Summer Daze

Nearly perfect periods of my life were summers off as a kid. There was a notable absence of obligations or things needed to be done.  Summers were a long expanse of  nothing but lazy relaxation.

Mornings would begin with a startle, as I realized, head against a warm pillow since our house did not have air conditioning, that there was no school. Then downstairs two steps at a time for a desultory breakfast with Carnation Instant Breakfast, the envelope torn open and emitting an acrid chocolaty dust floating up and stinging the nostril, and a peach or two. Our house was profligate with fruit. And yogurt—my mother was ahead of the times with yogurt, which then was just becoming popular, with Dannon cups having the removable cardboard lid that could be pried off and scaled. Coffee flavor, Blueberry, or Boysenberry, which I called Poisonberry. Finally, taking a shower in the upright stall with all the nozzles—six of them, the top of them aimed just about my forehead, and dressing in clothes already laid out. Bermuda shorts were worn daily, along with white elastic socks and either Keds or  Converse sneakers or, for one unpleasant summer, off brand hand- me-down black sneakers. But the best shoes were cordovan penny loafers, with which I used a shoe horn, and had a real penny in the fold. A shirt with stripes or some type of anchor or giraffe design on the pocket was also de-rigeur.

Next phase of the day was walking to the pool at a local club we belonged to. There was the trek down the block over the manhole stamped 1964 on it, and which sometimes prompted fearful fantasies of sewar dwellers, a hand reaching up......  Then walking further along the prickly hedge with millions of ladybugs, if only you turned over the leaves and scraped them into your hand—to toss them off into the air for good luck. And finally past the Yokels who always had cats aplenty in their driveway, boxes of kittens, the cats having a proprietary air over this musky smelling place.  And--lest I repress the memory, a big dark English Tudor with a metal witch on broom weathervane on top which I hurried past.

Next, crossing Demott avenue, named for the Demott family, whose scion, a professor at Amherst and writer for New Yorker, interviewed me years later for my college application.  It was a busy tree shaded street aside the golf course. Then along a dirt path with roots--and dog droppings, for it was one of the few places where real dirt and wild grass grew. The path was along the sixth hole of the club, and men walked amongst the green hills in groups. I eyed them warily—someone they did not seem the type of men in my family, but big, muscular, boasting and loud businessmen who seemed very at ease in the world, wearing pants so loud they could probably be seen on Jupiter, and women with big wide shorts and wide legs that were very white and veiny.  Occassionally a ball would lie on the dirt path, a white sphere nestled among the roots, having somehow penetrated the metal mesh fence dividing the path from the course, and once in a while a ball actually whizzed past, hitting a tree with a loud whack and caroming into traffic or a lawn.

Across the street from the past were rows of large pillored houses, big brick behemoths that seemed must have been built for royalty, yet nonetheless seemed to house regular folk, and kids I knew from school who were just regular guys, not particularly unusual distinguished or even well dressed. It was a paradox I didn't understand.  The men inside, the fathers, also seemed a prosaic breed.  One would see them occasionally watering the lawn or mowing--thin and ordinary looking, and probably having to ride that train to New York ever day to whatever dry soulless task awaited them.

Finally, I would get to the gate of the pool, the metal mesh curtains drawn apart.  I would walk past sting ray bicycles scattered on the entrance way to the wooden swing gate. The wooden bicycle stands, rows of slats angling up at 45 degree, were painted scoreboard green. Later they became metal. No locks were needed, though eventually I had a bike stolen there. You walked past, or sometimes through, since some would be on the walk, to a wooden gate about head height, on a sideways hinge. Beside the gate, from a window  a man, the same man for years, Ray, I think gate, would flip hinged panels of keys to find mine and hand me a key. He also operated the lost and found, a pile of pink and blue towels, goggles, and bikini parts. When he left and a series of  teenage girls and boys replaced him, it was not the same.. Number 42 was the locker, and I would proceed to the locker room, getting a hit of chlorine as I entered. 

The men's locker room had some kind of Spanish man doll dancing on the outer entrance—the woman's locker room, where I dressed with my mom until I was about five had a Spanish woman dancer with castanets. Into the locker room, one would turn through various angled doors, concrete floor until h itting the wet, blue floor that often was mopped by a white panted man with a slippery Clorox solution. I remember he was  not particularly friendly, and wearing white deck shoes and a whistle hanging out his pocket. He also made hamburgers at the grill--or that may have been a similar man of shorter stature.

