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Expressions of summer's unbridled heat

She found love, or something like it, at a ranch in upstate New York. Summer romance changed everything for many of the writers who entered our Summer Essay Contest. Today, we unveil the winners.

Published July 8, 2007

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The winner
By Jude Bagatti

Something broke loose in me the summer my cousin, Elaine, and I Greyhounded from North Jersey to Sun Canyon Ranch Resort. SCRR wasn't a ranch where guests do real cattle rustling. It was high in the Adirondacks, 220 miles from New York City, where weekend cowboys shed suits for boots and rustled women.

In the early 1950s we were office workers, 19 years old and virginal. Seduced by brochure images of log lodges, a circular Indian fireplace, lakeside beach, square dancing and appealing faces, we packed dungarees, bandannas and anticipation. For riding, I brought my white high school majorette boots. On the bus, Elaine became "Skip" and I, "Nikki."

"There are no strangers at Sun Canyon, " the folder declared, adding that guests meeting there often return for their honeymoons. Skip might, but I already had a steady boyfriend for two years, and sent a "Miss you" postcard as soon as we arrived. I'd met Don right after high school. He was 23, staid and reliable. I learned standard shift driving in his 1947 sky-blue Pontiac convertible and did detail duty keeping its chrome polished. We went out four, five times a week but never went "all the way." For our song, he chose I'll Get By.

Maybe it was the raw physicality of the horses, their rocking rhythm, my phony name, or just the company of other males that stirruped lust in my blazing saddle. With Derek, a young ranch hand, I huddled on porch steps and couldn't stop smooching. I danced too close and hot with lanky, older Bud. Slicker or rural, these dudes ignited me as Don didn't. Skip seemed unaffected. I was confused until it dawned.

First thing I did when I got home was break up with Don. He'd have to get by without me.

Jude Bagatti, of Gulfport, is a licensed massage therapist, writer and photographer. She can be reached at heyjudebagatti@msn.com.

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Second place
By Mark D. Herbst

In the summer of 1978, my brother brought my future wife home to the apartment we shared. Our romantic relationship began with concert tickets I won from 98 Rock. "You are the seventh caller!" yelled the DJ into the phone. I wondered whom should I bring to see Roy Buchanan and John McLaughlin on Saturday night.

Until then, Diana, her friend Laini, my brother Jay and I were study buddies. We crammed chemistry during the week and maintained our good grades, but we partied as often as possible and went to the beach on weekends. These girls were just our pals, nothing romantic about it. But, secretly, I was falling for Diana.

She was brilliant, sexy and gorgeous, with a laugh that tickled me inside, like Cold Duck, which was all we could afford on our subsequent dates. While planning our first date, I knew that if I invited her to the concert, and not my brother or Laini, things would change among us - and they did.

When I invited her, I put on my most casual tone, and she readily accepted. I was elated, and nervous. We went to the show, exchanging only smiles and rhythmic head-nodding. Afterward, in the foggy humidity after a cleansing Florida storm, we stopped suddenly at a puddle, because there, under the water, was a bug. A big bug, about 2 1/2 inches long, blowing bubbles out of its snout, one after the other.

Then, Diana said the one thing that endeared her to me forever. "Cool." We admired that bug for five minutes. Finally, I asked if I could put my arm around her. She pressed up against me and we strolled down the shiny, wet streets of Tampa, beginning our life as a couple on that night, almost 30 years ago.

Mark D. Herbst is a radiologist. He lives in St. Petersburg.

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Third place
By Nola Cancel

I remember the sound of the gulls as they swooped in searching for food among the overflowing garbage cans placed haphazardly in the sands of Brighton Beach. It was another miserably hot day in the middle of another sweltering summer when I first met my true love.

After a winter of brief affairs, I was looking for something new. Even though he was younger than me and still in school, I felt more than ready for this exciting, handsome stud.

Besides, we did have some things in common. We both bore the scars that came from a tragic childhood. Granted, his were more physical and mine more psychological, but the damage was real.

What brought us together and kept us together through the deaths of his friends and enemies, and the misunderstandings over his need to fulfill a greater destiny, was more meaningful than any love I had ever known.

We were together for seven wonderful summers. Summers spent relaxing on the beach, taking a cruise or just beating the heat in my air-conditioned bedroom.

But, like all truly magical moments in life, I knew someday our love would end. He had an overwhelming desire to follow some ridiculous prophecy and I was left to find a new summer love.

For a long time, I couldn't believe that I would never be with him again. Then, suddenly, I had the answer. I'd go back to the beginning, back to where I first fell in love with him. On that sandy beach on another miserably hot day in the middle of another sweltering summer, we'd start over.

After all, I hadn't read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in seven years.

Nola Cancel is a writer in Clearwater.

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By Linda Guggino Humphers

During my adolescent lust years in the 1960s, the Sky-Vue Drive-In on Pasadena Avenue held considerable promise for romance, heartbreak and mosquito bites. For us teenagers, the movies were a mere backdrop for more important acting endeavors, such as flitting through the parking lot to flirt or steaming up the car with a hot date.

