What a summer. The Gettysburg battlefield still fresh in my memory, and Saturday afternoons at the Wood Theatre, sitting in the dark staring up at the big screen.
Carl and I rode in another Fourth of July parade with Uncle Marshal.
This year he drove an old station wagon type of car. It had wooden bench seats, and we sat in the back dressed in our red, white and blue and our plastic straw hats, waving at the crowds. Uncle Marsh let me ride with him again in the big Wooodbury Parade too.I’m watching the construction going on behind our house. It began with trees in the woods being cut down to make way for the chain-link fence going up. I can’t go into the woods anymore, I’m blocked out-Mr. Rizzuto has sold the land and now the new high school is going up. The land has been cleared and the fields torn up by heavy bulldozers, and now I’m watching the foundations being poured. I won’t go to Woodbury High School. The Seventh and Eighth Grades won’t be part of elementary school. They call it Junior High School now, and I’ll be able to walk there in a few minutes. I’m thinking, “finally I can come home for lunch.”
I walk over to the school to see who my Sixth Grade teacher will be. Someone named Mrs. Carey. I don’t know anything about her, but I’m glad I won’t have Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith is a creepy-looking guy who looks like he’d fit right in living with Mrs. Price. I’ll be with most of all my old classmates, and Max Reimann will be back with us from the “other” grade. It will be good to have him back.
It’s funny, but this year I’m thinking more about seeing the girls again. Sue Burns and Joyce Hoefers and Sheila McLaughlin are on my mind. Girls? I’m thinking about girls? I’m not even twelve years old yet and I’m thinking about girls. I didn’t think that happened until you turned thirteen. I can’t wait for Team Tag in the playground, and a chance to capture and guard Sue Burns again.
We won’t be in the old school this year. The Sixth Grade will have classes in the Saint Margaret’s Catholic School building on the other side of town while they build a new addition onto the old school. A longer walk for me. I’ll go down Glassboro Road to Elm Avenue and cross at the traffic light. Up Elm past the fire house and the 7-11 and across the railroad track. Past Sheron Wakley’s house and the Tierney house. Past the Presbyterian Church and on by Paul LaPann’s house and up to Saint Margaret’s. When the weather is warm I’ll ride my black Rixe bicycle. On days when Paul asks me to come over, we can head right to his house directly from school. I can go right to Steve Kay’s house on the way home too. Mom has learned to drive, so in bad weather I’ve got a ride. No more wondering which neighbor can give me a lift to school.
What a year for comic books. This summer I spent a lot of time reading the Fantastic Four, and they gave that Spider Man character his own comic too. I save up my chore money and soda bottle deposit money and get a subscription. I love the way Steve Ditko draws. Dark and moody, and the people aren’t as pretty as in all the other comics. It’s a raw style that fascinates me. There’s another new Marvel character called Iron Man, and he’s fighting the Communists in Vietnam, the only comic book that even acknowledges that that war is going on. Just before school starts Marvel comes out with another exciting title, the X-Men, a comic about teen-aged mutants led by a bald older mutant. It’s wild and out there and drawn by the great Jack Kirby, and I subscribe to that one too. Uncle Pat continues to provide me with more and more comic books he finds at the dump, and my pile grows and grows.
Steve Kay and I will still play war. It’s getting harder to convince Paul LaPann and Billy Hills and Tommy Moore to join in. They’re more interested in sports now, so Steve and I recruit younger boys and girls into our “armies”. Steve and I build a desert in his basement and buy Airfix HO gauge soldiers and re-create the battles in North Africa during World War II. Steve is Montgomery and I’m Rommel, the Desert Fox.
This year will be totally different, yet still the same. I’ll be getting a new bedroom upstairs soon. I’ll be going to school in a strange building, but with old friends in a different part of town.
Comic books and toy soldiers and soon I’ll be twelve years old and I’ll have to start thinking about being a teenager.
There’s a chain-link fence at the end of my yard and a new school going up right behind me and I’ll be going there next year with kids I’ve never even seen.
Things are moving, things are spinning around.
Did I mention I’m thinking about girls?
Where’d that come from?
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