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PUBLISHER’S CORNER

June Is Busting Out all Over with June Bugs and Other Things

By Eloise Graham

As a little girl, probably age 4 – 7, on June 1 I would go to the old Victrola, get the 78 of “June Is Busting Out All Over” and play it as loud as I could! I wanted everyone to know it was June. If you are not familiar with the song, it is an upbeat, fast-paced song written by Rodgers and Hammerstein for the musical Carousel. The sheet music was first released in 1945. The movie was released in 1956.

June Bugs! Have you been bombarded by them yet? June bugs are nocturnal but are attracted to light. That is why they crash into the screens on a window of a lit room, or cluster around the screen door and cling to it with their thin jointed legs. Why do you find the dead bugs in the morning under street lights or on porches under the porch light? It is thought that while they are attracted to light, overexposure will kill them. They are harmless to humans, a mere nuisance, but can be damaging to your lawn. The larvae live in the soil and feed on the young roots of plants. They may attract garden pests like moles, skunks, and birds that could search your lawn for the larvae or an adult June bug.

For me, as a child through my teen years, June was the beginning of summer and summer-living. The city swimming pool was my second home. My older sister, eleven years my senior, and her girlfriends allowed me to tag along with them to the swimming pool. I may have only been five, but I learned how teenage girls would lay out their towels so they could tan while lathered in baby oil and iodine (sans sunscreen because we didn’t know any better) and watch the lifeguards. So at 5, I started hanging out at the pool. I took swim lessons in the morning and open swim in the afternoon. As the years went by, I gave swim lessons. My folks bought a season pass for me, Maybe 10 dollars. I went daily, so I got my money’s worth before June was over. Sometimes as a teenager, I would go three times a day. Teaching in the morning, then swimming in the afternoon for about 3 hours, and then occasionally go back in the evening for a swim at dusk. We didn’t observe daylight savings yet (in Kansas), so sun was down by 7:30 or 8:00.

Other June memories:

Father’s Day picnics. Mom would pack a picnic lunch of fried chicken, potato salad, sauerkraut, (my dad loved it), chocolate cake and iced tea. We would then go visit some
distant paternal relatives and some of his childhood friends.

Flag Day: Flag Day is celebrated on June 14. In August of 1949 Congress approved the national observance. and President Harry Truman signed into law the observance of June 14 as Flag Day. However, President Wilson in 1916 and President Coolidge in 1927 had issued proclamations asking for June 14 to be recognized as Flag Day.

President Wilson had borrowed the idea of Flag Day from a school teacher in the small town of Waubeka, Wisconsin. Bernard Cigrand led his one-room school, Stony Hill School, in the first formal observance.