Forget the Summer of Love, I'll take the Summer of 87

This article about the bevy of great movies that came out in the summer of '86, well, its captured my heart:

You won’t find a better span of summer releases than the lineup that greeted moviegoers exactly 30 years ago in 1986. From May through August, marquees across America advertised still-beloved titles such as Top Gun, About Last Night, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and The Fly. And even as those films dominated the box office, movies like Short Circuit, The Great Mouse Detective, and Nothing in Common also found appreciative audiences.

Now, its about Summer '86 movies, why am I talking about '87? because I'm a Gen-Xer and movies usually took a year to show up on cable, where we all experienced them.

Forgive me for indulging in a bit of nostalgia but the summer of '87 was the best summer of my life. The movies were a big part of it. We'll get to that in a second.

It was the summer I turned 14. The last summer before I had to work. The last summer before I discovered girls. The summer I started writing. If the reader will think of the most special time of their youth, that's what the summer of '87 is for me.

In 1987 I got into baseball and baseball cards. I bought a tops '87 set. I still get sentimental when I see those cards. I also rediscovered the shoebox full of baseball cards I had in the basement, bought for me pack by pack by my mother when we would go to the stationary store to get cigarettes. They were '79 Tops.

I grew up on a cul-de-sac and every evening we'd play kick ball and every night, flashlight tag. We'd start wondering outside about 4 PM. It was a hot summer, and we liked to stay inside in the blasting AC. We were Yanks, don't you know. Me, Kevin, Owen, Antoine, the three girls, Jane (see A Line Through the Desert for that last one), Nicole, and Meg, her brother Steve. Some younger kids would sometimes show, Sabee, Samud and Sahar, PJ and Brian.

Inside I played games like Computer Baseball and Ogre. I managed the 1978 Yankees over and over again. Did a bit of tabletop wargamming too, Squad Leader comes to mind, Blitzkreig.

I wrote; a story about a sci-fi tank, hard to believe, I know.  There was still a lot of day baseball then. Heck, I remember vividly coming inside about 10 and watching the Yankees on a west coast trip. Since I didn't have a job or summer school (hard to believe that last one) I stayed up late.

Most nights I'd come inside and watch movies. Aliens must have been on every single night. There were others in my cohort. Stand by Me was yuuuuge, so was One Crazy Summer.

Thinking back, what was I reading? Bolos by Kieth Lamur. The Iron Tower Trilogy by Dennis L. Mckiernan...nothing else is coming to mind. Frankly it wasn't a big book time for me.

Sigh....Coincidentally this song came out in '87:

Every word of it is true, isn't it?