Grabbing Summer In 1960

Can you feel it? Can you still taste it? Summer as a kid. 1960 was the year I embraced childhood tighter than I ever had. I would be nine years old in December. My tenth year was coming, and with it more responsibilities, more would be expected of me.
Summer is that glorious time. When tastes, sounds and smells are heightened. You're free of school and serious stuff. You're free to enjoy life and the simplest of its pleasures.
Sitting on the curb and licking the chocolate icing of a Tastykake from its wax paper wrapper. The cool icy rush from a Fudgsicle as it freezes your tongue and drips over your fingers. Hot dogs and hamburgers on the grill, sweet Jersey tomatoes and fresh, white corn on the cob.
I could forage all day in Woodbury Heights, living off the land from its natural abundance. Blackberry bushes were everywhere, growing wild along Boundary Road and the ballfields, their rich, dark musky taste, those pesky seeds sticking to your teeth. A pear tree in the Gerber's yard; the sweet red cherries in my yard and the Avises' next door. We had an old apple tree in the center of our back yard. It was a magic tree. It was magical because someone had placed an old horse shoe in the crook of a branch, and the tree had grown around it. The shoe was embedded in the tree, and I was convinced that it somehow endowed our apple tree with mystic powers. The apples themselves were somewhat sour all the time, so the magic didn't help them very much. Patsy Mullin's yard had a mulberry tree, just like the school, and I remember a wild strawberry patch somewhere in town that we raided with impunity.
I would seek solace in the backwoods area of the lake. It was quiet there, mossy and soft, the sound of the stream flowing towards the lake, watching waterbugs skim its surface.
The crunching of leaves as I'd climb up the hill and then ascend Freund's Cliff to lie in the moss beneath the trees.
The Phillies game over the radio, listening to By Saam and Bill Campbell give the play by play, the game drifting on the hot air as my Dad and Mr. Avis and Mr. Olsen and others played cards at the picnic table under the old maple, drinking beer and swapping stories.
On the hottest of summer nights the air would carry the smell from the pig farms down the road in New Sharon.
"The pigs are ripe tonight," we'd exclaim, and I'd wonder how the people who lived and worked there could stand it.
Summer was a time when black people were allowed to use the lake. The Baptist Church from Jericho would get permission to use the lake for their baptismal ceremonies. We would gather at the bank and watch as they donned their white robes, in sharp contrast to their black and brown bodies. Some of us watched in amusement and some of us with respect as they sang their hymns and dunked their souls, shouting,
"I see the light!"
"Praise Jesus!"
"Hallelujah!"
Once a year they could save their souls, but they weren't allowed to swim.
The Fourth of July parade with the Bonsal Blues American Legion Band, decked out in powder blue uniforms, white belts and helmets. Maybe the Pitman Hobo band in their patched up clothing, an antique car and a Nike missile. It was a small parade, mostly people from town waving at each other, but it was our parade; it was our community.
Can you hear it? The crickets and cicadas, the locusts on a really hot and humid night, and early in the morning announcing how warm the day would be.
The musky mildewed scent of the canvas of your pup tent as you camped out in the back yard, never really getting to sleep because it was too exciting and every noise scared you to death.
The thrill of staying up really late because you went to the drive-in for a double feature or you'd lie in the grass and watch the meteors streak across the sky.
The thunderstorms would roar and the sky would crack, and when it was over it would be hotter and more humid than it was before.
Snowballs made by my cousins Kenny and Ronnie. Scraped from blocks of ice carted around in a wagon, sweet cherry syrup staining your lips and tongue a crimson red.
Long drives in the country in big cars left over from the 50s. Seats like couches and dashboards made of chrome and metal with radios that glowed warm in the night.
Heat lightning flickering and hide and seek at dusk. Lightning bugs in the evening, honeybees on the clover in the afternoon sun.
Bike rides down Chestnut Hill and around the lake, the cool air of the trees a welcome relief from the heat of the day.
The first day of swimming at the lake, descending those steps and staking your claim in the sand. The first plunge from the sliding board; staying in the water till your teeth began to chatter and your lips would turn blue.
Just to run. Run with my dog Whee-Zee as fast as we could, down Walnut and to the ballfields and back again. Some evenings Dad and I would take Wheez to the lake and she could jump in and get a swim when no one was around.
Summer would wind down and you could feel school coming. We would walk to the school to see the class postings on those big white doors; a chance to see which teacher you would get, and if your classmates would be the same as last year. I worried all summer, despite all the joys. Would I get Mrs. Lee for Third Grade? Would I be with my friends Paul Lapann and Tommy Moore and Richie Hearn?
The powers in my apple tree must have worked. I climbed those stairs that day in August, and there on the list beneath Paul Lapann and Mary Lou Lewis and before Jimmy Matsuk was my name, right where it belonged. My name along with all my other friends from the years before.
And the best part of all, under the heading on the list:
Third Grade - teacher: Mrs. Lee.
"Hallelujah!"