"Summertime and the living is easy, fish are jumping and the cotton is high." Why is it that when I ask for a mint julep or a frozen daiquiri I always get a can of beer _ whatever is on sale at six cans for a dollar? I try to be a classy guy.

When I was a kid, I spent my summers at Midland Beach on Staten Island.

Once in a while you would get a giant afternoon shower and you would have huge pools of water lacing the side of the road. This was when every kid got out his bike and played speed boat _ go through those miniature lakes of water as fast at you could.

When the water started getting low, the mud would start to fly and soon we all looked like a bunch of Aborigines from "down under."

When the mud was gone and every vestige of water dried, we would take our mud-splattered bodies and walk over to the ocean, which was only two blocks away.

There was always someone who brought his bike and tried to pedal it in the ocean, but all he did was to provide the entertainment for the afternoon.

Now, the area where we went swimming consisted of a lot of sand flats. At low tide you could walk way out, and if the mood hit you, you could help somebody digging for clams.

When tide started coming in, we would get three-foot waves that would curl way out and run all the way to the beach. Sometimes they would come at right angles to each other and where they met you would have a confluence of water spurting six feet into the air.

The contest was to watch where this event was going to happen and try to position your standing body at the apex of the confluence.

If this sounds complicated, it was _ but, oh, the pleasure of getting shot in the air by a spout of water. (Moby Dick sneezed.)

The year before I moved away, a man started a rowboat concession.

Now at low tide with a wave running all the way to the shore, you could have three rowboats abreast racing to the shore. But then someone who almost got run down by the boats complained and the great rowboat races came to an end, but not the confluence contest. What a summer! If I recall correctly, I got to a confluence just once and the spout of water put that row-boat nose-in-the-air.

After moving to the country, I missed Staten Island. Until we could drive to Otsego Lake, we had to be content with a quick hike down to the railroad tracks and a dip in "Dicks Hole." This was a spot about 40 feet long by about six feet deep. In late summer, the water was sluggish, but was the greatest thing in the world to get hay chaff and grime off you. It didn’t bother me to share it with about 20 "suckers."

So there we were, looking like the leftovers from a minstrel show, my brother Richard, John and me, getting ready for the refreshing plunge awaiting us _ when I saw her. She was my age, sunning herself on a candy-stripped bath towel in a snow-white one-piece bathing suit. She was fantastic _ an angel fallen from heaven amongst a knot of boys who were thinking thoughts that would have put them on the express train to hell. I stood there unable to move, while my brothers dove in. I was not alone. There were six other boys from my class equally dumbfounded.

Her name was Patricia, and she was there for two weeks. It was a minor miracle that I could speak at all. It turns out that she was a model or something for some company in the Midwest. I was surprised to see that she was alone. I double-checked for guards bearing shotguns, which would not have surprised me _ if it were my daughter, knowing this country I sure would want her protected. No guards, just Patty.

One would have thought that I should hear opportunity knocking but the sensation I got was that opportunity weighed 400 pounds and standing on my fingers.

For the next 13 days, chores got done faster than humanly possible just so boys could get down to the swimming hole and ogle Patty. Hay was raked and baled faster than the speed of light, and after a breath or two the hay would get mowed away.

And then one day the dream died. Patty had to go home.

I remember for the rest of the summer the song "You Go To My Head" was popular and every boy in town could whistle it just fine. As time went by, I forgot how beautiful she was, but the song lingers on.

Henry Geerken is a three-time NYSUT award-winner writing humorous articles addressing retiree and senior citizen concerns. He can be reached by e-mail at hgeerken@stny.rr.com.