In Season: Summer

                   

Bill

In Boston, meteorological summer begins about June 21.  If, due to a snow day or a glitch in the school calendar, I was still in school on June 21 or, even worse, on the 22, then as far as I was concerned it wasn’t summer.  No matter what the temperature, what the date, what anyone said, if you were still in school, it couldn't be summer.

That belief of remained intact for many years, right through junior high.  It was not mitigated by early signs of summer’s approach like the first sighting of a bee bobbing in and out of a forsythia bush, or an ant, especially one crawling up your bedroom wall.  In winter I could see my friend Gene’s yard from my backyard, and the beech trees way back in the woods behind my house.  By May, those views were blocked by flowering bushes and leafing trees.  The grass was thicker and greener.  On Saturday mornings there was the ring of the ice cream truck.  By late June he’d be coming every day rather than once a week.  On the first warm day I’d pull on a short-sleeved shirt.  Sitting in the back seat of the car I’d have the window open.  Summer was coming.  By June, for all intents and purposes, it was here.  All except for that one thing.  I was still walking to school every morning.

Around the time school ended, Boston celebrated a little known holiday, Bunker Hill Day.  It commemorated the battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775, although, as was always pointed out to us in history class, the actual battle took place on nearby Breed’s Hill in Charlestown on which there stands a granite obelisk to commemorate the fighting. To me Bunker Hill Day was a half-day school holiday just  before school officially ended for summer. Why the school department didn’t just begin summer vacation on Bunker Hill Day I never understand. At that point everyone was ready for school to be over anyway.  

So we had to wait another day or two for summer vacation to start.  Books had been collected at the end of the previous week.  The last homework passed in, the final spelling test taken. With nothing much to do those remaining few days, school took on a new perspective. Some kids did not bother to show up at all those last days. My mother said I still had to go to school right up until the bitter end.  

School was a different place.  Since there were so few of us we could sit where we wanted and, as long as we weren’t too loud, we could talk with one another.  Crazy.  Kids would bring in their own books to read or games to play with other kids.  The teacher would ask some of the boys to help carry books down to another room where they would be stored for the summer.  Sometimes we’d even clean the room, sweep the floor, and wash the blackboards. As I said, an odd place where, for once, I felt I was treated with respect.  I wasn’t just a kid in a classroom but someone who proved to be fine on their own without a lot of supervision; even someone who could help the teacher with some task or other.

On the last day everyone showed up.  All the “sick” kids fully recovered.  The teacher passed out final report cards that were yours to keep, no parents’ signature required.  Then we sat around. Waited.  Outside it was sunny, hot.  But not quite summer.

The spring/summer transition begins around 11 o’clock.  I can already hear other kids in the corridor, talking, shouting, on their way out.  My teacher stands up from his desk.  He says something about enjoying the year, success in the next grade.  Finally. “See you in the fall. Now get out of here!”

Everyone seems to rise out of their chairs at once.  “Goodbye Mr. Sullivan.”  “I liked having you as my teacher, Mr. Howard.”  Most of the goodbyes from girls.  The boys just shuffle by, their only goal is the door.

I’m out of the class.  In the hallway.  It’s still spring. Down the stairs. There’s the door. The door flies open. I go through it. I’m outside. 

I’m not carrying any books. I don’t have any arithmetic problems to do for tomorrow, no spelling words, no “Read chapter 11 and answer the questions at the end.”  No homework at all.

I don’t have a lunchbox.  No lunch today. 

Down the outside stairs.  Out onto the sidewalk.  There are kids everywhere.  Some yelling about no books and no teachers’ dirty looks.  

I start walking away from the school building. It’s beginning. I look around at the green trees, the blue sky. It’s happening. I feel it.  The warm air.  The excitement.  The change becomes apparent. The shift happens. The moment arrives.  It’s summer.

Weather being what it is, there were times during that first week after school let out when summer seemed to retreat.  I’d wake up in the morning to gray skies, damp air, drizzle or light rain.  Even though it would be warm out, even humid, without the blue sky, the heat from the sun, it seemed like a pale imitation of what summer was about. By August, however, during the dog days of sultry afternoons and hot nights, an overcast day or two would become very welcome.

Once July began, quintessential summer was about summer camp, swimming in ponds, picnics, barbecues, little league, month long road trips to national parks, staying in motels, a week with an aunt and uncle in another state.  

I never did any of that.

To me summer meant no school, a respite from homework. It was about the sun, the heat, playing outside as late as 9 o’clock at night.  It was about idleness and even boredom. There would be occasional days at Nantasket Beach, or the amusements at Paragon Park.  A couple of summers we spent a week at a cottage down to the South Shore, Cohasset or Scituate.  It was about going to the drive-in, street games during a hot afternoon under the shady maple trees on Prospect Street, and a hurricane or two.

Gimp and Beanbags

It’s interesting that as much as I anticipated the end of school, within a few weeks, at ages 10 and 11, I was right back at the Fairmount School, or more accurately the school yard next to it, when the park department started up their summer program.  This was not a playground in the usual sense of the word.  There were no swings or jungle gyms, no soft foam to break a fall.  The Fairmount schoolyard was a large area of asphalt, hard, cracked in places, and hot in the summer.

It was also a place during summer when college age kids would set up game tables, brings out rubber balls and beanbags, teach kids how to weave baskets and make things out of that standard playground material, gimp. Kids would show up, get involved for a few hours and then be off to do something else.

The tables would be set up where kids, mostly girls, made things out of gimp, or popsicle sticks or whatever a counselor had a particular skill in.  Boys were already, sadly, conditioned to stay away from anything requiring small motor control and fine hand-eye coordination or, even sadder, sit with girls when you could be rough-housing with other boys.

Still, I was curious about what this gimp was all about. I’d hang around the crafts table, watch as the girls would unwind strands of this plastic multi-colored cord from small spools.  I recall the gimp as being flat and pliable. Key chains were popular along with bracelets and lanyards.  A counselor would show a girl how to start her project with a box stitch, the most common and easiest in the world of gimp crafting.  The bracelet you’d end up with was square.  But soon the girls would learn the spiral knot resulting in a round bracelet that was more comfortable on a wrist.

Some of the gimpers became good at incorporating cobra twists and butterfly stitches as they made small baskets and even a picture frame.  My skill extended to wrapping some gimp around my fingers and then trying to spread them apart. I couldn’t.  Pliable as it was, gimp was also strong.

The bean bag toss was more my speed I loved the feel of the bags.  At some point they may have been filled with actual beans, (Today some are filled with dried kernels of corn.) but the ones at the schoolyard were filled with fine sand. They were so supple, almost a liquid feel in your hand, with a shape-shifting quality as the sand moved about.  Heavy, too. I’d throw them at other kids, and had them thrown at me. They hurt. Then you’d be yelled at by one of the counselors.  “That’s not what those are for!”

The counselor is right. Beanbags are to toss at a wooden board propped up at an angle against the side of the school building. You’d aim at one of the several circular holes, one on top of the other, cut into the board. Getting a bag through any of the holes was equally difficult I thought but the holes were marked with numbers, 20, 10, and 5, indicating a degree of difficulty.  You aimed for the 20 point opening, not the 5.  Maybe the 20 circle was smaller than the 5.

There were several ways of throwing your bean bag.  I usually hefted the bag underhand trying to aim for the top circle. Usually the beanbag would plop against the board and slide to the ground. Or the bag would hang half outside and half inside the opening.  That would bring demands for points from the throwers.  “It’s half in.  I should get half the points.”

Some kids would throw it overhand at the board.  If your aim was good the bag would fly through the opening and you’d get all the points.  But if you threw it too hard you’d knock the board over.  There were penalties for this.  “You lose a turn.”  Or “You have to give back half your points for knocking the board over.”  As with any game played by 10 year-olds, cries of “You’re cheating.” and “Not fair.” would ring out. Maybe this is when we’d start whipping bean bags at each other and not the board.

I was fairly good at it. Ten feet from the board, I’d aim, move forward slightly on one foot and toss underhanded toward the board.  Sometimes missing the top hole, the bag would slide down and disappear through one of the lower circles.  Best though was a toss which resulted in that nice uncomplicated shush as the bag fell through the circle you were aiming for.  “Twenty points for Billy,” someone would yell. I can’t tell you what the points were good for.  They weren’t redeemable for anything.  If you had more than anyone else you won the game. OK.  Maybe at the end of the summer you got a little certificate proclaiming you “Best at Bean Bag.  Fairmount School summer playground.  1955.” In fancy script.  Don’t know.  You tossed beanbags because it was fun, something to do.  

As the summer went on and it got hotter, the playground atmosphere began to take on a desultory feel.  At least to me. I’d ride my bike down early on a muggy afternoon, lean it against the chain link fence on the Summit Street side of the schoolyard, see what was going on. A kid was bouncing one of those small pink rubber balls against the brick wall of the school. A couple of girls were playing on a faded hopscotch grid stenciled on the asphalt.  Gimp art was in progress at the table set up in a corner. Several girls were painstakingly weaving lanyards. I didn’t know what lanyards were but they seem to have been mass-produced by kids at camps and playgrounds across the country in the fifties.

If it were particularly hot, most kids would be in the shade of the building.  Some gimping.  Some by themselves reading.  A group of girls might be telling each other stories about how obnoxious their little brothers were.  A lone kid would be riding erratic bike circles on the baking asphalt. A certain lethargy appeared to have set in by the middle of July.  Not as many kids.  Some were on family vacations or just didn't want to deal with the outside heat.  The novelty may have worn off as well.  Just a few weeks before, shortly after school had ended, the school yard seemed packed with kids.  Tables had been set up in all the corners, not just the shaded ones.  Kids were playing checkers and Chinese checkers and pick up sticks; there was ring toss.  Someone was roller skating.  There was even a Cootie game. A sense of excitement prevailed.  It’s the beginning of summer.

By August the schoolyard is deserted.  It’s still summer but the summer program is over.  Counselors need a vacation as well. Maybe some of them have more lucrative lifeguard jobs.  Riding by the empty schoolyard I find I miss that earlier excitement.  There is a stillness now.  Not even a breeze.  Just the heat.  I wonder if I’m actually looking forward a little bit to school in September.  Well, let’s not get carried way.

I’m riding my bike past the deserted school to go to the corner store which is, well, right at the corner of the schoolyard. Candy is a penny.  Tonic, soda to everyone but a Bostonian, is a dime for the larger bottle. Gin effectively delineates the corner store experience in her blog “Corner Stores.”  And every nostalgia website has descriptions of the many varieties of candy offered behind the glass of the penny candy counter.  Suffice to say my favorites were spearmint leaves, the red licorice, those chocolate discs with the crunchy white sprinkles on top, (Nonpareils Gin informs me.), anything nougat, anything caramel, even those ridiculous little dots on paper strips. (Gin is right.  Sometimes you eat more of the paper than of the candy.)  Buying this stuff was a year-round occurrence.  My teeth never got a break.  

