Many years ago, when my dad was stationed at Ft. Bragg, NC, we’d often spend part of our summers with Grandma and Grandpa in Kings Mountain, NC.

My cousins and their friends and I would play ball; my sister and the girl cousins did whatever it was that girls did… that was well beyond our kin back then and is to this day.

As the afternoon became late, we’d sit up on the porch swing and jaw, kicking our feet just enough to keep it swaying, to keep the breeze going.

By August, summer moved in slow motion, and when the sun finally shot the temperatures well up into the 90s, the heat whipped us.

We did anything we could to douse those heat blahs: We sat with our noses in the fan to get a breeze; we froze bananas and ate them like popsicles; we soaked towels in ammonia spirits and slung them across our necks.

Then “the girls,” while flipping through an old Good Housekeeping my grandma kept in a basket on the floor, came across a recipe for Lipton Sun Tea. We all went to Grandma and asked if we could make it.

She already had the tea bags, of course – in fact, we had tea: Grandma always had a fresh pitcher in the fridge – but none of us could deny the appeal of something as simple as brewing our favorite beverage in the sun.

We boys rode our bikes like the wind to Rose’s – now that name brings back memories – and bought a special Sun Tea jar with a yellow screwtop lid and a spigot to pour the tea.

Back home, we filled it with water, put in three family-sized tea bags, and set the jar on the concrete sidewalk in front of the house, taking advantage of our newfound use for the sweltering August heat. Then we just waited

Gradually, the sides of the jar heated up and the water began to tint a deep amber color, like resin or syrup, taking on

rich bronze hue as if the sun itself had permeated the jar.

It took all day. By dinnertime, we finally proclaimed it “done,” and poured ourselves a glass. The tea was warm and melted the ice in our glasses, and it went down sweeter and more delicious than anything I’d ever had.

We drank nearly the entire jug in one sitting, going back to the spigot for more, saying how, yes, it was worth the wait, the way so many good things, done simply, are.

When I look back now, I can remember the ease of those long summer days and how the simplest activities enacted beneath the blaze of an August sun – playing ball on a grassy lot, smelling approaching rain just before the storm, brewing sunshine in a gallon jar – were the most fulfilling.

It’s no wonder we stretched them out for as long as possible.