Summer Songs Writing Challenge
I remember discovering the music of the Beach Boys as a middle school student. The group had been around since before I was born, but I had never paid any attention their music until I heard a friend playing "California Girls" one day. I immediately saved up for their Sounds of Summer vinyl. The songs about the beach and surfing made me want to live in a perpetual summer season. Played at the right moment, beach music makes us feel willing to accept the extreme heat of the season so we can have some fun. Life in the South seemed different in the summer when I was growing up. We could stay outside later, swim in a lake, vacation at the beach, and spend all day in a bathing suit. If things got hot and we couldn't go anywhere, we sprayed each other with the garden hose. If we were lucky, we also had music playing somewhere. Some people had record players. Others had boom boxes and eventually cassette players. My family even had an eight-track cassette player. We all had a s...