title: Summer of '68
author: Jarvis, Elizabeth Pavlicek
description: Summer of '68 is a poignant yet inspiring narrative of Olga Orsak as she chronicles the three summer months of her life in 1968.  At the beginning of summer she packs her bags and her older sister, Margaret, who has shared her apartment with Olga, drives her to the small cotton farm near Houston where they both grew up in a family whose everyday language is Czech. She returns to help in the care of Agnes, a younger, severely handicapped sister and to help in the fields to chop and pick cotton. Almost immediately, the disconnect of the campus life - and the boyfriend she left behind becomes apparent - she combs out the ratting from her hair, washes her face from make-up, and kicks off her shoes. Threaded throughout her story is her interaction with the campus boyfriend and a surprise visitor to the farm, John, a mysterious young man who asks to stay and work there for the summer. As the summer progresses, the relationship deepens and the emotional conflict deepens as he provides transportation for her in his white Volkswagen Beetle to a movie, a Czech wedding dance, and to the beach. By the summer's end, after seemingly endless days of working in the fields, John reveals to Olga his background and his next move. Things like polka music, harmonica playing, kolaches, lightning bugs, and seashells become the Summer of '68. Events, such as the brutal murder of an elderly woman from town, John's adverse reaction to defoliant spray, a classmate's death in Viet Nam, and Agnes' seizures and ultimate death, all become the Summer of l968.