Sixth Grade is coming to a close. My teacher, Mrs. Carey, was a good influence on me. I think she was a good influence on all of us. She gave us confidence in ourselves and treated us as adults, and we all grew closer. I do well all year and end up with a straight A average.
1957 seems so long ago now, here in June of 1964. I did not do well that first day of Kindergarden at Woodbury Heights Elementary, but here in the Sixth Grade I'm doing just fine.
This school year I learned that I could get up on a stage and entertain. I was convincing as an actor and pretty good at lecturing a class on a subject that I loved. I became better at baseball, due in large part to my new neighbors Butch and Billy Clay. The Clay family moved into the Gerbers' house, and Butch was a year younger than me and Billy was the same age as my brother Carl. They both had played in the Woodbury Little League for several years, and they were teaching me how to throw and hit and catch. Butch and I would play catch for hours on end, until our arms couldn't take it anymore. The result of all this practice meant that I wasn't one of the last ones picked during our softball games at recess and in the hardball games after school.
I was still infatuated with Sue Burns, but I never had the courage to tell her. I would try and capture her as much as possible in our final Team Tag games during the last weeks of school. Maybe when we get to high school I'll get up the nerve to express myself.
I'm not quite in that awkward stage yet. No pimples and just a hint of facial hair. In December I'll be thirteen, and I'm not sure if I'm ready to be a teenager just yet. I'll have the summer to think about that and the new high school.
This summer I'll be mowing a lot of grass, and I'll be making money cutting that older lady's yard over on Maple Street. Once in a while I'll fill in for Steve Kay and do his paper route for him when he and his family go on vacation.
Vacation! Time for swimming at the lake and long afternoons playing baseball and riding bikes. My parents are talking about going down the shore for a week again, and I'm not too thrilled about that. If Dad takes us to the World's Fair again that will make up for having to go down to Whale Beach and all that damp.
This summer I plan to watch a lot of movies on the Late Show and the Late Late Show. Mom says I can stay up later now that I'm older. Carl can fall asleep anywhere, so it won't bother him if I watch movies into the early morning hours.
We've got a dog again. Dad brought home a little black poodle that someone lost or abandoned in Woodbury. It was in the barber shop and no one knew what to do for it, so Dad brought the dog home. We're going to call him Max. I won't have much to do with him at first because I don't like the idea of replacing Whee-Zee with such a wimpy little thing, so Max kinda becomes Carl's dog. I get over myself after a while, and I accept Max as one of the family.
I'll see Steve Kay and Paul LaPann and Billy Hills and some of the other guys this summer. Steve and I are looking forward to playing war outside and with our Airfix toy soldiers in his basement.
Gateway Regional High School is going up behind our house, and in a few months we'll all be going there instead of that old familiar brick building with the big white doors and those old wooden windows that you open with a pole. We won't hear the creak of the wooden floors or the smell of wet coats and boots in the cloakroom. I'll walk a shorter trail to a brand new school with lots of unfamiliar faces. There's plenty of time to think about Gateway and what that will bring.
Goodbye, Woodbury Heights Elementary.
Right now it's time for summer.
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