On a hot summer afternoon it wasn’t the candy I craved.  It was a bottle of tonic.  Maybe even worse for my teeth. But there is little more satisfying on a sweltering summer afternoon than that first swig of a cold fizzy tonic. 

Even without air conditioning it was cool inside that little store. Dark too. A bit of an oasis compared to the hot dazzle of the outside.  Opposite the candy counter was a large steel container, no cover, half-filled with chilled water up to the slender necks of the tonic bottles.  Ginger ale, cola, lemon-lime, grapefruit, quite a variety.  I liked orange soda, grape, sometimes root beer.  Just from the names, I didn't think I'd like birch beer or cream soda so wouldn’t risk my dime on them.  I stayed away from the local Boston brands. Like Cott.  “It’s Cott to be good,” proclaimed the advertisements. I preferred Canada Dry. I was such a connoisseur. 

I peer into the inky darkness of the cooler.  My hand stings from fishing around in the cold water.  I pull out a few bottles looking for grape.  I hold a bottle up to the light to read the label, miniature rivulets of water sliding down the side of the glass, gathering at the bottom before dripping on the floor or my pants. On a hot, hot day just this bit of dripping water is refreshing. 

I finally choose, pay my dime, unhinge the bottle cap using the opener on the side of the cooler and head back outside where I am hit with a wall of humidity. I stand by my bike and take a long drink of my tonic, my hand wet from the condensation.  I pause a couple of moments letting those first few gulps settle.  A couple of minutes later and the bottle is empty.  I hold it loosely by the neck with three fingers for a moment before going back into the store to place it in the wooden case by the side of the soda machine.  Back on my bike.  Peddle up the hill on lower Prospect.  By the time I get home I’m thirsty again.  This time water from the kitchen sink faucet will have to suffice.

Tonic and ice cream. That’s summer. There was no ice cream man and his truck in winter.  Maybe there should have been. We liked ice cream year round.  And in winter it could have been sold from the back of an open pickup truck.  No freezer necessary.

I connect the ice cream man with early summer afternoons on Prospect Street when I was nine and ten.  Lunch is over.  It’s hot. We’re all slightly bored.  Still a lot of kids in the neighborhood.  Family vacations won’t start for another couple of weeks.  Kids waiting impatiently for their ice cream treat.  I wait on my front stairs.  Down at the corner of Fairmount several kids sit on the curb.  A kid comes by on his bike.   I have the nickel my mother has given me for my Popsicle or Fudgsicle. 

It’s a waiting game.  Everyone is reluctant to get involved in anything else until the ice cream man comes.  You could hear the truck before you could see it. Nothing fancy.  No chimes or music.  Just a simple ring.  Like a doorbell to a city apartment. 

There’s the truck.  I run down to where it's stopped on the corner joining the large group of kids hovering around the back of the truck.  The kids that I had seen waiting, kids who had bolted out of their houses, a few kids I never saw before.

The truck was nothing special.  A cab with a large white freezer compartment on the back, the sides  slathered with pictures of various ice cream treats. To us kids, though, in those mid-50 summers, this unassuming vehicle could be the highlight of the day.

Behind the truck there is no orderly line, just the usual motley gaggle of kids, some of the girls holding their younger sister's hand, some of the boys sweaty and streaked with dirt from their morning’s play. The ice cream man, a title bestowed upon him with as much gravity, to us anyway, as the president, came around to the back to begin dispensing our eagerly awaited treats.

Sound and sight mixed together. The essence of an early summer’s afternoon in Hyde Park in 1954. There’s the sound of a sharp snap as the ice cream man reaches up to pull the metal handle forward to open the back of the freezer. I can feel the cold air on my face.  A small cloud of condensation hovers around the open door. The whole inside of the freezer is lined with frost.  The crowd of kids moves forward to shout their requests.  There’s the sight of Popsicles and Creamsicles handed back to smaller brothers and sisters, the sound of paper tearing,

When I had pushed sufficiently close to the back of the truck, the dialogue was always the same.

“What do you want, kid?”

“I’ll have a Popsicle.”

“What flavor?”

“What kind you got?”

“Orange, cherry, grape, root beer, banana.”

Sometimes I’d fool him.

“I’ll have a Creamsicle.”

Being so close I could look right into the freezer. I was fascinated by the inside of the ice cream compartment, by the rows of rectangular boxes made of thin cardboard, some stacked on top of the others, some open from the top, others opened on the side. A treasure trove in the dark.

Sometimes the ice cream man would have to reach way back to get something, his head and shoulders disappearing into the small opening, his feet almost leaving the ground.  When he reappeared there’d be ice crystals in his hair.

He didn’t have to rummage around too much to get what I asked for.  The Popsicles and Creamsicles were right in the front, easy to get to. Only a nickel, which is all I usually had.  

Popsicles were fine. Two sticks. Two ice pops connected in the middle by a thinner layer of flavored ice.  Some kids would leave the paper on in order to snap the popsicle in half, then slide one out of the wrapper, eat it, and then other. Sometimes we’d snap them in half to share flavors.  “I’ll give you half my grape if I can have half your root beer.”  These negotiations had to happen quickly; it was difficult to break Popsicles in half after the wrappers came off.

It was also difficult eating them on a hot afternoon without making a mess. Popsicles are flavored frozen water.  Fragile when exposed to the sun.  The sticks were another hazard.  After eating the top of the Popsicle, the top of the stick would show up.  For some reason the stick was placed almost all the way up through the Popsicle making it easy to gag yourself as your tried to eat the rest of the Popsicle before it melted all over your hand.  Once the stick showed up I’d nibble around the edges to avoid having the stick in my mouth.  This weakened the Popsicle that remained around the stick and with the heat often resulted in some of it falling off onto the street.  No one said a kid’s life was easy.

A Creamsicle was a bit more manageable.  Vanilla ice cream in the middle surrounded by orange sherbet.  It didn’t melt as fast but the stick was still an issue.  Fudgsicles dripped in the heat as much as Popsicles but you could lick all the sides so the stick wasn’t as much an issue.

There was also a class distinction when it came to buying ice cream.  Some kids had dimes to spend.  They’d buy pushups, a paper cylinder full of orange or raspberry sherbet protected from the sun until you pushed the little bit up that you ate.  The ice cream sandwich, a bit drippy, but with cookie on the outside as a holder.  The drumstick, no stick in spite

of its name, an ice cream cone topped with a thin layer of chocolate and a coating of nuts.  And my favorite, the one I would got the rare times I had a dime to play around with, the chocolate covered.  Still a stick stuck in there but so good, the creamy vanilla ice cream crackling with broken bits of the chocolate shell.

After the ice cream man drives off to another neighborhood of impatient kids, I walk back to my house.  By the time I get there all that’s left of my Popsicle are two orange or grape-colored sticks. The summer afternoon stretches languid and indifferent in front of me. Most of the kids have disappeared.  Back to their houses.  Maybe to run in and out of a sprinkler.  Maybe down to the Fairmount playground. That hour or two after the ice cream truck has gone is a decided contrast to the excitement of waiting for the ice cream truck to show up.  Now there’s a whole afternoon to fill up.

Bug Wars

I sit back on the front steps for a few minutes trying not to touch my clothes with my sticky hands.  The street in front of me is a still picture. Nothing moves.  Not a breeze to stir the leaves. Not a car driving by.  It’s even hot in the shade. Should I go up to my friend Gene’s yard to see if he’s home?  Go in, sit on the couch and read. Play some records in the cool dampness of our new cellar room? 

Something startles me, brings me out of my languorous state.  A wasp is hovering around me.  Then another.  I bolt.  Call me a baby.  A lot of kids did. But creeping, crawling and buzzing creatures are the blight on my summer existence.

From a safe distance I can see the wasps flying in and out of a small opening in the ground adjacent to the concrete of the front steps. That night as soon as he comes home from work I tell my father what I’ve discovered.  Together we walk over to take a look.  Yellow jackets. We’ve had problems before with wasps and hornets building nests around the house.  A favorite spot was at the corner of the house in the back up by the rain gutter. I’ve already written about the hornets’ nests in our hedge. My father has a system in place for dealing with such yard pests.  Carbon tetrachloride.

Carbon tet was used for years as a solvent particularly in the dry cleaning industry. My father would keep a can of it at his work bench in the cellar using it in his TV repair work to clean television tuners among other things.  I liked the aroma of it, fragrant, like the smell of gasoline.  One small glitch.  Carbon tet is a potent hepatotoxin, toxic to the liver.  Exposure through inhalation was particularly serious.  There were no government warnings against its commercial use then, although my father did draw a skull and crossbones on the can he kept it in, and, in red ink, the word “poison” as well.

It did a number on pesky wasps and hornets.

The attack on the underground nest by the front steps required a little strategy. We waited until it was dark.  I held the flashlight while my father crept over with a tomato can of carbon tet.  He carefully poured it down the hole and stepped back. As far as I could tell not a single wasp emerged from the opening, their days of scaring a little kid named Billy over

The next afternoon my father and I brought a shovel out front to dig out the nest.  A foot or so down we came upon a large rock, the size of a watermelon.  Underneath it was the papery wasps’ nest. The carbon tet had proved to be instantly lethal. 

Bumblebees would also send me on a quick sprint if they flew too closely.  But unlike hornets and wasps, I considered bees a little more friendly.  As long as they stayed away from me.  My knowledge then was that bees pollinated flowers and produced honey while wasps and hornets hovered about trying to sting people.  Obviously I was not much of an entomologist.

Dragonflies are lovely graceful insects as they dart about dining on mosquitoes.  Obviously an adult interpretation.  As a kid I called dragon flies “darning needles”.  I had been told to be wary of them as they could sew your mouth and eyes shut. Really. Who comes up with this stuff? I’m not sure if I believed that 100 per-cent but I was still on my guard if one got too close.

My real fear, which I still have, is of spiders. If I had lived in Australia or in areas of tropical jungles there might have been some basis for my arachnophobia.  Not so much in New England.  I knew about black widows.  Other kids highly exaggerated the effect of their bites.  Writhing spasms, foaming at the mouth, a slow painful death. Every time I saw a spider I’d try to look to see if it had that red hourglass shape on its body. I never did spot one.  Of course I’d never get closer than five feet.

Spiders are strange.  Or fascinating.  Or both.  They scuttle.  All those legs.  That whole spider web thing.  Hiding up in the dark in the corner of a cellar ceiling, or under a rock, appearing suddenly out of nowhere when you reach up to open a basement window.  “Nothing to be afraid of, it’s just a spider,” my father would tell me. It wasn’t the fear; it was the feeling of the fear, the anticipation of it, the relief when I was out of “danger.” 

My friends and I talked a lot about tarantulas, the absolute kings of the spider world.  Big, hairy, fearful.  “One bite and you're dead,” one of my friends, an obvious expert, used to tell me.  The fact they were not native to New England or even poisonous didn’t seem to have much to do with the danger we faced if we happened to run into one of them. A popular movie of the time, fittingly called Tarantula, showed the death and destruction just one of them could cause.  Of course the one in the film was a big as a house.

