Anne LeClaire

Summer has hit with the force of a tsunami here on Cape Cod.

It arrives earlier every year. When I was a college student working at a hotel here, the season started on July 4th. Then it edged back to the middle of June when the schools let out. Now it seems as if the official season begins on Memorial Day.

Let the crowds arrive.

Let the eating begin.

Already I’ve gone out for fried clams and onion rings. Last week while dashing out on an errand, I stopped to pick up a bag of chips and bottle of crème soda - me who rarely eats junk food. And when I was shopping yesterday I dropped a quart of orange sherbet in the cart. (Sherbet was the tip-off as to what was really going on. Instantly I recalled riding my bike to the corner store to buy a pint of raspberry sherbet and then sitting on the front steps and eating it right out of the carton.)

Here’s the thing. Childhood summers meant liberation from school and from coats and sweaters. It was a season of permission. Endless hours outside. No bed time. And it was a relaxation of food rules. A&W root beer. French fries dunked in ketchup. Cotton candy. Roasted peanuts in a warm and greasy bag. Fried clams. Potato salad. Hamburgers on the grill. Lobster roll luncheons at the church. Grape flavored Popsicles.

These days, as if trying through food to recapture the sweetness and - especially - the freedom of those long ago years, I eat things I would never consume during the remainder of the year. I was talking about this with my friend Joan and she told me she went to a party yesterday and ate three hot dogs. With all the trimmings. Relish. Mustard. Chopped onions. By the time she got to the third, there were no rolls left but she didn’t care. As she told me this, I heard a definite note of pride in her voice.

Laurie, another writer friend, is having lobster for dinner tonight. “It’s the best way I know to kick off summer,” she says. “It’s almost a superstition. Memorial Day and Labor Day. Lobster to start and end the season.” And she and her children have already hit the clam shack near her home.

School’s out. Let the eating begin.

What’s your summer food memory?