F AMILY, especially parents and grandparents, plays heavily in today's last installment of reader's favorite summer memories.

Susan Law of Stafford County fondly remembers summers growing up in the late '30s and '40s in South Dakota.

"It was one of those quiet little towns that if you blinked, you might just miss one of the sweetest spots on Earth," she said.

Summers brought the opening of the town swimming pool.

"We'd watch through the fence as the people painted and repaired the winter's damage to our precious pool and then watch as the water slowly inched its way to the 'full' mark," she said.

When it finally opened, "We had our dimes for the day, some of us were lucky enough to have a season pass. It was truly a blessed relief during the hot, dry days of our summers in Miller."

She also remembers getting in hot water for taking chicks from an incubator at her grandfather's seed store and hatchery, thinking them in need of rescue on a hot summer day.

"We had baby chicks running all over," she said. "It wasn't an easy task to gather up a hundred baby chicks and get them back into their warm home."

Linda Harris of Spotsylvania County has treasured summer memories of her grandmother's Arlington home.

They include the smell of clean clothes coming off the line, produce vendors touting fresh strawberries and days roller skating on a nearby church sidewalk with her skate key around her neck.

Others included: "Chasing the dairy truck down the street on my bicycle, in hopes of stealing a small piece of ice when the driver wasn't looking, and listening every afternoon for the Good Humor man, who hopefully still had one of the coveted white or root beer Popsicles."

Ruth M. Winston-Bosio said that growing up on Jackson's Creek in the Northern Neck, it was only natural that she spent all her summers "floating on the creek or lying in the sun on the wharf, gazing into the water, a soothsayer looking into the future."