Summertime was always my favorite season as a kid and the lack of school was the least of it. My parents packed up everything, zippy our dog and their four very rambunctious children into two cars and off we headed to Adams Shore to a small family house right on the ocean that used to belong to Grandma Helen. Then the ritual unfolded, my mother who was a teacher in the Boston school system loved to fish and had her own little fishing boat, my dad, a medical doctor still went to work at his hospital job but also would paint portraits and decorative furniture during his free time. The house had a big screened in porch that faced the ocean and that’s where we pretty much lived. In the morning we would have our breakfast and change into our morning bathing suit, after lunch it was our afternoon suit. Then after supper it was into our pajamas- a pajama posse taking over the street every night until our mothers called us inside. We never really wore our summer clothes or shoes unless we were going to Mass on Sundays. Several of our cousins lived nearby so we became a seasonal tribe of kids wandering around the neighborhood looking for adventures. Not every “adventure” however ended on a positive note-certainly not when the US Coast Guard had to pluck my cousin Donna and I out of Quincy Bay on our homemade raft. And all our 9-year-old howling’s because the Coast Guard did not return our raft to us instantly disappeared when my mother’s flat furious side eyed stare clearly telegraphed what was going to happen to both of us when the Coast Guard officers left.

But sometimes after a calm normal day with no known catastrophes, after supper my mother would pack up all the Pajamaed kids and off we would go to Howe’s Neck a small nearby town where a guy had a big classic merry-go-round right on the beach. In my extended family we always referred to that merry go round as the “flying horses” Riding those wonderful flying horses with my happy cousins and siblings with the lights and blaring music and the smell of decades of stale popcorn filling the air is possibly one of my favorite and clearest childhood memories. After a few rides it was on to Higgins Ice Cream Stand for cones. I still can remember every family member’s favorite flavor. Magical summer evenings for sure that have stayed with me and will always make me smile.

Not that there are any classic merry-go-rounds near us but there are still some great hand scooped ice cream to be had locally. The best is at Lou Monteleone’s Corner Shop in Eldred. Lou has hand scooped ice cream and as far as I know he is the only ice cream shop open year-round. With over 25 varieties of hard ice cream from Perry’s Premium, The Corner Shop has a wide variety of toppings and has two flavors of soft serve ice cream as well. My current favorite that I came to appreciate while researching this column is the Lollapalooza Cone- three to four scoops of your choice of flavors plus whipped cream and a cherry all in a waffle cone-and it comes with as many plastic spoons as you want! The other choice during the summer months is Nora’s Lovin Spoonful at 141 Kirk Road in Narrowsburg across from Pete’s Market. Nora once told me that when she opened in 2012, she paid a ton of money for a specialized soft serve machine that uses whole milk and can blend flavors. They sell 25 blended flavors of soft serve which are really good. So far pistachio nut is my favorite and it’s pretty nice to sit outside with a cone and my friends on a warm summer evening and watch the sun go down. Nora’s opens in May and after Labor Day they are only open on weekends and close for the season at the end of September. Summer is tailored made for simple pleasures like having an ice cream cone with loved ones that make for some very sweet memories that last an entire lifetime. So, pack up any kids and family members around and go get ice cream during these waning days of summer-the sweetest time of the year.