No part of the body was safe from monster insects, even if they were only as small as an earwig. I didn’t like earwigs.  No surprise there.  Those pincers looked intimidating.  And I knew from what other kids told me, geniuses all, that at night they could crawl into your ear and, what, take up residency there, have their mail delivered there: Billy’s ear, care of Prospect Street, Hyde Park, 36, Mass. Benign though they actually were, it was the thought of them crawling into my ear more than the actually possibility that disturbed me.

As usual these tiny insects always had the upper hand in making a fool of me.  One summer my father set up a hammock in the backyard, stringing it from one tree to another.  The hammock was war surplus, canvas with mosquito netting you could zip up after you got in. This is great, I thought. I can lie in it, read or just swing it back and forth.  I did do that a few times. One morning after some overnight showers I am lying in it, getting comfortable, gently swaying back and forth, looking up at the trees and sky, when I feel something moving across my arm.  Earwigs!  Not just one.  An army of them.  They like dark moist places.  Like a hammock. According to a witness, my sister who was watching from the kitchen window, I leapt out of that hammock with such speed and panic that the whole thing spun around wrapping itself up in a twist. I’m sure my sister was laughing as she watched me jumping around the yard trying to knock off any remaining earwigs. The earwigs were probably laughing as well. 

I liked the sound of cicadas on a hot summer afternoon, and the sounds of crickets late into the night as I’m falling asleep. But I didn’t want them in my room. I hated it if a cricket somehow found its way into the attic. I’d hear it but not see it.  Holding a fly swatter I’d search for it.  It’s in the corner.  Then it would hop.  Somewhere.  I hope not on me.  How am I going to sleep now with this thing in my room?

I’ve written about the nasty bites of red ants in a previous blog.  Our yard was full of them until my father started to apply liberal treatments of the now banned insecticide Chlordane to eradicate them. The cure was worse than the bite.  It’s likely the residue remains in that soil to this day.  

I was also afraid of the larger carpenter ants. I’d do that spastic hand motion in an effort to knock them off me.  My father told me they damaged the wood in people’s houses when nesting. He also told me knowledge is a dangerous thing.  They ate wood I thought. (Actually they burrowed in wood; termites ingest wood.)  Would they try to eat me me thinking I’m wood? I would diligently step on them as they crossed our patio hoping to diminish their numbers.

They were in the bathroom as well. My anxiety increased one day when I found one walking across the edge of the toilet bowl. I have to use that, once a day at least. For a long time before I sat I’d examine the seat, the bowl, even the water.  With all the effort I expended fending off all these potential hazards to life and limb, it’s a wonder I had energy left for anything else.

I wasn’t afraid of fireflies.  We called them by their poetic name, lightning bugs.  Sometimes on a humid summer night we’d be off in the field behind my house, a few of us with bottles, their caps punched with a few holes, to try to capture lighting in a bottle.  I preferred just to look.  Of course, tail grass at night, definitely a hiding place for spiders, ants and who knows what else.  Still, the lure of the fireflies outweighed my anxiety.

Whether it was the heat or some other factor, one night there were many more of them than usual. Not just a few by the trees but what seemed like hundreds of them, all blinking that soft delicate light, illuminating the field in the softest of yellow hues. Before light pollution, a moonless summer’s night was a very dark night.  Looking up I’d see the stars piercing the black sky while in front of me lie a field of fluttering fireflies, the sparkle of one reflected in the twinkle of the other.

Fields of fireflies are a poignant summer memory. But those same fields hid a decidely different summer experience, poison ivy. I never quite knew how I got it.  I knew the signs, the pointed leaves in groups of three, the some times shiny appearance, dark green in the summer, red in the fall. Any part of the plant can be reactive to skin.  I knew the phrase. “Leaves of three. Let them be.”  The blisters, the itching.  I had it enough as a kid to motivate staying far away from it.  Still, it didn’t seem to make any difference.  I began to think just looking at it would bring on the symptoms.

It was everywhere.  People tried to eradicate it in their yards, and to do that you had to literally pull up the vines using thick heavy gloves, but it was difficult to get it all.  In a few weeks it was back again growing profusely. You couldn’t burn it.  People knew inhaling the smoke could cause problems.

In the woods behind my house it crept along the ground or ran up along fences or even trees. It must have known when I was going by.  Maybe it transmuted itself into a rose, a flower I liked to smell, in order to fool me.  I always kept an eye out for it. Even before climbing a tree I’d scout around it to make sure there were no vines. Eventually, as I got older, I stayed out of the woods entirely.  I would still get it although not as badly.

Once in the fall, seventh grade, I had a particularly bad case.  Blisters on my hands, between my fingers.  Some red blotches on my arms.  I was embarrassed by it, coming to school dabbed with white calamine lotion that was thought to give some relief from the itching. I never noticed much difference.  Eventually it would go away. I’d vow to be extra vigilant to avoid it the next summer.  

An extra incentive was the story going around when I was about ten. Today it would be called an urban legend.  One of my friends said he knew a kid who knew a kid who, on a dare from his sister, had eaten a handful of poison ivy. He seemed okay the rest of the

day.  The next morning he woke up to discover his mouth puffed up, his tongue swollen, his throat tight. Kids with some imagination could get very explicit about the gruesome details.  Gums so inflamed your teeth would pop out of your mouth.  Eyes shut tight.  Your whole face a distorted grotesque mask. The kid was rushed to the hospital where he almost died. With some of these stories an ironic ending was added in which the sister felt so guilty she ate some too.  She did die. 

I’d think of that story  whenever I felt itchy.  A mosquito bite, dry skin, heat rash.  It didn’t have to be poison ivy.  Any itch caused me to worry I was about to be rushed to the hospital. Or worse.

"I'm Bored."

Summer always started with a rush of energy.  It’s summer, new, novel, no school.  Lots of kids around.  Everyone enthused.  Much to do.  As the weeks went by, though, as the heat increased, as friends disappeared for weeks at a time on family vacations, summer began to lose some of its appeal.  A certain lethargy set in.  In the mid-50s, before I had a bike, my sphere of influence ranged from the school playground, Cleary Square, Gene’s yard, down to Brush Hill Road.  On a hot, listless day none of these places held much interest. I found myself in the doldrums of mid-summer, of hot spells and heat waves, hazy, lazy and dull.        

There was another phrase I used to describe this state of affairs, a statement my mother did not like to hear. “I’m bored.” I was underfoot. She'd prefer we were all back in school.  Friends were away.  It was too hot to play outside.  It was too stuffy to be up in my room.  The cellar was too damp.  There didn't seem to be any place to go.  Sometimes I'd sit on the front stairs with a book.  It was shady out there in the afternoon. 

After a while I'd get up to walk along the side of the house to the back. There'd be an old lawn chair out there in the far corner. I'd sit there under the trees, read a few more pages before putting the book down on the grass.  A rustling nearby as a squirrel scrambles up a tree. A bee hovers for a moment.  An ant walks across the arm of the chair. I flick it off.

Leaving the book, I walk over to where our collie dog, Laddie, is lying under the black walnut tree.   He’s tied to a dog run, a wire attached from one tree to another. He could walk or trot back and forth, but this was no day for that. He barely moves when I pet him. His tongue hanging out of his mouth. His breathing coming in short gulps.

I walk over to the other corner of the yard, lean on a post of the round rail fence our neighbor had put in last summer and look into the unruly growth of our back woods. Profusion. Everything growing every which way.  There’s poison ivy back there, roses, tiger lilies, raspberry bushes, all fighting toward the sun.  My next stop on this walk is over to our garden.  Unlike the woods, this little patch of our yard is weeded, cultivated and organized.  My father loved tomatoes and most of the garden is given over to those plump red fruits that are just beginning to ripen.

In the summer the garden was the first place my father walked to when he came home from work. Just to take a look. After supper, he'd be back out there with our black hose spraying sparkling cold water onto the plants. I remember the sound of the water dripping off the leaves of the plants after the hose was shut off.  Now on this hot afternoon I see a tomato in the back that looks like its ready to be picked.  

The image of my father on a warm summer night plucking a tomato off the vine, rubbing it on his shirt and taking a big bite out of it like it was an apple is a time machine back to those summers in Hyde Park. "There's nothing like the taste of a fresh tomato," he would often say.  Still, as a kid, no matter the love my father had of tomatoes, I didn’t like them. Same for the green peppers and the beans that were planted over the years.  Cucumbers I did like. With the skin off and lots of salt.  And radishes.  Over a summer the radish leaves would grow from tiny sprouts to a full green clump. When the time was right on an August evening my father would grab hold of the root just below the leaves and pull.  Hiding all this time in the dirt was a large red radish ready to be rinsed, sliced and eaten.  Again with a lot of salt.

From the garden, I'd walk over to our dusty driveway out into the street where I'd look up and down searching for any sign of friendly life. There's no one around.  So it’s back to the front stairs and eventually inside the house where I couldn't resist telling my mother, "I'm bored."

Sometimes to pass the time my brother Lawrence and I would send away for travel brochures filling out those little request forms we'd find in the back of magazines. It's where I learned about mail zones Hyde Park 36, Mass.  The mail didn't show up at our house until mid-afternoon. The anticipation quelled the boredom a little bit. I especially liked the travel brochures from the west. Utah. New Mexico. California. We considered Florida a special place along with Canada.  Looking at them I wondered if I would ever get to go to any of them.

Maybe that's why I loved the sailfish shirt I had when I was 11.  So exotic.  So not Hyde Park. It was a T-shirt with a large colorful picture of a sailfish jumping out of the ocean. Not only did this fish have that wide colorful sail but it had a sword-shaped snout.  I couldn't wait until summer to wear it which I did every day until it became thinner and thinner and finally wore out.

Then there is the sad tale of the shirt that never was.  In the mid-50s Kellogg’s cereals sponsored the Superman show on TV.  One morning my mother placed a new unopened box of Frosted Flakes in front of me.  After pouring some I turned the box around to read the back. There it was. An offer to send away for your own Superman T-shirt. “Look at this,” I shouted to my brother.  “It looks just like the one Superman has,” he said.  It did.  A blue shirt with the bold red Superman insignia emblazoned on it.  We were excited.  More so when my mother said we could do it, actually send away for something that cost money.

We had to wait until the ceral box was empty until we could fill out the little order form, insert the few dollars in cash and address an envelope. My brother and I both ran down the street to drop the envelope into the mailbox slot.  Now all we had to do was wait.  I was nine then in the summer of 1954.  Waiting was not a skill I had honed very sharply. 

