The first of August has never meant the end of summer to me.

To me, it means football camp.

Even now, all these years later, there'll be something about a hot afternoon. The air gets thick enough to chew, the cicadas start hollering, and all at once I'm sixteen years old again, riding a school bus toward McCreary County, Kentucky.

Our camp was at the old conservation camp. We slept under one big open shelter. No air conditioning. No fans. Just rows of cots and enough teenage boys to make the place smell like wet socks and Ben-Gay.

We practiced football three times a day in the hot August sun, but we only got on shower, at the end of the day. Cold water only.

That was considered plenty.

By the second day, we'd sweated so much our uniforms could've stood up by themselves. Sweat bees followed us everywhere like they thought we'd planted ourselves just for them.

But the thing every Pineville High School football player remembers is that blamed blocking sled.

Coach Bill Adams loved that thing.

You'd line up beside it and start chugging your feet while doing what Coach called a butt roll. When he'd blow the whistle, you'd jump up, explode into the pad, knock it back, drop for another butt roll, roll to the next pad, jump up, hit it again, then another and another until you'd gone all the way down the sled.

Seven stations.

Middle of August.

Ninety-five degrees.

Humidity thick enough to swim through.

Son, if you finished without throwing up, you felt like you'd accomplished something.

It wasn't just the heat. We practiced on what was basically a hayfield. They'd mow it with a tractor before camp started and call it a football field.

Every time you got tackled, there was a good chance one of those sharp-cut stalks would rake your arms or legs. By the end of camp, everybody looked like they'd wrestled a bobcat.

Then there were Coach Adams’ conditioning drills.

If he'd gotten aggravated about something, he'd march us to one end of the field.

The drill was, run at full speed, drop and hit the ground when the whistle blew, the get up and run again at full speed.

We'd sprint as hard as we could.

Tweet!

Hit the ground.

Back up.

Run again.

Tweet!

Hit the ground.

Again.

And again.

And again.

You kept doing it until Coach decided he'd made his point. Sometimes I wasn't entirely sure what the point was.

Looking back, maybe neither was he.

Things have changed since then.

Today, football players have nutritionists, hydration schedules, cooling tents, sports drinks, heart-rate monitors and trainers who worry if somebody looks a little overheated.

Back then?

We got a couple of salt tablets.

Water during practice wasn't exactly plentiful. Funny thing is, we'd get water during games, but practice was a different story. Coach figured we'd survive.

Most of us did.

Of course, every football camp had its traditions, and ours had one I'll never forget.

The trainers had a bottle of muscle liniment everybody called Atomic Bomb.

It earned the name.

Every year, the rookies would somehow end up getting a little rubbed where no man wanted muscle liniment rubbed. The burning started immediately.

Then some upperclassman, trying his best not to laugh, would say, "Go jump in the shower. Cold water will take the sting out."

That was the biggest lie ever told in McCreary County.

The water didn't help.

It made the fire feel like somebody had poured gasoline on it.

It was cruel.

It was juvenile.

It happened every year anyway.

Nobody complained much. You just waited until next year, when it was your turn to watch some poor freshman learn the lesson.

I'm not saying those were the good old days.

A lot of what we did would probably get a coach fired now, trigger a call from social services, or both.

But I am saying this.

Those camps taught us something besides football.

They taught us how much more we could do after we were convinced we couldn't do one more drill.

They taught us teammates mattered.

They taught us that everybody hurts, everybody gets knocked down, and everybody has to get back up when the whistle blows.

Every year, when August rolls around and the mornings start hinting that summer won't last forever, I don't think about vacations.

I think about that old conservation camp in McCreary County.

I can still hear Coach Adams’ whistle.

I can still smell fresh-cut hay.

And somewhere in the back of my mind, I can still feel that blamed blocking sled waiting for one more butt roll.