There were several ways to the locker. One involved walking past the toiletries—a shelf with a big glass jar with blue water full of black combs, plastic Johnson and Johnson talcum powder and other stuff. The other route  involved a more prosaic labyrinth of locker aisles, involving more stepping on the slippery unidentifiable wetness on the floor.

 Finally, arriving at locker 42, bottom row, way in the back, the key would fit in, the lock turn, and various pieces of clothes would be placed strategically inside. Sneakers on the bottom, shorts on top of that, other sartorial accouterments on the hook either side of the locker. The bench was brown, smooth, lacquered wood, with little drops of water on it, and would have to be toweled off. Hopefully some full grown man was not dressing nearby. Occasionally, an undisciplined glance in that direction would fill me with a sort of horrid disgust of what adulthood meant. 

Then to the pool. It was long and L shaped. Around the pool was a concrete shelf upon which higher waves splashed. Benches around the pool were brown panels on stone supports and on each end of the bench was a big urn, full of sand, for cigarette butts, Lifeguards, strong and mostly male, would sit high on their perches, hairy legs curled colorfully beneath them, with whistles to signal bad behavior, and white oily stuff on their noses--greasy stuff that I imagined came off in the water when they swam.

One had to stake out a place for a blanket, or a chaiselongue. The problem with a blanket was ants and uncomfortably thick grass beneath. The problem with a chaise longue was the sort of uncomfortable angle it put one at, and, occasionally, an errant plastic fiber that would stick into the skin. When younger, I would hang around my mother and her friends near the baby pool. But as I got older, I ventured to the farther area, other side of the pool, which seemed, at that age, a land as distant and strange as Africa. The teenage, or probably tween girls, hung out there, with bikinis, and one dark haired sprite seemed always to catch my attention, though never acknowledging me.  In retrospect, remembering their anime like bodies, they were probably only 12 or 13 rather than real tweens but at that time they held all the dark secrets of junior high school. They mostly ignored me.

Swimming in the pool involved lots of diving, splashing, inept flips of the low board and jack knifes and cannonballs in the water. Occasionally we would rock the pool, zipping up the diving board ladder and jumping off, one after another so as to make the pool as wavy as possible.  Contests to hold breath were also common, and my brother Joe was so good at it that after a couple of minutes a concerned life guard came over to look, then called the pool manager who also stood by worriedly. With a shake of his head to disperse the water Joe arose, and seeing the crowd, said, in a stage whisper, "that's the way you hold your breath it,." by way of explantion. By the end of the day our eyes were pure red and the more fried our skin, the better.

After the pool it was back home. More fruit, and time to sit in front of the TV and take in a Mets game. One anticipated 9 whole innings of lazy tevision watching as if that completeness was a virtue. Maybe Tom Seaver would be pitching or Don Cardwell, who never in my watching days ever seemed to win a game. But it did not matter. With a Mountain Dew and a Wingding, one sat and watched the Mets, often losing in those days,  go through nine  innings, the familiar names like Swaboda and Kranepool and Grote supplying even, pleasant entertainement, and then watching Kiner's Corner, where old timer Ralph Kiner, apparently a great player and still a great kidder, would interview the prominent players from the game, who probably did not know who he was, either. The players always seemed so horribly inarticulate--even by second grade they seemed to be inept interviewees.

Dinner might be a barbecue. My father used sticks and newspaper, sometimes without lighter fluid and results varied from smoky but quick to what seemed like geologic time spans gathering sticks and even newspapers to light the fire. Occassionally he would shoot a stream of lighter fluid onto the fire, telling us before hand to stand back.  Corn on the cob, fresh farm string beans which my mother would drive afar to get but whose importance escaped me, and hamburgers or steak or meatloaf—and margarine, much admired in those days as a better substitute for butter.

And then an evening of TV—maybe Ed Sullivan, maybe Get Smart, and then bedtime, playing Light My Fire on a portable record player in my brothers room, whose bed I liked better than my own, until ejected when he came back from  his nocturnal prowlings and I had to return to my own warm pillow.