Junebugs on a string.......

“In the summertime when all the trees, the leaves are green......” Roger Miller
I like summertime...always have, I guess. “No more school, no more books, no more Teacher’s dirty looks....”
Pretty tame lyrics compared to what the kids come up with t’day.....but I didn’t make ‘em up, I just remembered them......
I s’pose I have as many false memories of my youth as ever’one else....heck, maybe more. Junebugs on a string to the ‘dog days’ of August.....Seems like I spent my summers wand’ring the hills and the riverbank....I know those memories ain’t entirely factual but, that’s what I got....honeysuckled hills and big river....a great big playground, a little more dangerous playground in many respects....safer in others.....
We moved to Beattyville in time for me to start in the 3rd grade....I wuz seven years old but I turned eight in September and Miz Fanny Williams wuz teacher.....she made the ‘wicked witch of the west’ seem like someone’s Grandmother.........
Beattyville wuz a small village (smaller now) on the southern end of the Ohio River Shelf, a flat spot ‘tween the hills and the mighty Ohio River.....it had gravel and cinder streets and wuz more formally known as South Portsmouth becuz it’s across the river from Portsmouth, Ohio.....(that’s prob’ly more hist’ry than anyone wants to know)...
There were steamboats on the river and steam locomotives pulling the trains and ev’ry summer was a lifetime.....’cuz when you’re a kid, the world is brand new and stretches out in front of you f’ever ‘n ever......