Country Time

These are my grandfathers.  "Opa" on the left, "Bill" on the right.  My heart swells when I look at this picture because I have so much love and admiration for both of them.  Today, July 11, would have been Bill's 108th birthday.  We all joked that if he were still alive, heaven forbid at 108 (!!), that he would still be practicing law!  I sure wish he and Opa were still here.  Bill was funny!  I am always telling my kids about the time we went out to eat, Bill without his dentures.  "Hell's fire, I forgot my teeth!"

In most of my memories of Bill, I am scurrying to do something he asked me to do, as if it were the most thrilling thing in the world.  Taking a cold bottle of Coke outside to the gardeners was an adventure!  Even more exciting was jumping out of Bill's heavily air-conditioned gold Cadillac to open or close the driveway gate so the long, sleek caddy could glide through.  Summertime was a Norman Rockwell vignette, complete with the Cokes and the smiles.  Hot August days with the sound of the lawnmower buzzing in the distance, the verdant, alive smell of cut grass, the comforting crickets in the dark as I ran for home after a long day at Bill and Golda's house, are what my memory banks are made of.

I distinctly recall when Country Time lemonade came out on the market.  Bill liked it, and popping open a can on a hot, dry summer day was just like the commercials.  "Tastes like good old fashioned lemonade," the jingle went. I strain to hold onto those memories with each passing year.  When I lived in Paris in 9th grade, I would sometimes take the metro to the Sacre Coeur, just to smell the fresh-cut grass and dream of home.  The grass will never smell as sweet as it did on those Country Time days, never be as nostalgic as it was in Paris, when I longed for all it represented.

My childhood was as sugary-sweet as a glass of Country Time lemonade, and as seemingly smooth and endless as my grandparents' two-acre lawn.  End it did, but I'll tell you what, Bill.  I'll pop open a can of Country Time here if you'll save me a patch of green grass there...