Still, the first week or so after mailing in the offer was fun.  One of the other of us would check the mail in the afternoon, or we’d yell down from upstairs when we heard my mother at the mailbox.  “Is it here?”  “Did it come yet?”   The answer was, “No, maybe tomorrow.”   A week went by, and then two.  Still no package from the nice people at Kellogg’s.  Then three weeks and a then a month.  The nice people at Kellogg’s were turning out to be the mean-to-kids people from Kellogg’s.  

The T-shirts never came.  School came. Fall came.  But no T-shirts.  When I realized Superman had let us down, I felt very disappointed.  I wanted that shirt.  I wanted to wear it up to my friend Gene’s yard.  I wanted to have kids shoot at me and have the bullets bounce harmlessly away.  I had a rubber knife that would have been perfect to show the indestructibility of that shirt.  Maybe I could even fly with it on.  Never did get a chance to try that.  And that was a good thing.  

It’s likely way too many kids, excited like us at the breakfast table the morning we first spotted the offer, mailed away for them.  “Bob,” the supervisor at the factory would say to his foreman, “we’re all out of those damn T-shirts but we just got another mail sack of orders. Lets not fill them but let’s still keep the money.”  “Good idea, boss.”   That’s how I imagined it anyway. 

To cheer us up my mother would make us a lime juice drink.  On the hottest of summer afternoons she’d pull from the cabinet a shiny gold aluminum pitcher.  From another cabinet would come a bottle of lime juice concentrate.  Into the pitcher went a pour of the lime juice and then lots and lots of sugar.  Water came next and then a tray of ice cubes. Mix it together and it’s ready to be poured into glasses. 

It was delicious, particularly thirst quenching on a hot afternoon.  Whenever I told my friends about drinking lime juice, they were puzzled.  “You mean lemonade?”  “Tonic?”  “Grapefruit juice?”  No one had ever heard of lime juice.  It was apparently a family tradition, something either my father or mother had as kids when the prevalence of soda was more limited.  The pitcher my mother made it in eventually ended up on a shelf in the cellar, its inside pitted and corroded black by the effects of all that citric acid on the aluminum.

Kid Games

That first summer on Prospect Street, 1953, rather than succumb to boredom, I would play with, maybe even impose upon, the kids who lived in the houses on either side of me.  Mostly girls. Three girls, the Garrity's, lived on one side, and two more girls, the Zorn's, lived on the other.  Diane and Karen with their younger brother, Carl were the Zorns.  Margaret, Kathleen and Mary Ellen were the Garritys. Mary Ellen was my age, the others were younger.

Gender issues aside, I used to like to go into one or the other of their yards to participate in a tea party.  Out in a backyard would be a little table upon which would be an array of pink plastic dishes.  Plates, cups, saucers, a tea pot, a sugar bowl. A tea set. I’d be there among them, filling cups, passing them around. “How much sugar do you want?”  Stirring imaginary tea with a plastic spoon.  “Milk?” My parents drank tea mid-evening every night as far back as I can remember so I knew the basics.  At first I liked this kind of play.  It was peaceful, everyone getting along, ritualistic.  I think the girls liked having a boy at their parties.  At least initially.

The truth is tea party protocol was apparently not my cup of tea.  I may have been a teaspoonful too aggressive.  I loved handing a cup of tea to one of the girls and then abruptly dropping it onto her lap. The first few times this might have been seen as fun.  There was scurrying about for a towel to sop up the imaginary tea, then the tea had to be reheated and the serving and pouring started all over again.  Then there were the imaginary cookies. Cookies that I would grab with both hands to stuff into my mouth like an early version of Cookie Monster. The girls would get mad. I’d be yelled at.  One of the girls would start to cry. I would be banned.  Until the next time. “I’ll be good. Really.  Let me serve.”  And then it would start all over again.

There were other things I would have liked to have been a part of but felt I couldn’t because of the social pressure that boys didn’t play girls’ games. I admired the neighborhood girls’ abilities at jump rope and hopscotch.  I would occasionally attempt jump rope. Probably on a dare. I quickly ended up entangled.  I never mastered that extra little jump the girls did before the larger jump that got them over the rope.  Sometimes there were two ropes. Double Dutch. I had serious issues with one rope.  How did the girls twirl two? Even more challenging, jumping between those two ropes, performing a rhythmic graceful dance without getting snared. Then, as if that were too easy, they would speed it up.  

On certain summer mornings and evenings, when the heat hadn’t yet established itself or was on the wane, or when a bit of a breeze may have turned up unexpectedly, and when kids weren’t away on vacation, the street in front of my house would come alive with the noise and bustle of kid games.

It was a good place to play.  A hard surface for bouncing balls and running, lots of shade from the thick canopy of the maple trees, and very few cars to deal with. 

I liked a game we called squash although it had nothing to do with rackets and indoor courts.  It was like baseball. Without a bat. And just one base to deal with, first.  We used a large rubber ball, sometimes as big as a basketball. You’d hit the ball with your fist, trying to fly it over the heads of the kids further up the street, or you’d hit it on the ground hoping no one would catch it in mid-bounce.  Then you would dash to first base.  You’d either make it or be out if someone caught the ball. You could also get the runner out by throwing the ball directly at the runner.  Try that in baseball.  If you made it to first, the next batter would try to get you home. There was a lot of running between first and home.  

It could get a bit rough and tumble.  It was not the neighborhood girls’ favorite. Some of them were only five or six so hitting a large ball more than a few feet was an issue.  “Move in. Move in.  Karen is up,” we’d yell as a diminutive girl struggled not only to hit the bill but even to hold it. Then she had to make it to first with the risk of someone throwing the ball at her as she ran.  “That hurt!”  “You’re throwing it too hard.”  Lots of arguments too.  “You missed!”  “I’m safe.”  “You’re out by a mile.”  And so on.

We didn’t stick with any particular game for too long. Especially the aggresive ones like Red Rover.  How could this not result in someone crying?  Two lines of kids facing each other, arms entwined, attempting to make a barrier so when the team leader yelled over to the other team, “Red Rover, Red Rover, send Bobby right over”, they could prevent Bobby from breaking through their line.  But when Bobby is a125 pound twelve year-old boy running at two 90 pound girls tenuously holding their arms together, well, you know who won that battle.  Red Rover got so rough it was banned from school playgrounds all over the country.  (And, ironically, replaced in eighth-grade gym classes all over the country with dodge ball.)

Picking the Red Rover teams was the important part of the game.  You'd try to get a good mix of bigger and smaller kids on each line.  This worked pretty well when lots of kids were out on the street after supper.  Still, the line was only as strong as the seven-year old sister who stood between her ten year-old sister and one of the bigger boys. Like I said.  Lots of crying.  Lots of bruises. Time for the next game.

Red Light, Green Light was a game that also worked best with a large group of kids.  And it was another game that precipitated a lot of arguments.  One kid, called the cop, would face away from a group of kids some distance behind him. When he yelled “Green Light”, the pack of kids would move toward him. Some aggresively.  Some with baby steps. At any point the cop would yell “Red Light” and then quickly turn around.  Any kid he caught still moving was dispatched to the back.  The point of the game was to get close enough to the cop to tag him without him seeing you move.  Then you would become the cop yourself. 

The game relied on the honor system.  “I saw you move. Go to the back.”  “No you didn’t.” And so on. Some kids getting real close would purposely not move.  If the cop claimed they did, there’d be a chorus of other kids yelling, “He didn’t move.  You’re cheating.  You just want to be the cop the whole time.”  Negotiating through these bickering disagreements may have been the real point of these street games. Experience for disagreements we’d all face as adults. Finally someone would yell, “Let’s just play.”

On a quiet summer’s afternoon they’d be a couple of  neighborhood girls on the street working with chalk outlining a new hopscotch pattern, the ones from yesterday having been worn away by last night’s shower or cars driving over them. 

Hopscotch was not a game where participants ended up crying.  All it required was accuracy, concentration  and balance.  I had some of those qualities.  But I didn’t get to play very much. I was a boy. Hopscotch was considered a girls’ game. Some of the girls were very good at it.  Hopping from square to square on one foot, twisting, balancing, avoiding any line, stooping to pick up their marker on their way back.  Speed and grace were the hallmarks of the best players.

The few times I did get a chance to play I found I wasn’t too bad at it at although I’d often kick the marker off the grid on the way back. Hopping through the pattern was easy for me.  Tougher was tossing the marker up to the 8, 9 or 10 square.  Rather than toss it, sometimes I’d try to slide it so it would stop in the square without touching a line.  Some of the girls were so good at tossing they could do it with their eyes closed.

What I liked best about hopscotch was finding something to use as the toss.  Small stones bounced too much.  Sticks were too light.  Sometimes I’d find a bottle cap or a small piece of broken glass.  Some of the girls had their own special markers they would use every game.  Sort of like having your own personal baseball glove or bowling bowl.  This was serious stuff.

On the Shore

Those first few summers on Prospect Street I like to think there were times when the other neighborhood kids were bored because I was the one away on vacation with my family. For years there was a summer tradition among working people in Boston that for a week or two they would rent a cottage along the Massachusetts coast. “We’ve got a place on the shore,” is how people would express it. This meant the North Shore, north of Boston up to Gloucester and Ipswich; the Cape, Sandwich, Dennis, Yarmouth up to Orleans and to the outer Cape, Wellfleet and Provincetown; and the South Shore, Cohasset, Scituate, Marshfield down to Plymouth.

When my father was a kid his family would spend part of the summer camping on the Cape to fish and hunt.  Back then the Cape was a spectacular ocean wilderness, rural and primitive.  Farming and fishing were the main industries.  By the time I was a kid, tourism had become established there. But it was considered too far away from my father's work to rent a summer cottage there.  Same with the North Shore.  Gloucester would have been an exotic place for me to spend time. I thought the nearby ocean would be full of whales.

Our family vacation time was spent on the South Shore, closer to Boston. As a kid, my mother spent summers at her aunt and uncle’s in Scituate.  “We’ll be spending next week down to Humarock,” I was informed one day in the summer of 1954. This was exciting.  Now I’ll be the one on vacation. Later that day out with some friends I told them where I was going. I liked talking about beaches, particularly trying to conjure up an image of the beach from its name.

“We’re going to White Horse Beach,” someone would say.  OK.  White horses splashing about?  The sand as white as a white horse, I’d think.

“Every summer we go to Horse Neck Beach,” some one else would offer.  Sounds unappealing to me. If I had to go to a horse-named beach I’d go to White Horse.

Brant Rock was another beach.  No sand, I’m thinking.  I don’t want to get to the water stepping on rocks.

Rexame Beach I associated with a drug store chain at the time, Rexall Drugs.  Scusset Beach was in Sandwich. I liked sandwiches so maybe that’s a beach I’d like.

As for Humarock, one kid liked the name calling it very musical whereas another kid, trying to be funny, said he didn’t like it, “‘cause all those rocks singing would make me end up in Mattapan.” Mattapan was the site of a state hospital for the insane, one of our favorite places to cite in a disparaging way.

