Ventura Highway in the Sunshine

On Memorial Day Weekend, 2024, the weather was certainly warm enough — in the 80s. Annuals were planted, the pool was ready, potato and cucumber salads were prepared in advance, the grill was primed, and summer books were selected. But it didn’t feel like summer, not even with the car top down.

Saturday morning arrived, and I was scrolling through videos, overcome with a sense of ennui. Then, a young guy popped up playing the familiar opening acoustic guitar chords of the 1972 America song “Ventura Highway.”

Ventura Highway in the sunshine
Where the days are longer
The nights are stronger than moonshine.

Voilà, summer.

Technically, a song of the summer lasts only one season. Lizzo had a summer, and so did Dua Lipa. Harry Styles' “Watermelon Sugar” was the epitome of a contemporary summer song. Last summer was all about Sabrina Carpenter's "Espresso." 

Most songs of the summer are eventually relegated to the oubliette of pop culture. 

But "Ventura Highway," with its sweet harmonies and inexplicable reference to "alligator lizards in the air," endures. 

I went with my sister and brother-in-law to see America in Cleveland's most drastically uncomfortable auditorium in April. Spring immediately felt like summer when the band's current incarnation got to "Ventura Highway."

My husband deplores classic rock, but for me, it provides the soundtrack of summer. It evokes the first decade when I was fully aware of the freedoms and joys of the season. 

Tomorrow marks the first day of official summer, 2025. Put the top down and turn up the volume:

'Cause the free wind is blowin' through your hair
And the days surround your daylight there
Seasons crying no despair
Alligator lizards in the air, in the air

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