Midday/Early Afternoon, Saturday, June 7, 2025, Miami, Florida
“The summer stretched out the daylight as if on a rack. Each moment was drawn out until its anatomy collapsed. Time broke down. The day progressed in an endless sequence of dead moments.” ― China Miéville, Perdido Street Station
It’s the seventh day of June – and meteorological summer…and of the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season – and, not surprisingly, it’s exquisitely hot and sticky outside. As I write this shortly after noon on this first Saturday of June, the temperature in Coral Terrace is 89°F (31°C) under mostly sunny conditions. However, with only a slight 6 MPH (9 Km/H) breeze from the southeast and relative humidity at 67%, the heat index is a searing 100°F (38°C). It might be early summer (or, for astronomical summer fans who prefer to mark the seasons by solstices and equinoxes, late spring), but it feels like late July and early August.
I’ve been trying to remember what summer was like half a century ago, in June 1975, but aside from blurred recollections of attending summer school, the occasional kissing sessions I had with my girlfriend on weekends, and fretting about being “mainstreamed” into regular classes at Tropical Elementary School in the coming ’75-’76 academic year, my 12th summer is a missing page in my personal history.
I also remember that school was still in session early in June; back then, school years didn’t start till September. So 50 years ago, I was probably enjoying a hot and lazy Saturday afternoon and watching whatever movie WCIX (Channel Six) aired in its One PM Movie block. (Or, more fun than that, I was “snogging” with my then-girlfriend at her house? See, memory is a fragile, unreliable thing!)
The summer of 1975 was also when I met my best friend Mark Prieto, who had just moved in, along with his mother Dale, and younger sister Leslie, two houses down the street from mine. At first we didn’t get along, but as the summer went on and we got to know each other better, we were as tight as brothers. That bond, by the way, is memorialized in the Reunion Duology; when I needed a best friend for my protagonist/narrator Jim Garraty, I inserted my real-life “bestie” (name and all) to honor him and our friendship.
The only thing I can say about June 7, 1975—thanks to a quick search online—is that it was hot, with a temperature of 90°F, and partly cloudy during the day. Fortunately, my mom was able to purchase a new central air conditioner from Sears for our house at 1001 S.W. 102nd Avenue.
Back then, that house – my favorite of the two where Mom and I lived between 1972 and 2015 – was only 12 years old (like me!), but it only had individual air conditioning units for the three bedrooms. As a result, the heat in other rooms, especially the west-facing living room, got uncomfortable in the summer. Plus, the window-mounted AC units were old and balky, which meant they sometimes broke down at the worst possible times. One of our neighbors suggested that the best solution was to get a new central AC, so that’s what Mom did – she bought a Kenmore unit for, I think, $2000.
I miss that house on 102nd Avenue. Sure, I hated the mango trees that are probably still in the backyard; they were nice and shady, yes, but when they bore fruit, the yield was so great that there were rotten mangoes all over the yard. I hated the chore of picking those up and putting them in trash bags for disposal; the smell of rotten mangos is one of the reasons I now hate that fruit. Aside from that, though, 1001 was a great place to live. I had tons of friends on that block, and – especially after my older half-sister moved out – it was a mostly happy and harmonious home.
A Certain Point of View, Too 
Comments
11 responses to “Tempus Fugit: The Seventh Day of the Sixth Month…and Summer Memories from 1975”
Beautiful memories, well except the rotten mangos.
LikeLiked by 1 person
We lived for five years at that address. And we left it shortly before I started junior high school in 1977. So….five summers, all of which were mostly fun…except for picking up the mangos from the lawn in the backyard. Sometimes they weren’t rotten yet…just slightly bruised from hitting the ground. Even so, there were only so many that Mom could eat or give away, so a lot of them went into Glad or Hefty bags and the garbage can. Oof. That was the only aspect I ever missed from that house.
I lived far longer in the last house we all lived in, and aside from a few practical aspects, I don’t miss THAT house much. (Maybe it’s because Mom died there? I don’t know.)
LikeLiked by 1 person
I also think that where you live as a child or a young teenager you may remember more fondly. Then life gets harder.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m sure that childhood nostalgia is a major factor re that house. 1977 was not the best year for me. I turned 14 in March, but even before that happened, my mom’s dad (the one grandfather I knew well; my paternal one died in 1967, when I was four) broke his hip due to a fall and Mom, the ever-dutiful younger daughter, flew to Bogota to care for him in January. On the 19th of that month, it snowed in Miami, but I was sick in bed and missed it. On March 7, I broke up with Girlfriend No. 2 after I found out she had cheated on me. She was one year ahead of me in school, see, so when I was finishing sixth grade, she was already in junior high. (I guess I was held back a year or something while I learned English?) Since we were in different schools, of course temptation turned her head, so….(If this sounds familiar somehow, it’s because it inspired the Jim-Kathy breakup in the Reunion Duology.) And then…of course, my grandfather passed away in April of 1977, which prompted my now-widowed grandmother to fly up to Miami and stay with us for a while…and it was she who convinced my mom to sell the house on 102nd Avenue and buy our next…and last…home. I wasn’t happy about that then, and even though I learned to live with my mom’s decision, I think my 14-year-old self’s memories linger still, coloring how I feel about the townhouse now.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That was certainly not a good year.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Interestingly, several of my favorite films came out in 1977: Black Sunday, A Bridge Too Far, Star Wars, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. (And three of them have scores by John Williams.)
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sounds like a wonderful home minus the mango trees and half-sister.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The house itself was almost perfect for just Mom and me. The only issue my mother complained about – especially when she admitted she regretted selling it and moving to our final townhouse – was that it only had one and a half bathrooms. Even then, that was more of a problem when there were three of us there. Later, in the early 2000s,Mom said, “I wish I hadn’t let my mother talk me into buying this place. All I had to do was get a permit and hire a good contractor to enlarge my bathroom, and we’d probably have been better off.”
Ah, hindsight. Always 20/20.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yeah, I think sometimes we just see things more clearly later on when it’s too late.
LikeLiked by 1 person
[…] to learn that he was working on the next book. Which is of course, Reunion: Coda. As I follow Alex’s blog, I was able to better understand his writing journey and also sympathise as a writer myself. He […]
LikeLiked by 1 person
What a pleasant surprise to see in my Comments section! Thank you, Pooj!
LikeLike