Our hillbilly summer
This summer of 2020 is going to be all about making shit up. By which I mean, I am going to recreate, revisualize, reimagine, refashion, repurpose, redesign, and rethink, reality. I will innovate and virtualize and pivot. I will make “summer” out of Summer! using nothing but what I have leftover from spring. Or, to quote every teacher’s favorite scene from 1995’s “Apollo 13”:
“The people upstairs handed us this one and we have to come through. We have to find a way to make this (a square box) fit into the hole for this (a cylindrical tube) using nothing but that (points at the table full of stuff).”
The crew of Apollo 13 were running out of breathable air and Houston had a problem. They had to provide the crew with instructions to make a square filter fit into a round hole using only what the astronauts had on board. They figured it out because they had to.
Well, the people upstairs sure did hand us this one. I am going to make this summer work because, like an astronaut in a tiny space craft thousands of miles above the earth about to suffocate on her own exhale, I have to. And it will likely involve significant application of duct tape, strategically placed smoke and mirrors, and just a bit of the suspension of disbelief.
Since living in the corona has pretty much eliminated all of the social and entertainment benefits of an urban center like Chicago, I am going to down-home me up some summer, y’all.
Urban: Portage Park pool
Walking distance from our house sits a beautiful Olympic-sized swimming pool. It is free, has family-only hours, and is proximate to multiple ice cream shops. It will likely stay empty—waterless and peopleless—all summer. The pool is a reward for the heat of summer and a multi-generational honoring of the legacy of sunburns and public, but yet private, urination.
Hillbilly: backyard watering hole
There are a lot of different ways to interpret “watering hole.” Last summer, Target was selling adult lounging pools for about $40. They could fit 2-3 people and their drinks comfortably. I almost bought one. I had it in my cart but put it back. They went on clearance at the end of the summer, and I still didn’t buy it. Why, God, why did you make me leave that pool on the shelf? This year, they better have them back in stock. I might let the children enjoy a refreshing dip, but if they pee in it….
Urban: Taste of Chicago
While the city has not officially called off this epic Chicago tradition, it’s not gonna happen. The Taste of Chicago has been part of Chicago’s July celebrations since 1980. Millions of people converge on downtown for the eating and drinking spectacular that celebrates the obese and wasteful glory that is the American summer, replete with fireworks and shootings, but no baseball.
Hillbilly: Taste of McVicker
To be honest, I’ve never gone to the Taste of Chicago. While I love summer festivals, this one I enjoy more from a distance. I propose a long weekend of outdoor, backyard grilling, while maintaining a stocked bar converted from a potting table. Each meal will be enjoyed al fresco, oops, I mean we’ll be eating off of paper plates on the front porch, y’all.
Urban: YMCA Summer Camp
For at least five summers, my kids have participated in the ultimate urban youth summer experience: day camp. It is a glorious creation. I drop them off each morning around 8am and they hang out at the playground, swim, do arts and crafts and science experiments, talk with their friends, and pretend to learn things. I hang out at home, work a bit, write a lot, and pretend that I wish they were home with me. The college-aged counselors monitor them, feed them, and remind them to drink water (which they do) and apply sunscreen (which they don’t). Around 3pm each day, they herd the kids into a fenced and gated side parking lot where they wait, like a bunch of little criminals, for parental parole.
From Y Camp, kids come home with the trifecta of sweaty, dirty, and tired each day.
Hillbilly: Xbox
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Urban: Ravinia
I’ve already bemoaned the cancellation of Ravia’s summer season. I generally go only once or twice a year, but Ravinia is much like the Taste of Chicago in that it is a summer pillar, but with fewer flies and less garbage. Ravinia comes with its own, less aromatic, accouterments:
The Ravina Table: a low, foldable wooden table--a coffee table for lawn chairs--upon which you place a variety of meats, cheeses, crackers, fruits, and wine.
The Ravinia Goblet: an unbreakable, often lidded and insulated cup that holds a generous pour. These, like Christmas mugs or your Grandmother’s china, come out only for specified occasions.
The Ravinia Chandelier: even though Ravinia is essentially a picnic event, it’s a picnic with style. Every proper Ravinia Table is decked out with battery-operated candle arrangements illuminating empty bottles and sweaty cheese.
Hillbilly: Backyard boombox
I’m choosing a couple of nights this summer to blast a good 80s mix in the backyard right up until 10pm. Our neighbor does this whenever he is making a drug deal in his garage and doesn’t want any chance of having his negotiations overheard. For a full hillbilly Ravinia experience, I might project a recorded concert video or an epic movie on a sheet fastened to my garage while blasting the soundtrack. I’ll sit in my lawn chair around my Ravinia table while low flying planes en route to O’Hare and my neighbor’s dope deals duel for the remaining air space.
Urban: Shakespeare in the Park
Of all the things I will miss this summer, this is the most heartbreaking. We have walked to Shakespeare in the Park for at least five summers. Chicago Shakespeare usually does two shows on two separate nights. My whole family goes to one, but my daughter and I go to both. It is the one thing she will willingly do with me. Still. We’ve seen Romeo & Juliet, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Two Gentlemen of Verona, and A Comedy of Errors. She laughs—really laughs—in the right places and enjoys spending time with her family (and me). I get this kind of engagement once a year—perhaps twice if I count Christmas and the presents are good enough.
Hillbilly: Hank Williams?
I’m not really hillbilly enough to know that country crooner Hank Williams is also called the Hillbilly Shakespeare, I just Googled it and Hank came up. But somehow, I don’t think a rousing sing-a-long of “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” will bring my family together.
I don’t know how to replace Shakespeare. I already replaced Ravinia with a movie, so that’s out. I thought about setting up my snack table in the front yard and narrating the comings and goings of people on our street in iambic pentameter. Or we could stage our own mashup of bawdy Shakespearean one-liners and hurl a few Elizabethan insults, but that fun seems short-lived.
Shakespeare in the Park usually happens in August. Let’s just hope the social distancing has eased by then or that Chicago Shakespeare travels with a very big stage and all the actors wear giant crinolines that project 3 feet around them to maintain appropriate safe distances. It would make the comedies rollicking, but the romances would be doomed. And we’ve had enough tragedy. That leaves the histories—the ides of March made glorious summer for we few, we happy few?
I think there’s a hillwilliam joke in here somewhere, but I’m not going to make it.
