Summer is finally here and today I feel like waxing poetic (I should be waxing my surfboard), so I’d like to begin with a little ode to summer. It goes kinda like this: Spring has sprung, and fall has fell, now it’s summer and it’s hotter than…Heck! Okay, I know what you’re thinking, I coulda said something that rhymes, but dagnabit…oops, excuse me for cussin’… but I’m not that kind of guy.

Speaking of surfboards, and I just wuz, summer is perfect for surfing. In fact, I tried it once and nearly drowned. This wuz back in the 60s, when I wuz in high school. Every day, when the bell rang at 10 minutes past two at Tustin High School, a lot of us hodads and gremmies (slang for gremlins) would make a mad dash for the parking lot, hop in our woodies and head for Newport or Huntington. One time, we went to “The Wedge” at Newport, where the waves were high and the women were nearby…there I go waxing poetic again.

Anyway, I didn’t own a surfboard, nor did I know how to surf, so I borrowed one from my buddy, Jimmy Utt, whose grandpa was Orange County’s congressman and, naturally, he had everything, including a Woodie and a surfboard. So, I hopped on the borrowed board and immediately wiped-out.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, wipe-out! (“Wipe Out” – The Surfaris – 1963)

Well, that was the end of my surfing career, but there were still the women.

In the summertime, when the weather is high, you can stretch right up and touch the sky. When the weather’s fine, you got women, you got women on your mind. Have a drink, have a drive, go out and see what you can find. (“In the Summertime” – Mungo Jerry – 1970)

Speaking of woodies, and I just wuz, if you missed this year’s Wooden Boat and Woodie Car Show at Lake Arrowhead Village, you can read all about it in this week’s Alpine Mountaineer.

I guess I don’t have to tell you that Crestline’s Jamboree Days and Fourth of July fireworks extravaganza are both on Saturday, July 1 this year; it has something to do with both events happening on a weekend, not in the middle of the week. But, if you’re still around on Sunday, Lake Arrowhead will have a flyover of military aircraft before shooting off their fireworks over the lake at 9 p.m.

In the meantime, if it’s women you’re looking for, you should be able to find them all weekend long at Lake Gregory and Lake Arrowhead.

If her daddy’s rich, take her out for a meal. If her daddy’s poor, just do what you feel, speed along the lane, do a ton and twenty-five. When the sun goes down, you can make it, make it good in a day. Sing along with us, dee-dee-dee-dee, dah-dah-dah-dah-dah. Yeah, we’re hap-happy, dah-dah-dah, dee-dah-doo.

Keep it flyin’,

Uncle Mott