First came the buzz of the June Bugs glistening in their dress coats of iridescent blue and green with their skinny little black legs and tiny feet traipsing across my bare and tanned knee as I knelt in the dew dampened grass of our front yard. Then came the clatter of the Katydids, nervous and hoppity in their race to get out of the hands that held their little green baby bodies. I never liked them when they grew older and bigger and were no longer green.
Then there were Lightning Bugs, zillions of them, tiny glitters dancing their way up the holler and over the trees and racing to see who could get to my front porch first. I waited for them there, not allowed to run barefoot up and down the holler after dark. They never failed to visit, lingered and stayed awhile, lighting up my fingers and then my nose and finally my hair. Ninna had to nearly turn me upside down to shake them loose, so tangled were they in my hair every night.
Then came the Jar Flies announcing their arrival as loud as any marching band and disturbing the quiet of that little mountain holler. They wanted to be heard and not seen but they left their calling cards all over Mom's plants and shrubs, shedding skin before climbing to the tops of trees and sucking the juice out of the leaves; leaving them dead and falling, just as they curled up and fell to the ground with them. Even after those Jar Flies were buried and gone, the echoes of their clackety song lingered and bounced around in the mountains of my mind.
Those were my Mountain Summers, Leon, we heard the same sounds, saw the same sights, ran barefoot on similar tanned feet and watched and listened so closely we brought those summers with us through all these years, didn't we? We are the lucky ones, Leon. Thank you for waking the memories.
