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The sound of the ice cream truck. The sight of a sparkler. Malls and movies. Pools and Putt-Putt. Camps and cruising.

Whether in Topeka or the Triad, the scenes of summer are universal.

So, we sent staff writer Jason "Endless Summer" Hardin to bring us back some memories. He, uh, still hasn't come back.

But some of his dispatches have. Read them each Friday during the next few weeks.

The sun is as close to Greensboro as it gets each year.

You don't have to know the astrophysics. You can feel it.

Even in the minutes before the crack of dawn, it's warm enough to break a sweat without too much trouble.

A sunrise in the summer isn't the same thing as it is during the winter.

In the winter, the sun often does little more than cast a weak light highlighting the gloom of January.

In the summer, the bright ball rising in the sky says one thing: It's going to be a hot one.

Even if we feel it only in the quick dashes between the air-conditioned cubicle and the air-conditioned car and the air-conditioned house, it's there.

But even as we scramble to escape the heat, summer wouldn't be the same without it.

It's what drives us to the pool or the ice cream shop, what helps grow the crops we buy at the market, what is always in the background at the park or the Little League game.

And it all starts with the sunrise.

Some of us sleep though it.

Some of us wake to it.

Some of us are just getting in from the night shift.

Regardless, it's the fuse that lights the summer day.

Contact Jason Hardin at 373-7021 or at jason.hardin@news-record.com.