One muggy night in 1966, I went to the Sky-Vue with a guy so cute I could barely breathe when I was around him. Very quickly, though, our mutual admiration and the August heat turned his Ford Falcon into an oven hot enough to roast a walrus, so we committed the two-fold error of 1 rolling down the windows and (2) not lighting the noxious PIC mosquito-repellent coil we'd bought at the concession stand.

I remember nothing about the rest of the date or the cute guy, because the aftermath doused whatever we'd kindled. My lower limbs, normally toothpick-thin, became so swollen from the hundreds of mosquitoes that bit me that for days my legs looked like bloated cypress stumps.

There was a lovely conclusion, however. For the next 20 years I was never bitten by another mosquito. They'd hover around my skin, then zippity-flit away from me.

The next summer, cautiously dressed in long sleeves and slacks, I gave the Sky-Vue one last chance, this time with a down-in-the-dumps fellow who was getting married the next day, though he never mentioned it. I'd accepted the invitation out of raging curiosity, but all I got was limp conversation. I later heard that the bride flew from him at the altar to sob in her mother's arms.

All that's over now: The Sky-Vue's long gone; the cute guy is probably bald; the sad married guy is dead; and mosquitoes once again love my toothpick legs.

Linda Guggino Humphers is a writer in Clearwater.

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By Amanda Luchsinger

One warm evening he finds he is 94, with a failing heart, and she will be 90 at the end of summer. She, petite, delicate and still pretty, falls that evening while they are feeding the birds out on the lawn, as they have done for years. Simple pleasures, always enjoyed together. Her scalp is cut wide open, and under the bright lights of the emergency room, 12 sutures are neatly tucked amongst the wrinkles.

He brings her to me today, anxious and edgy, and mouths urgencies at me when she looks the other way. Reluctantly, I let out the secret he and I share: She has Alzheimer's dementia. She cries piteously while I hold her, the tears deepening the soft gray of her lovely eyes. Framed in the blue sky and summer light of the exam room window, he sits with military bearing, but his jaw quivers, and his lips tremble. Our eyes meet: He is depending on me to keep her with him.

They leave slowly, hands clasped, prescriptions tucked into pockets, their path down the long hallway echoing their bridal march. Behind them trails a veil of summer memories, wisps floating off into the looming darkness.

Amanda Luchsinger practices internal medicine and lives in Palm Harbor.

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By Judith Heady

"It's so pretty, " he said. "It just shines in the moonlight."

"You know it's not real, " I said.

"What?" he asked.

"My hair, " I said. "It's blond, but not this blond."

"Well, it's still pretty, " he said.

At 16 I was a bleached platinum blond virgin. He was also 16 and genuinely nuts about me and my not-so-genuine hair. He was not so nuts about his own virginal status. We were parked high on a hill overlooking the sparkling city skyline. It was June and we'd been coming there every weekend since we'd met in January. A good Catholic girl, I never let him get past "second base, " as we said back then.

Several weeks passed and I noticed that he was growing his hair long, past his shoulders. This, combined with his weird fashion sense, was acutely embarrassing to me. He refused to cut it. I decided to stop bleaching my hair. And stop curling my hair. And stop wearing makeup and cute, short little dresses. Just see how he liked going out with a brown-rooted, listless-haired, pimply faced, clothes-challenged total hick of a girlfriend.

Three weeks later we were at the drive-in. He had ignored my marvelous makeover and actually continued with his usual compliments.

"You're so pretty, " he said.

I exploded.

"Haven't you noticed anything different about me?" I shrieked. "My hair, my face, my clothes?"

"No, " he replied. "You look the same to me. You're as pretty as always."

And it was then I realized how pretty lucky I was.

He eventually got past second base and I eventually wised up.

That was 40 summers ago and I still get a thrill whenever he says, "You're so pretty."

Judith Heady, a retired art teacher from Texas, lives in Dunedin.

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By J. Raphael Morrison

Fifty-four summers have passed, but I'll never forget that August day in Virginia when I asked a perky strawberry blond to run away and marry me. A war across the world was put on hold as an Italian-American sailor from "Yankee-land, " of Catholic persuasion, found love with a Southern Baptist farm girl whose parents were hard-core haters of daughter-stealing Navy types. Back then the signs in town read: "Sailors and Dogs keep off the lawn." So far I had never met her parents. They would leave the room whenever I arrived.

Joy lived 30 miles out in the country. A date consisted of a trip down to pick her up, 30 miles back to Virginia Beach for dinner and a movie, then 30 miles back to the farm, where we could sit a few minutes on the front porch until it was time for the final 30 miles back. My car's broken radiator required several stops for water. I never complained because she was the one I had waited for all my young life.

The plan was: Get a license, get married on Friday, have a weekend honeymoon in Carolina and return Joy home, keeping the marriage a secret. We sadly discovered that our secret was published in the weekend paper where the marriage licenses were shown. Ma- and Pa-in-law were waiting; the chase around the living room with Ma swinging a broom almost ensured that there might never be any heirs from my side of the family. Pa was quieter as he tearfully offered me a piece of land and help building a house next door to them.

We reluctantly and frightfully stayed that night. The next morning we left to find a place of our own while we waited for them to accept having Yankee half-breed grandchildren.

J. Raphael Morrison, a retired computer systems manager, lives in Palm Harbor.

[Last modified July 6, 2007, 15:45:12]