In our rush to overschedule our lives, it’s easy to overlook some of the simple summer traditions that make this season so wonderful.

When I was a child, twice a week my parents and I would load the car with 10-gallon glass bottles. The bottles and I would bounce around the back seat (Seatbelts? What seatbelts?) as we headed to the nearby Merrimack River. There, just across the street from the water, was an ice cream shop that also sold spring water from a tap outside its back door.

There was always a crowd — lines for the water, lines for the ice cream. Big old classic banana boats. Frappes topped with whipped cream and plastic toy soldiers with "real" parachutes. Brownie sundaes that I craved but never tried because the brownies were jammed with walnuts (I still can’t abide nuts in baked goods).

In fact, I never got ice cream of any kind. Nor did my parents. Nor plenty of other people.

Back then, Heritage Farm Ice Cream (named for Heritage State Park that ran along the river in front of it) was known for its lime rickeys — ice cold sweet-sour drinks that bear only a casual resemblance to the boozy cocktail with which they share a name.

Heavy hits of lime juice and sugar mixed with crushed ice and seltzer water so heavily carbonated the bubbles would come up the straw. It was pure summer.

My parents usually got the straight up lime rickey. I preferred the even tangier raspberry-lime rickey.

Then I grew up and forgot about them. But this summer, while shuttling my son between karate and summer camp and park outings, I remembered. And I decided it was time to restart the tradition. Minus, that is, the bouncing around in the back seat with 10-gallon bottles of water.