Humarock, a spit of land in Scituate that faces the Atlantic Ocean on one side and a tidal river on the other, did have a musical sound.  I liked the rhythm of waves so the ocean beach is where I planned to spend most of my time. It will feel odd, though, that after a day at the beach we won’t all pile in the car and drive home.  Instead we’ll all pile into a small cottage.  Of course the next morning I’ll be able to walk right back to the ocean again. This is going to be fun.

Then one of my friends pointed out a big problem. “‘Them’ is going to be at the movies next week. You’re gonna miss it.”  Oh, oh, he’s right.  We had seen the ads for it a couple of times on TV.  To me, a nine year-old in 1954, seeing “Them”, a movie about ants mutating into giant monsters threatening the world according to the ad, was a big deal.  The movie would rank up there with “The Creature from the Black Lagoon” on my best list. 

Now what do I do?  It’s going to be playing the week I’m away.  Just for that one week. Then it’s gone.  No video.  No later release on DVD. (Well, not until 2002.) Maybe years from now on a late night TV showing.  Conflicts like this reveal the important dilemmas of kids that are considered less than trivial to adults.  I knew I couldn’t ask my mother to let me stay home or change the week to another one knowing I wouldn’t get much sympathy over this conflict.  It wasn’t important.  Only to me. I still remember to this day the disappointment of not seeing “Them” that week we spent at Humarock. I made all my friends promise to tell me every detail of the movie when I got back.

What struck me about cottages on the shore, Humarock and the one or two other places we stayed during summers in the mid-50s, was how different they were from my house in Hyde Park. There was grass around my house; on the shore it was sand, and scruffy bushes trying to survive in that salt air environment.  

The cottage was not far from the water. There may have been a street to cross, or a street to walk up to the beach.  Sometimes there was a concrete wall at the end of the street with stairs to walk down to get to the water.  Or just a path in the sand along a rise at the top of which was the sloping beach and the ocean.

The air was different too. Inside the cottage there was a feeling of dampness, the odor of mildew.  This was in the days before air conditioning and

dehumidifiers.  Outside the cottage the air was fresher but still had that bite of salt and tang. The ocean had its own smell, different from the others, of brine and seaweed, of the sea, as ancient as it gets. The air is alive at the seashore carrying not only the smells but also the sounds, frivolous splashing as a wave begins to break, the rush as it travels to the beach and then the collapse as it slaps against the sand in a disarray of foam and bubbles and sand. I liked the beach which, when combined with the whole of the enormous ocean and the wide sky above, made me feel both excited and calm.

We’d spend mornings into early afternoons at the beach before lugging everything back to the cottage, blankets, bags of food, maybe a chair or two.  My skin would feel warm, dried out and very, very clean from the scouring of water and sand. Late in the afternoon I’d lie on the small bed in a tiny room off the kitchen reading a comic book when I’d hear my father outside.  He worked during our vacation week preferring to come down after work and then leave in the morning from the cottage.  My sister did the same thing, spending a few nights with us from work.

My father and mother would sit outside, have a drink, before starting supper. There might be hamburgs fried in a skillet on the stove, or spaghetti sauce made the week before and frozen, or maybe hot dogs boiled on top of the stove.  I don’t remember grilling or even eating our supper outside.  It was just easier to eat in the kitchen as we did at home.

There was no television at the cabin, or was there a tiny one in the corner that barely got two stations? No telephones.  My friends had already seen "Them" and have been talking about it all week.  That’s what I assumed.  After a few days I did feel a bit isolated, not so much during the day but at night.  After supper we would go up to the beach again, not to swim but to walk.  I’d take my shoes off, trot down close to the water and then as a breaking wave approached run back up to the beach trying not to get my feet wet.  Of course after a while they were wet along with the bottoms of my pants.

The beach was different in the evenings.  Less people.  Fewer kids in the water.  As I walked I’d pass by the remnants of sand castles constructed earlier in the day under a hot sun.  The waves had done their job. Most of these constructions were now just mounds of shapeless sand. The ones further up on the beach lay in ruins from people trampling across.   As for the holes dug by kids, sand from the edges already beginning to fill them in.  As for the words written in the sand with sticks, I’d make out some of the letters but the rest were just faded scribbles. By morning it will be a fresh beach, the sand level and smooth, an empty canvas, ready for new construction and excavation and message writing.

Everyone went to bed early during the week at the cottage, sometimes just as the sun was setting.  I had a little light next to my bed.  I’d read for a while.  Maybe play cards with my brother. Cards and the checker board were among the essentials everyone brought on a beach vacation.  I’d click off the light, try not to mind the dampness of the bed too much, toss and turn for a while if it were hot, and eventually fall asleep, the distant sound of the ocean in my ears even while I slept.

As much as I liked being down to Humarock, when I think of spending a day at the beach, Nantasket Beach immediately comes to mind.  The beach at Humarock was small, narrow; the area had a village feel.  This was not the case at Nantasket. Nantasket was a broad beach, packed with people in the summer, and, depending on the winds and tide,

the waves could be full and vigorous, a wall of water coming at you before they broke.  It was scary at times.  

We’d drive down to Hull on a Sunday or on a weekday during my father’s vacation.  It was always crowded but less so during the week. Unlike Humarock, Nantasket was prepared for its influx of summer bathers.  There were vast parking lots, concrete bath houses where you could change and wash the sand off, sets of stairs that led down to the beach, various places along the seawall where you could buy beach food, the usual hot dogs and hamburgs but also more exotic things, to me anyway, fried clams, milkshakes, cotton candy, popcorn balls.  Now, awful stuff, of course, and we rarely bought it, but just passing by these places added to the almost frenzied atmosphere on the boardwalk during a hot crowded summer afternoon.

Once on the sand my father would shake out an old army blanket onto our spot.  In the corner would go a couple of grocery bags with food and drink.  I was impatient. The waves awaited.  I never wore sunglasses, applied sunscreen or paid attention to any warnings about riptides. No kid did.  All I had to do was I would kick off my shoes, undo pants, peel off my shirt to reveal my bathing suit under my clothes, and head down to the water. 

Whereas my older brother Ralph might run headlong into the surf, my style was far more timid.  I didn’t plunge into the waves and swim out fifty yards.  I didn’t know how to swim. I’d begin by standing by the edge, letting the water rush over my feet, startled at how cold it was, and then slowly walk further in until the water came up to my waist.  Hesitant about wading out any further, I’d stand letting the passing waves glide by me, most of them at my comfort level. Then I’d see in the distance the swell of a larger wave. I’d try to get back to shore before it overwhelmed me but the water made my effort at speed a dash in slow motion.  My shoulders are covered.  I’m being knocked over.  I struggle to right myself as the foam and dissolved sand rush past me.  I taste salt water in my mouth. I’m okay. Wait. That was fun! 

There was an openness, an expansiveness that I felt standing out there in the ocean.  My mood was as buoyant as the water that held me up.  Salt water.  I was told it would make you sick if I swallowed too much of.  I found it unusual.  How different from the fresh water that came out of the faucet.  There was so much salt water too.  Oceans full of it, writhing and churning and foaming.  So much more dynamic than the clear settled water I drank from a glass at the kitchen sink at home.

Looking straight out I’d see the horizon. It did look like the ocean met the sky out there but I knew from school that was just an illusion, something to do with the curve of the earth.  I also knew that if I were able to walk on the ocean I’d eventually reach Spain. That’s what was right across from me. Well, you’d come to Portugal first a smarter friend told me later. (Actually taking into account the earth’s spherical shape, great circles and the position of Nantasket to the rest of the globe, I could also end up in Australia.)  I did a lot of thinking out there in the water apparently.  

And some worrying.  Jelly fish were a major concern.  (The era of shark fear was some years in the future.)  They were transparent, drifted close to shore and some of them could sting you.  I was never harmed in any way by a jellyfish but standing out there I could not see what was going on beneath the passing waves.  Maybe a lobster would bite me, or a horseshoe crab scuttle across my feet or that giant octopus from Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea drag me out to sea over to Spain. 

After a while I’d begin to get cold or be crowded out by the throngs around me.  To warm up I’d get out of the water and sit in the sand.  Dig a hole with my hands.  I may have had a small plastic pail to scoop up water to pour into the hole I made.  I was always disappointed since as soon as I filled the hole, the water would drain back into the sand.  It is sand after all. Porous. 

Sometimes I’d lose track of where I was.  I was supposed to stay in front of the blanket at all times. Playing in the water I’d inadvertently move up or down the beach so that the blanket that was right in front of me eventually moved from one side or the other. With all the other blankets, and beach umbrellas and crowds of people, it would be hard to spot.  Everything looked the same.  There it is.  There’s my mother and father sitting on it.

Is there anything better than being a ten year-old kid, sitting on your beach blanket on a hot August afternoon, half a sandwich in one hand, a bottle of soda in the other, several potato chips in your lap, surrounded by millions of other people, millions more in the water, your feet sandy, your hair wet, the sparkling ocean right there in front of you. No, there isn’t.

Sitting by the ocean gave me an insight, shallow as it might be, about the way the natural world worked.  My father would talk about the tides, how the moon’s gravity would actually pull the ocean toward it.  As a result the water at the shoreline would recede a little bit, low tide.  When the moon was on the other side of the earth, the oceans would flood back to where they had been, high tide.

I may not have completely understood this but I could see it.  There were little blackboards by the changing rooms on which had been written in chalk the times of the day’s high and low tides.  I’d sometimes put a rock at the edge of the water and an hour or two later see that the rock now was high and dry in the sand, the water’s edge several feet lower than earlier.  “The tide is going out,” I realize.  Lower tide meant I could walk out further and still be in water that only came up to my waist. Low tide also left small areas of water stranded on the beach, water warmed quickly by the sun.  These large pools were fun to splash around in, there being no danger of getting in too deep or, another peril, falling off a shelf.

Hidden under the water and anywhere from 10 feet or more off shore depending on the tide, a shelf was a sudden drop from shallow water to water that was way over my head. Caused by tidal action and erosion, I had been warned about these sudden drop offs.  “Be careful walking in the water,” I was told. “Don’t go out too far. You don’t want to step off a shelf.”  Well, that’s exactly what I did.

I was already concerned about another warning, the old saw about staying out of the water for a half hour after eating, which, unless you’re going to swim a marathon and the meal was the one you ate at Thanksgiving, wasn’t even true.  Still, I didn’t want to get cramps, whatever they were. Now I had to worry about stepping off into the fathomless abyss of the ocean.

I liked being out there, paddling the water with my hands, the gentle waves passing by. I'd look back at the beach still crammed with the colorful commotion of the crowds but without the clamor. All I could hear was the gently lapping of the water around me, or the soft rush of a larger wave flowing past.  The tranquillity gave me a false sense of confidence.  Then I took one step too many.

