It's A Long, Hot Summer

The month of July is hot and humid, and since Mom is pregnant, we don't get to the lake too much. Once in a while we go with Mrs. Avis, but for the most part we have to stick to the yard. Dad buys this sprinkler thing that you attach to the garden hose, and we run through the spray to cool off. The wet grass provides us with a natural slip n' slide. Mom sits in the big metal wash tub that we use to keep sodas on ice for our cookouts, and we squirt her with the hose.
The Bulldog Patrol goes out on more missions, and we come back from the front lines without any casualties.
Paul and Carl and I build a long shaft-like structure in the woods behind my house out of plywood and two-by-fours. It becomes our prison camp escape tunnel and our space ship to mars. Some days it's a gold mine and other days just a place to hole up in and read comic books. We look out on the fields beyond the woods and begin planning an expedition.
We cover the entrance to the shaft with an old orange inflatable raft that doesn't inflate anymore, and this drives Sophie Olsen nuts. She claims that it glows at night, so it gives her the willies looking at it. This pleases us to no end.
There is a steady stream of kids in our yard. The Arans have moved and in their place is the Leap family. They're a little strange. The kids are kinda quiet and don't seem to know very much. When they come to one of our cookouts, they act like they've never seen a hamburger before. They become part of our little clan anyways.
I hang around with Keith Madden a little more, even though he's a little younger than I am. We go rake fishing along the banks of the lake, and I bring home a turtle. I name it King Tut, and we get one of those little plastic turtle pans with an island and a plastic palm tree. I like to catch flies and place them in the water and watch King Tut come up from under them and swallow them whole. King Tut lives for about a year in his artificial kingdom.
Keith introduces me to some other kids over on Lake Avenue. Joyce Patton is a pretty girl who has a big tree house in her back yard. This is a girl one should get to know! I find out there's a Filipino family in the Heights. The Quinto family live right near Joyce Patton. Sisters Marcie and Mabel, and their brother Terry. The first real sign of diversity in town.
Keith's sister Christine likes to come to our corner as well. Chrissy is a few years older than I am. She's mentally retarded, and she loves to come to our yard and sit on the swings and sing. Chrissy has her own world apart from us, but every now and then she joins in for a game of kickball. She's so comfortable in our yard that her Mom or one of her sisters has to come and drag her home for supper.
July seems to go on forever, and Mom is getting bigger and bigger and more uncomfortable. On one particularly hot and humid day she's complaining about how bad the weather is making her feel, and she wishes this baby would make up its mind and be born. I run into the house and get the plunger, and come back to force the baby out like a plug in a drain. I think it's funny; Mom is not amused. She'll have to go cool off in the washtub some more.
It's hard to get comfortable in all this humidity.
When is this baby gonna be born, anyway?