morning everything would be 
covered in ice, the streets, the trees, the telephone wires.  They called off 
school for that.  At school they taught us not to eat the snow.  They said the 
snow was radioactive from all the nuclear tests that were going on in Nevada.  
They said the radioactivity flew way up high until the snow washed it down to 
the ground.  I never ate any.  Nowadays one of my favorite things is to stand in 
the rain.  Try it.  It won't kill you.