It was sudden.  One moment I am above the water, the horizon in front of me, the blue sky above; the next I am underwater, in a dream world.  That’s how I think back on it.  For some reason I didn’t panic, didn’t start thrashing.  Remember I couldn’t swim. I didn’t even close my eyes.  Everything is so green.  There are shafts of sunlight darting everywhere. Above me, there is blue sky gently quivering as I look up through the water. I have become a fish. 

Had I decided to take a breath, my attitude would have changed abruptly and violently.  But I didn’t have to.  Within seconds of my going under, someone grabbed me, pulled me out and led me back to the shallow water. It was a man. No one I knew. A stranger. Just someone who had saved my life.  In a moment he was gone. 

I walked back to the beach and then up to my blanket where I sat. I didn’t tell my parents. I didn’t tell anyone. Maybe I felt embarrassed or thought I’d be punished for disobeying the rules about going out too far. Instead I just sat there, alone, amidst the crush of the people around me, looking out at the sparkling water, to that far distance where the sky and sea met.

Humarock.  Nantasket.  A different experience on the coast of Maine.  One night in August,1955, we all had to go to bed early.  “A big day tomorrow.  We’re driving up to Maine to spend the day at Reid State Park,” I am told.  The kitchen looked like we might be gone for a week rather than a day.  Bags of food on the counters, blankets and extra clothes, and the red metal Coca Cola cooler.

My father meant it when he said early.  At 5 am I am standing outside helping to load the back of the car. It’s surprisingly cold, and dark.  Usually at this time I’m asleep.  It’s the hushed quality of this very early morning that strikes me. Nothing moves.  Our neighbor’s houses are dark. Not even a car going up the street.  I’ve been told to be very quiet.  I’m whispering but my voice still seems loud. It’s unusual being outside this early in the predawn chill.  I have a jacket on.  Where’s summer I’m wondering? 

The reason for the early start was the distance we had to drive,150 miles. This was before I-95. We took Route 1.  Setting out in the dark we drove through Boston heading north up through Newburyport, through New Hampshire, over a big bridge into Maine.  By the time we were in New Hampshire the sun was up.  Better to see things from the back window. 

I liked reading the signs.  "Entering Seabrook."  "Biddeford 8 miles." "Speed Limit 45."  "Route 1 bear right." "Soft Shoulder."  Didn’t understand that one. I wished we’d pass a large truck, the ones with all the wheels.  It gave me a chance to look at those enormous tires in motion as we drove past.

I began to see signs for something called The Desert of Maine.  A real desert, I’m wondering?  The only deserts I knew were from the movies. Enormous expanses of sand, sloping dunes, people crawling on their hands and knees, near death from lack of water.

When I asked my father he said he wasn’t a real desert, just what he called a “tourist trap”. Promising people something more than what it was. Lots of places to buy things and too many people.  I might still like it but I realized it was also a place my father would go out of his way to avoid.

I also liked some of the names of the towns we drove through.  Kittery. Wells.  Bath.  Not as good as Greece, Turkey or any country with the word “great” in it, like Great Britain.  Bath, though, almost made it into that league. 

We arrive at Reid midmorning.  It’s still cold, with a wind.  Near the parking lot is a bluff overlooking the wide expanse of beach.  The waves are white-capped.  There are some picnic tables nearby where we set up for an early lunch.  Stuff keeps blowing away.  Again, where’s summer?

We walk down to the beach but it's far too blustery to go in the water.  I spend time walking along the shore looking for shells and rocks. It’s nice enough here but after such a long ride I’m disappointed there's no swimming. Then my father tells us there’s a river just behind the beach that ends up in a little pond right by the parking lot.

Walking over to it I see it’s more crowded than the ocean beach and much smaller.  But the water is warm!  This is great. The afternoon coalesces into a perfect vacation day.  I can wade out into the water, play in the sand by its edge and walk up to the blanket to refuel with a sandwich or cookies or some fruit.  

One particular memory of that afternoon is vivid because of its color.  The bright red Coca-Cola cooler.  Maybe it stood out because at a beach the predominant colors, save for a few beach umbrellas, were blue or tan.  On the front in white script were the words “Drink Coca-Cola”. The cover had an aluminum handle over which an aluminum bar, hinged on the sides of the cooler, would snap to keep the cover secure and tight.  It was an effort for me to push the bar off to open the cooler.

Inside was ice. I loved bags of ice, my father banging them on the ground to break up the clumps of ice inside, dumping them inside the cooler, hearing them clink down around bottles of soda and jars of pickles and mustard and cartons of milk and juice. On a hot day there is no sound more refreshing

On one side of the cooler was a bottle opener.  On the other side was a small drain spout. Late in the afternoon my father unscrewed the stopper and then tilted the cooler on an edge to drain all the melted ice. As the melt water flowed out I’d put my hands under it to wash off the sand. That water was cold!  Ice cold.

But the sun is hot.  The sounds are of splashing and shouting.  My feet are sandy, my hair wet.  Summer is back.

Fire in the Sky

Every summer my mother would say, “When it gets to be Fourth of July, the end of summer is not far behind.”  A folksy truism, no doubt something she heard her own mother say but it was not something I wanted to hear.  Let’s at least get the fireworks in before I have to go back to school.

Unless you were a licensed professional shooting them off into the sky the night of the Fourth, fireworks for your backyard or barbecue were in banned in Massachusetts.  The flaw in that regulation was they were not illegal to buy in nearby New Hampshire. Parents of a couple of kids I knew would drive up there the week before the Fourth and buy a bag of them.

I had mixed feelings. I was concerned I might lose a finger, or a hand.  How about a whole arm?  But somehow that anxiety dissipated when I was actually around someone who had dipped into their parents' supply with the idea of starting the celebration a little early. I liked the flash and I liked the noise. 

The selection usually included some bottle rockets, launched in the air with a high-pitched whistling sound; firecrackers on a string, as many as 15 or 20, light one and they’d all go off in sequence; sparklers, long rods that emitted vivid sparks, best in the dark; and the mother of all street fireworks, cherry bombs.  These were the dangerous ones.  With their short fuse and red color they did look like cherries. For their size they packed a lot of explosive punch giving off a loud bang when detonated.  With a short fuse size whoever lit it had to be very quick and nimble in order to keep all their fingers. Safe to say I never lit one. 

Cherry bombs were often put inside soda cans or stuck in the dirt so that when they went off, along with the bang, you’d have the additional thrill of watching the can shoot up in the air or a clump of dirt fly off in every direction.  It was tense lighting it.  Everyone knew what could happen.  Lots of screaming and running even though we spectators were 20 feet away.  Bang! Then a rush over to see how badly the can was damaged.  The people who fought in the Battle of Concord and Lexington would have been proud to see what their sacrifices had wrought.

I preferred the string firecrackers.  You’d light them with a punk.  Punks were also tough kids with seriously coiffed hair but in this case the name referred to a long, thin piece of wood made with a substance that would smolder but not burn.  You’d light the end of the punk, touch it to the end of a fuse, wait until the fuse started to sputter, and then run.  There was something very inconsistently rhythmical about a string of firecrackers going off.  The first one, then the second, maybe a pause,  several more in quick succession, then rapid fire as the rest started to jump around in the street.  Flash after flash, a haze of smoke.  Bang, bang, bang.  

Sometimes the action would come to an abrupt end if there were a dud in the series.  Or if the fuse burnt out prematurely.   Now what?  Who’s going to light the rest of the string?  I actually did a few times.  With punk in hand I’d slowly circle the string of remaining firecrackers, inch closer, making sure there were no signs of a still smoldering fuse, quickly reach over, touch the tip of the punk to what I hoped was the end of a fuse and then take off.  Lots of banging, or nothing.  I’d try again or hand off the punk to someone else.

As a kid in Hyde Park, the Fourth fireworks were launched over Jamaica Pond in Jamaica Plain. It was still light when we parked on a side street off Centre Street, then walked along with throngs of other people to a grassy area by the edge of the pond.

We brought a blanket to sit on while we waited.  I didn’t like waiting.  It was dusk when we got there, just after the sun set, a period of twilight.  “The sky has to be dark,” my father told me, “before the fireworks can start.” I sat hoping this twilight thing wouldn’t go on any longer than I could endure.  Slowly, painfully so, the light began to seep from the sky.  A few stars appeared. Any minute.  Any second. Swoosh! Crackle!  Bang!  They’ve started.

Fireworks in those days were not crowd friendly.  There were no multiple rockets fired in sequence to burst in unison or to create an interlocking pattern of bright flashes and glittering trails of red and gold sparks. Fireworks were expensive.  They were shot off one at a time with long waits in between.  Relatively.  A long wait to me was anything over 15 seconds.

They were lit by hand with what I imagined to be the biggest punk in the world.  There was a thunk as the rocket left its firing tube, a shower of sparks outlining its graceful arc skyward. A moment of silence. Darkness.  Did it flare out?  No.  Casting shadows among the nearby trees and setting the pond below afire was a sudden explosion of light and color and the boom of the biggest cherry bomb of all. In a moment the fiery trails would fizzle out and the rolling boom echo off to the distance.  Darkness again. More waiting as the next rocket was loaded, ignited and sent skyward. While paced leisurely, the fireworks, some staining the sky with brilliant orange, red and yellow flares of color, others all sound and fury, were fun, a treat that we only got to experience once a year.

The best is saved for last.  The finale.  Rocket after rocket streaming up and up. The explosions come singly and in groups, concurrently and simultaneously.   The whole sky is filled with vivid pandemonium. I am present at the beginning of the universe. The shadows of the trees jump and lurch. The pond is ablaze from the fire above.  The barrage of exploding shells comes from all directions. It’s a wonderful commotion that has totally enthralled me.

Then it's abruptly over.  Just smoke hanging in the air.  And a glowing American flag in the distance.   I come back to my senses, to where I was before, on the grass by Jamaica Pond.  

It’s dark now as we crowd in with all the other people carrying blankets and coolers, grasping kids’ hands, heading for their cars. In the back seat when I close my eyes I still see the flashes. 

One Fourth of July was not very summer-like, cloudy and damp with on and off drizzle. Would there be fireworks tonight was the question on everyone’s mind. Reluctant to cancel them, the parks’ department was also concerned the dampness could interfere with how well the rockets ignited.  As it turned out they had a right to be worried.

No word on a cancellation. We are in the car for the ride over to Jamaica Pond. Lots of people in spite of the damp grass, the muggy air, the overcast sky.  Some light rain had fallen earlier in the afternoon.

The show starts off in the usual fashion. A tail of light, an explosion, the fluttering, expanding colors, the bang.  Then another and another.  But something isn’t quite right.  The bursts seem lower in the sky than usual.  The crowd is also being rained with debris, mostly bits of charred cardboard from the fireworks’ tubes.  Burning embers are also falling closer to the pond and the people around it before extinguishing. There are sparks everywhere.  Once or twice sparks shower into the crowd quite close to me.  

My father says the dampness may have changed the amount of time it takes for the fuses to ignite the fireworks.  Some of the rockets are not exploding at their maximum height but igniting as they began to fall back to earth resulting in a fireworks display closer to the ground than safety requires.

