Summer’s Song

We didn’t count the days back in the ’50s. What purpose would there have been to that? The days and nights of summer were simply never going to end.

From the moment the final school bell rang in June to the clang of the first bell in September, it was an endless series of adventures. The sights, smells and sounds of summer were all the same. Summer looked, smelled and sounded like bliss.

Baseball games, tag, hide-and-seek — or, as we named it back then, “hide and go seek” — swimming, biking, and driving vacations with the windows of the Studebaker down ... it was all bliss.

Seems like a story from a different culture and a different world, let alone a different era, doesn’t it? But when you’re a kid experiencing the joys of summer in Ohio, there is just one culture, one world, one era. And the good news is: Nothing, really, has changed.

For evidence, enjoy a trip through our annual feature, “102 Days & Nights of Summer,” beginning on page 62. All year long, our editors have surveyed the places and events that seemed to hold the most promise for a summer made of memories to last a lifetime.

More good news: It isn’t nostalgia. Don’t get us wrong — we love nostalgia, the mind’s refreshing and sentimental vacation to things pleasant and past. But in Ohio today, there is no need to take a cruise through yesteryear. There is too much to do — too many places to go, too many things to see and do — in the here and now.

Whether it is a festival in Lexington, a concert in Pomeroy, a picnic in Minster, a fishing trip in Port Clinton, or simply a walk in the park just about anywhere in the state, Ohio is the home of diversions and delights that make each summertime something special. In our estimation, there is nothing quite like a summer in Ohio.

Maybe it is because the changing of the seasons is so marked and the differences so distinct here. Maybe it is because the state offers every imaginable kind of vacation spot — from big-city excitement to small-town charm, from amusement park thrills to peaceful trails, from fragrant gardens to cool beaches.

Or maybe it is because we are, by our nature, a hopelessly sentimental lot. After all, only we would have a state song with words like this:

Beautiful Ohio, where the golden grain

Dwarf the lovely flowers in the summer rain.

Yes, we just can’t help ourselves. As far as we are concerned, the summers of our youth will never end. We relive the bliss every year. And this year, we give you another 102 ways to do it all over again.