Cody,

This is a response I had wanted to send you three weeks ago, as it fits better in August than in September in several ways. And if you had wanted to print any of it, August would have been the best time. But I got too busy — you know how that is. Hopefully, late is better than never.

Being just a few years older than you, and having played football myself (though not in college), I really appreciated your August 19 column, when you dealt with Woodstock, two-a-days, the smell of newly cut grass, etc. Two responses immediately came to mind.

The first was my own Woodstock connection.

It was a Monday in mid-August, 1969. Brenda and I and three friends from North Carolina were on our way to a conference at Lake Luzerne, New York, about 50 miles north of Albany. We had left home after church on Sunday, spent the night with friends in the D.C. area, and headed on north, getting on the New York Thruway shortly after lunch.

All of a sudden we started seeing lots and lots of vehicles loaded down with hippies — the raggy clothes, long, unkempt hair, the whole bit — in old beat-up vans, assorted jalopies, pickups, etc. Now we had seen hippies before — probably more on TV than in person — but never so many or at such close range! It was quickly obvious that something out of the ordinary was going on, but we had no idea what. (Apparently we hadn't watched the TV news over the weekend!) Later, of course, we found out about Woodstock and realized that these guys and gals were on their way home from the three days of music and everything else that happened there. And yes, Brenda and I did see the movie a few months later.

Then, the second: your mention of special memories from that era that are more personal. You concluded: "Off-the-wall remembrances like mine of freshly cut grass are more individualized, but millions have them. What's yours?" I read that question and immediately knew what mine was.

In late summer around these parts — July and especially August — there is a certain kind of insect that makes a characteristic noise that's a mix of a singing sound and a buzzing sound. I've never known exactly what it is — there was one that my father used to call a July fly (not to be confused with a June bug), but I think this is something different. Maybe next summer I can find someone who really knows their insects to identify it for me. Anyway . . . .

Go back to late August of 1964. I had finished college in May, and would be starting graduate school at Columbia Seminary in a few weeks. For the summer I had been working at the camp and conference center in New York state that I mentioned above, and now it was time to head home. I had worked there other summers, but this was my first time to make the trip in my own car. I had two other summer workers from the South riding home with me. After spending two days at the New York World's Fair, we had left Jersey City about 9:00 on a Tuesday night and driven all night. After dropping off the first friend in Lexington, VA, around breakfast time, the other — a guy from Texas — and I continued south. A certain amount of fatigue from the overnighter was setting in. No air-conditioning meant riding with the windows open, and as we got closer to North Carolina in late morning, warm began to shade into hot.

And then, just after crossing the NC line, I heard it — that singing/buzzing sound so characteristic of late summer around here, that said, "You're home." Gaffney was still three hours further down the road; but that insect sound told me that I was back in the South, and that it was still summer! The rest of the trip would be coasting.

Thanks for listening. See you soon.