The display continues, compromised or not. Then the unexpected happens.  There is a sudden explosion on the street just behind us. A loud bang.  Startled, everyone turns to look at a cloud of brown smoke hovering above the street where a shell has exploded.  Mostly noise and some sparks.  It does make people, including me, more concerned the next one is going to land in our laps.

It’s exciting too.  I’m thinking this must be what soldiers experience in a war as shells burst all around. I am in a war. People in the crowd point across the pond where a small tree appears to be on fire.  The fireworks continue.  

The smoke becomes a nuisance.  There is no wind to disperse it.  The fireworks take on a muted effect as the smoke begins to obscure the display, the smoke cloud lighting up from within. With the haze and noise and fireworks hitting the street, by the time it ends I am a veteran, glad I don’t have charred clothes but also thrilled about being in a bit of danger. 

One summer my father thought it would be fun and different to watch all the city’s fireworks from atop Blue Hill in Milton.  Different? Yes. Fun? No. The top of the weather observatory was open giving a 360 degree viewpoint to watch fireworks not only in Boston but in Quincy, Dedham, where ever there was a display. 

As soon as they started it became apparent the fireworks were too far away to have any impact.  Some just on the horizon.  Unlike at Jamaica Pond, these fireworks were subdued splashes of color amidst the city lights around us. The worst thing.  No noise. No loud bang from the exploding shells, no lingering echo off nearby buildings and hills.  Silence.  What kind of fireworks were silent?  My father tried something different but I’d rather risk fireworks going off in the street behind me than watch them from so far away that it diminished what fireworks were about in the first place, the blossoming of light, the colors, the hiss and crackle and bang.  Maybe next year.

Storm Clouds

There were other safety concerns beyond wet fireworks.  I grew up in Boston during the oddly named golden age of hurricanes. When I was nine in 1954 and ten in 1955, New England was hit by four major hurricanes within a year’s time.  Two per summer.

In 1955, in the middle of August, hurricane Connie drenched the area with a half a foot of rain.  Less than a week later hurricane Diane showed up overwhelming southern New England with twenty inches of rain. Connecticut took the brunt of Diane’s winds. The town of Winsted was literally wiped out. In Putnam, Connecticut, as a result of Diane, a magnesium processing facility was destroyed by fire. In an apocalyptic vision I’m surprised a disaster movie has not appropriated, hundreds of barrels of burning magnesium drifted along the flooded streets before exploding.

In Massachusetts, Diane washed away the Old North Bridge of Paul Revere fame in Concord. The combined deluge of rain between Connie and Diane caused massive flooding in many communities including North Adams, Massachusetts where Gin’s grandparents lived. The result of the floods was an Army Corps of Engineers’ building project for concrete flood control channels in many communities to assuage the next big hurricane that, as of this date, 2017, has never come.

Because of its destructive intensity there was never another hurricane named Diane.  The name was retired.  Diane was also responsible for the creation of the National Hurricane Center.

Carol hit Boston at the end of August, 1954.  Less than two weeks later hurricane Edna passed over Cape Cod. Not a lot of damage in Boston from Edna but there were winds gusts of 75 mph in the city compared to 120 mph over Martha’s Vineyard. Carol was a different story.

Carol is the hurricane I remember the most. By the time I was nine in 1954, I was an avid movie fan, an enthusiastic reader, loved watching TV, even read the Boston Globe to a certain extent, but was too young to care much about the local TV news and weather. I’m sure my father told me the day before about a hurricane approaching Boston. I don’t remember that day.  I do remember the next day, August 31, when Carol showed up at my Prospect Street doorstep.

My father had gone to work early before any heavy winds materialized. The Navy Yard in South Boston was on emergency status due to the pending storm.  My father worked in the power plant that needed to remain online as long as possible during the storm event.  I also recall my sister making it into work.  She was a switchboard operator for a bank in downtown Boston. When the hurricane intensified mid-morning I see myself, my younger brother and my mother riding out the storm at home. My older brother, Ralph, may have been there as well but also could have hightailed it to a friend’s house just before the storm started rather then be trapped at home with his mother and younger brothers. Couldn’t blame him for that strategy.

The memories I have of that day are looking out our blurred living room window at the tumultuous world outside.  Rain is coming down sideways. There is the roar of wind, peaking, falling a bit and then picking up again even louder than before.  How are all the leaves going to stay on the trees I am thinking?  Speaking of trees, our side of Prospect Street was lined with a row of large maples that, to me, were symbols of stability.  It was difficult even to climb them as the trunks were some five feet in diameter with branches out of my reach ten feet up the trunk. They were a stately presence on the street for my whole childhood. Majestic, eternal in some ways.  Now they were groaning against the wind. The huge trunks were swaying, albeit slightly, back and forth.  I was awestruck by that.  This is only wind. Right? 

This was my first experience with a hurricane. My father had told me stories about the hurricane of 1938, this before these tropical cyclones were named.  That storm had slammed into Long Island Sound with little warning.  In Boston, people were going about their usual routines when they noticed it had become very windy.  It happened that fast.  Soon those outside were being knocked down by the wind, homes and business lost power, the sea began to flood the lowlands. During that storm the weather observatory on Blue Hill measured a wind gust of 186 mph, the highest ever recorded in a hurricane. My grandfather walked home several miles at the height of the storm from his job.  His wife, my grandmother on my father’s side, was panicked.  Their youngest son, my Uncle John, had gone to try to save his boat. No one had heard anything from him. My grandmother was crying when her husband finally made it home.  “John is drowned,” she said.  He survived; the boat likely fared worst. 

With Carol, I was more impressed than frightened. Historically Carol made landfall as a category three that Tuesday morning. The winds that were testing the endurance of the big trees out front were sustained at almost one hundred miles an hour. In Boston, there were gusts up to 125mph.  I only learned later just how destructive this storm proved to be. The hurricane tore at the physical structure of the greater community all around me. If you owned a beach house along the Connecticut/Rhode Island shore, it was gone by mid-afternoon. A small boat?  Likely sunk or tossed on a beach. Forty per-cent of New England’s fruit and vegetable crops, apples, peaches, corn, tomatoes, were destroyed.  This happened at the end of August so the loss was particularly devastating considering much of that acreage was almost ready for harvest.

We rode out the storm in our little house high atop Fairmount Hill. By early afternoon the electricity was out.  Phones too. Ignoring my mother’s pleas to stay away from the windows, I looked out to see wires lying across the street. The view from the upstairs windows was even better. I could watch the wind whip the smaller trees in the neighbors' yards back and forth.  Right under the roof I could feel the raging gusts as they tried to swallow up our little house, racing across the roof, looking for anything to rip away and blow down the street.  No roofs were lost in our neighborhood but at times I could sense the whole house trembling as a particularly strong gust tore across it.  There was a strange sort of quiet up in the attic as well. The only sound was the wind.  No TV or radio.  No shouts from kids playing outside.  No cars.  Nothing but the long cascade of wind. You could almost get lost in it.

By late in the afternoon it was over.  The sun was out.  And blue sky. I was aching to get outside.  But there were new rules. “Do not go near any downed wires,” was the first admonition. “Don’t climb any trees. The branches may snap off. Be careful where you walk.  Everything is wet and slippery. There’s broken branches everywhere and who knows what else.”

I quickly realized my normally placid neighborhood was altogether different. With all these warning I was surprised my mother even allowed us to go outside in the first place. Maybe she was sick of us cooped up in the house.

From the back porch I step onto the leaf-littered driveway. What is that amazing smell?  The air. It’s tropical, warm and moist.  It’s the scent of a subtle perfume, lilacs, orchids. Usually summer in Hyde Park is hot and humid or cool and damp. In the aftermath of the hurricane it has become balmy.

Nice, except for the destruction. Limbs and leaves everywhere. My ordinary neighborhood has become extraordinary. Some trees down. Most surprising, several of the big blue spruces in my friend Gene’s yard have toppled over. Wires are strewn in profusion on the ground as well.  Telephone and electric. I don’t know the difference. I treat every one as death dealing stepping gingerly over them as I walk up Prospect Street. More trees down here but the street seems clear.  Some trees are leaning on others. I don’t want to walk too far.

My father somehow made it home from South Boston that evening.  Our stove was electric so he made do with what he had, a camp stove perhaps, and cooked up some food in the backyard.  By tomorrow everything in the refrigerator would have to be thrown out.  We likely subsisted for a few days on peanut butter and grape jelly on Wonder bread.

He also brought home a Globe.  In those days the Globe and other papers updated their front pages during the day.  There was a morning paper and then extra editions (“Extra, extra, read all about it!”) during the day with a final evening edition printed about 4 o’clock.  On the front page was a picture of a fallen tree crushing the roof of a car. Wow! I also learn that the steeple of the Old North Church in Boston (Paul Revere again.) had been knocked into the street. Another wow.

It was the light, though, that I remember so well that first night after the hurricane.  By about 7 o’clock the sun is low in the sky.  I’m standing at the end of my driveway.  The big trees are still. The earlier wind has done some rough pruning to their canopies but there are plenty of leaves left for shade for our street games.  A breeze comes up, or is it the sigh of the trees as they begin to recover in the peaceful calm.

Shadows begin to fill the open spaces around me.  There are no street lights, no lights on in any house in any direction.  Darkness comes quickly. It is so quiet.

Inside our house my father has lit a few candles.  They flicker haphazardly against the walls.  The windows are open but it’s beginning to get hot upstairs.  In a few days things will be back to normal.  The electricity will be restored.  The sound of axes and saws, maybe a chainsaw, will be heard as people clear tree debris from around their houses.  For a while the neighborhood will be fragrant with smoke as fires burn up piles of branches and leaves.

That first night as I lie in bed, I think about the sound the wind made racing across the roof, and my fear that one of the big trees in front might crash onto the house. I’m glad the storm is over but I miss how exciting it all was. A very different summer day. I slowly fell asleep in the calm after the storm.

Laddie 

Hurricanes weren’t the only times of crazy commotion in the neighborhood. There was one night that involved our dog, Laddie, a bike, and my father taking the kid next door to the hospital.

My father liked dogs.  His family always had one.  They all looked the same to me, small, black with white, mutts.  To further confuse me, every dog they had was named Jerry.  About a year after we moved to Hyde Park my father brought home Laddie.  Laddie was not a mutt; he was a classic collie, thick yellow/brown coat, long nose, sharp bark.  We heard the bark a lot.  My father said that Laddie was “high strung”.  It meant he was excitable.  There were dogcatchers in those days, people who would round up stray unlicensed dogs.   To prevent Laddie from winding up at the dog pound my father had made the dog run for him. 

