I’m lying in bed not wanting to get up. This is what a twelve year old boy does in the summertime when school is out. I’m hungry. But I don’t want to leave the comfort of my pillow.

Earlier, while it was still dark, I could hear the clink of a spoon in a coffee cup. The window at the foot of my bed faces the porch and the light from the kitchen streams into my room. WSB is dialed in on the Zenith radio. I can faintly hear the music playing.

Mom and Dad are up early every morning. He leaves the house at 6:30 am on the dot. Their routine is practiced and choreographed down to the minute. Mama puts on a pot of hot water for the Sanka, then she works up the biscuits. While Dad is washing his face, shaving, and getting dressed the bacon is frying in the pan and the eggs are in the green bowl waiting their turn.

By the time he comes into the kitchen, Mama is buttering the biscuits. The yellow plate on the table has the eggs and bacon on it. Dad pours both cups of coffee, if you can call Sanka coffee. He takes one ice cube from the freezer and drops it into his cup. It splashes over the edge and down into the saucer. He sits. Always the same chair. And he stirs.

Mama comes to the table carrying the biscuit pan. She leans in around him and sets the pan down on a towel.

“That pan is hot. Be careful,” she says.

He knows this. The pan is hot every morning. There are eight biscuits. Four of them are turned bottom-up, a sign that these four have been slathered with butter. The other four? They might be my lunch.

Mama always sits last. Dad waits. She has a steaming pot in one hand, a spoon in the other. He shifts his plate to one side for easier access, and she spoons out a heaping pile of grits. First his plate, then hers. Dad puts a pat of butter in both piles. She rinses the pot at the sink and then comes to take her seat.

They bow. He says the blessing. A word of thanks without much variation from day to day. But they are grateful and I can’t remember ever having a meal in that house without saying grace first. Saying grace showed up in restaurants. It showed up when friends came over to eat. It even showed up on the tailgate of the truck while we were hunting and only had soda crackers and Vienna sausages to eat.

Lying in bed I know everything that is going on. I’m picturing it in my head from the sounds and smells. But it’s summertime and I’m not expected to be at the table for breakfast except for Sundays.

It’s cool for a summer morning. The attic fan has been running all night. My window to the back yard is open and the breeze made me pull up the sheet sometime during the night.

It was hot and sticky when I went to bed. I laid there in my whitey-tighty briefs trying not to move. Trying not to sweat.

But by morning I’ve got the sheet tucked under my chin. I hear Dad crank the truck and leave for the foundry. The house gets quiet and I doze off for a while longer.

It’s daylight when I stir. I can hear Mama at her sewing machine in their bedroom. I put on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. The tile floor is cool to my bare feet.

“Good morning sleepyhead.”

Mama is always cheerful at odd hours.

“You want me to cook you some eggs? There’s some extra biscuits if you want one.”

“No ma’am. I’ll get some cereal.”

I’m going through a Captain Crunch stage. Sometimes I’ll eat Alphabets. I like seeing what words I can spell with the letters. CAT is easy. COW, too. It’s harder to get HORSE or HOUSE.

I take my bowl to the den and sit in Dad’s chair. If it was Saturday, I’d be watching Buggs Bunny and Foghorn Leghorn. But it’s a weekday. Captain Kangaroo is okay, but I’m getting a little old for kid stuff.

Mama comes through the den on her way to the kitchen.

“Your daddy wants you to put down newspapers around the tomatoes this morning.”

I’m sure I squinted my eyes or made some facial gesture in protest. I hadn’t said anything, but I was hoping to ride my bike into town and play some baseball over on North Avenue. I’m not sure how she knew what I was thinking.

“You can play baseball later today after you finish in the garden. If I was you, I’d get out there now while it’s still cool; before it gets hot and the dog flies start biting.”

“Yes ma’am.”

I was not enthusiastic.

In the corner of the den, piled up in a chair, there’s a stack of newspapers. Mama keeps every issue of the AJC, and it comes daily. The Sunday paper is the best because it has the comics in it. Peanuts. Beatle Bailey. Snuffy Smith. Family Circle. I love them all.

The stack is so tall that it’s tilting to one side. I grab an armload of papers and head out to the garden. The grass is still wet from the dew. My Keds are wet before I get to the tomatoes. I’m on my hands and knees unfolding papers and spreading them out around the plants.

“It’ll help keep the weeds out,” Dad says.

So, I lay out the papers two and three sheets thick. I can hear Dad’s voice in my head telling me not to skimp.

“If you’re gonna do it, might as well do it right.”

This is his steadfast rule. I’m not wholeheartedly buying it at my age, but unknown to me this is a lesson that will stay with me for the rest of my life.

I finish up by noon. Three long rows of tomatoes. All the edges of the newspapers covered with dirt to keep them from blowing away. I’m sweating like a hog. My knees have dirt smushed into the pores of my skin. My hands and elbows are nasty.

“Don’t come into this house looking like that,” Mama says to me. “You go wash off with the hose before you come inside.”

She has a ham and cheese sandwich and a glass of tea waiting on me. I eat at the kitchen table, my sandwich on a sheet of wax paper, while she asks me about my plans to go play ball.

My bike is on the back porch beside the lawn mower. I hook the wrist band of my glove over my handlebars. It’s a 30 minute ride into town, 20 minutes if I pedal hard all the way.

Mama sticks her head out the back door. “Supper is at six. You be on time.”

“Yes ma’am. I will.”

Six decades later, I still remember those days. Not a care in the world.

When summertime was the best time.