I liked Laddie.  He seemed cheerful to me, rambunctious.  But sometimes the behavior that was boisterous and fun to me could seem aggressive and threatening to others.  It didn’t help that one of my favorite games with Laddie included him attacking me.  I had an old coat that I would wear just for this situation, the sleeves long and torn.  I’d put it on, run into the back yard, unsnap the chain from Laddie’s collar and then start running.  He’d chase me, jump up on me, knock me over and then grab the ripped sleeve of the jacket with his teeth, whipping my arm back and forth as I struggled and tried to fight back.  It was great fun.  Laddie always looked so confused when I suddenly said, “Alright, enough!” and started taking the old jacket off.  He’d stop immediately and give me a bewildered look.  He’d step back a little, move his head away and then come right back up against me again as if to say, “No, just five more minutes.  I love this.”  

Whether our game made him more aggressive, I don’t know.  He was not that good around other kids.  He’d bark a lot, snap at some of the kids, run around.  I’d have to grab him, bring him back into our yard.  Once, though, our game might have prevented some harm to me.  Some kid, older, was in the neighborhood one day, an aggressive kid.  He had been carrying this large hammer, hitting trees with it, threatening us.  Yeah, crazy.  Laddie was out on the street, barking, out of control.  This kid with the hammer wasn’t helping.  Laddie started running around him, snapping.  The kid raised the hammer over his head as if he were going to hit Laddie on the head with it.  Before I could do anything, Laddie jumped up against the kid’s chest knocking him over.  The kid ended up walking away never to be seen again.  Laddie was a hero.  “Did you see that,” we’d be saying. “That’s just like something Lassie would have done.”  Lassie was a TV show in which, every week, Lassie would save Jeff or Timmy, or their mother, or some stranger.  Laddie, you did okay.   

Laddie had a wide range of emotions, few of them tranquil.  Every once in a while a dog would show up in our driveway, I'm remembering a German Shepherd. A big dog, aggressive.  Almost instantly, if he weren’t tied up, Laddie would attack.  Yelping, bared teeth, snapping, dog drool everywhere.  The two got so entangled they looked like one dog.  My father would start yelling, try to kick them apart.  Suddenly there is blood.  Collies have big tongues, always hanging out as a means of perspiration.  During these dog fights, Laddie would bite his own tongue.  Finally we’d get them apart.  The other dog would casually walk away up the street as if nothing much had happened.  Laddie would take a drink from his water bowl before trotting over to lie in the shade under a tree.  I’d stand there thinking this is the most violent thing I have even seen.

Laddie could be a nuisance. He wasn’t a dog just to lie on the sidewalk while you played with your friends.  He wanted to play too. I didn’t want him biting anyone out of enthusiasm so I’d try to sneak away when I visited a friend.  He’d be sneaky himself and follow me.  I’d look behind me to see him slinking along the edge of the street trying not to be seen. “Laddie, go home.  Good boy.  Go home,” I’d yell in my most commanding voice. He’d turn around and trot back. But I knew that was not the end of it. He’d run up through the woods to outflank me showing up on the street in front of me. “No. No. Bad dog.  Home, Laddie, home.” Finally I’d have to grab him by the collar, walk him back and tie him up.  “Ma,” I’d yell, “Wait until I’m gone and then untie Laddie.” 

It all came together on a hot August night in late summer.  I’m thinking 1955. Supper’s over. Humidity hangs in the air. No chance it will get any cooler as the sun goes down.  The street is full of kids.  Hopscotch.  Someone is throwing a ball around.  For some reason Laddie is off his chain.  He runs with me out to the street.  He’s excited, barking. I try to grab him by the collar but he slips away.  A car goes by.  Laddie races after it, nipping at the tires.  It’s lucky he isn’t run over.  The kid next door, Carl Zorn, seven years old or so comes by on his bike.  Laddie goes after him, or at least the tires of the bike.  Snapping at them.  Barking.  Over excited now.  Carl is startled.  He falls over, his bike crashing on top of him.   There’s blood gushing from his head.  Kids start screaming.  Laddie is leaping about now.  Beyond excited.

My father, in his sleeveless undershirt, comes running out of our house.  He scoops up Carl in his arms, puts him in the back seat of our car and rushes him over to the emergency room of Boston’s City Hospital. Where Carl’s own parents were I don’t know.  Maybe they didn’t have a car. Maybe one of them went with my father to the hospital.  Details escape me.  I remember those few minutes as astonished commotion.  What happened?  How did Carl punch a hole in his head?  Did Laddie accidentally bite him?  Did something happen when his bike fell on him?  The heat added to the bedlam. 

As it turned out Carl was okay.  As far as I knew no one sued us. But Laddie’s days were numbered.  One day when I came home from school, he was gone.  My father told us he had a friend that lived in Maine and that’s where Laddie was going to live.  Lots of meadows in which to run around, rabbits to chase, not bikes, where he could bark all he wanted and not bother anyone.  I don’t really know if Laddie lived his days in such an idyllic spot.  It sounded good.  I hope he did.  But after the incident on the street that muggy August night my father may have been told Laddie’s days were literally numbered.  Maybe that’s why he wasn’t sued.

“Good dog, Laddie.  Good dog.”  You added a lot to my childhood.

The Color Game

In writing memory pieces you always question if the situation you are writing about transpired quite as you remember. That’s the case the afternoon I suddenly realized I couldn’t walk. Odd, yes. The details, though, are what matter and thinking about that afternoon when I was ten brings it into sharper focus.  

I was always a kid in motion.  I liked being outside, running, climbing, playing. One afternoon, walking by our neighbor’s house, I spotted Carl Zorn sitting on his front stairs.  Yeah, that Carl.  Diane and Karen were his sisters. I walked over to the stairs to say hi, sat down.  One of the girls came out. We talked for a while.  As I began to stand up I realized I couldn’t.  There was no pain or cramps or loss of feeling.  I just felt my legs wouldn’t be able to hold my weight if I stood up, that I would fall over.  So I sat down again. 

I didn’t feel frightened or even particularly concerned. The other Zorn girl came out, stood by the bottom of the stairs.  A few minutes later a couple of neighborhood kids came by.  Diane Zorn is telling them I can’t walk so we all have to stay around her stairs.  Maybe the word gets out.  Billy can’t walk.  Let’s all congregate at the front of Zorn’s.

I seem to remember my friend Gene being there, this just shortly before he moved to nearby Milton. One of the Boyle girls? A couple of kids from up the street rode by on their bikes, turned in, casually letting the bikes fall onto the grass as they slid off. 

At this point it’s a sizable group. I’m on the top stair, a couple of kids sitting below me, some sitting on the grass, others standing. It seemed just about everyone from the neighborhood was in Zorn’s front yard.

The kids are sympathetic to my plight, such as it is.  (Maybe my legs just fell asleep.) 

 “We can carry you home.  Piggyback or something,” somebody is saying.

 “What if we get you on the back of my bike and we can ride you home,” another kid suggests. 

 I am non-committal.  I like sitting there the center of attention.

Someone else offers an explanation for my condition. “I knew some one the same thing happened to,” he’s telling everyone as if he is a doctor. “Muscular something…” 

Not a very knowledgable doctor.  “He’s in a wheelchair now.  It’s true. Cross my heart.”

I was so into the moment with this whole gang of kids around me that thoughts of paralysis did not cross my mind.  I could sit here all afternoon.  And I did.

Kids would come and go, the group changing size and dynamics as the afternoon went on. Someone shows a bracelet they made out of gimp.  A girl has a paper cup of Kool-Aid.  We all take sips.  She runs off and comes back with more. Candy is passed around.  We’re talking about black licorice and how everyone hates it.  “Why do they even make it,” someone laments.  Someone is trying to break off a piece of a Fig Newton to share, and not very successfully.  An ant walks across my pants.  I don’t care.  I’m not moving for anything.  Besides, I can’t.

Someone asks, “Who likes root beer Popsicles?” We all have differing opinions.  There are confessions. “I pushed my brother off his bicycle.  He fell and broke his arm.”  And jokes. “Why did the moron throw the butter out the window?”  “He hates butter?”  “No, he wanted to see a butter fly.”   The one I liked was, “Why did the moron shut the light off in his refrigerator?”  “The light was in his eyes?”  “No.   He didn’t want to see the salad dressing.”  That led to a deep discussion on whether the light stays on in the fridge after you close the door.  The mysteries of a kid’s universe.

This spontaneous improvisation around the stairs has become communal, lively and friendly.

Someone suggest we play the color rhyme game. You yell out a color and everyone has to make a rhyme out of it.  No repeating rhymes. Always rules. The quicker you come up with a rhyme the less rhyming words will be left for someone else. 

“Red!” I shout out to start the game. 

“That’s easy.  Red, red, go to bed.” 

“Wait!  That’s the one I was going to use” comes a protesting voice. 

“Be quicker”, someone else yells.

 “Red, red, you’re dead!” someone interjects, quickly. 

 “No I’m not.  You are.  Red, red, you died in bed.” 

“Not fair. That’s the same rhyme as Josh’s.” 

More protests.  The communal spirit is fading. “Red, red. You’re sick in the head.”  Laughter.

“Blue!” 

“Blue, blue.  I see you.” 

“Blue, blue.  I see you too.” 

“Wait.  Isn’t that the same?” someone points out.

“Purple!”

“Purple, purple. I want to be a turtle.”   Arguments galore on that one.  Some kids were convinced it rhymed; others said nothing rhymes with purple.

“Yeah.  What about purple, purple.  Run around in a circle.”  More controversy. 

“That doesn’t rhyme.” 

“Oh yeah. Prove it!” Kids talking all at once. 

“What about snurple or burple.  Those are words.  Like when you burp, your’re a burple.”

“Those aren’t words.” 

“They don’t have to be.  As long as they rhyme.” 

The very limits of semantics were being reached but what better place to do that than in a group of imaginative game-loving kids.

“Green.”

“Green, green.  You’re face is green.”

A girl jumps up with a challenge.  “You have to rhyme with green, not just say the word green.”  This was getting serious.

“Green, green.  Life is but a dream,” another girl shouts. And sureal.  Just like the afternoon.

Every color rhyme game ended with the same conundrum.  Someone always yelled out the one color for which there was no rhyme. 

“Orange.”

Silence. 

“Nothing goes with orange,” someone says. 

Lots of overlapping chatter as we all try to find a rhyme.  Nothing works.  It’s something everyone agrees on.  The game fades away on that note.

The afternoon begins to do the same thing.  More kids leave the than join.  The group begins to dwindle. Just a few kids left.  The Zorns.  But they live here.  I stand up. My legs are fine now.  Dehydration, muscle spasms, growing pains, or just one of the odd things that happens on an unassuming late summer afternoon as you realize your vacation is almost over, fall is near, a new grade to start, leaves to turn, holidays to anticipate.

None of it mattered that afternoon. For those few hours I had all the time in the world. 

There are times that afternoon still whispers across the years.

“Orange, orange.  What the hell is a sporange?”  It’s a botanical term for a part of a fern.  It’s also the only word in the entire English language that rhymes with the word orange.  Conundrum resolved.