York, 1950

Took a brief stroll down memory lane, and here’s a few things I found (York, Nebraska, mid-50s): Boyer Drugs, on the square. Blue and white “Rexall Rx” sign outside on a pale yellow building near the corner, the rare and welcome chill of air conditioning on a hot summer day, the special smell of medicines, floor wax and whatever, chocolate Cokes for a dime at the soda fountain. The Hesteds dime-store nearby, a two-story brick building. The big Safeway store across from the big white auditorium, and a Chevy dealer with “OK” used cars sign in front. The public Carengie library and its summer reading club. Seems to me our dentist was down that street too, in a house I think, within reasonable walking distance of home; I vaguely but sharply recall the spit basin and sinister-looking equipment; I think the walls were some sort of commercial green. Mercifully for his soul, I don’t recall his name. The playground behind Willard Elementary School when it was still gravel, and the huge metal fire escape tube we used to try and climb up. My earliest memory of the playground was when my neighbor and good buddy Bruce started kindergarten a year before me, and I stood across the street watching him and his friends ride the white wooden merry-go-round, wondering if I’d ever be big enough to try that. A later summer when the fire tube was suddenly gone, and the playground was covered in asphalt, which made for much smoother bike-riding but probably also for more easily broken bones and concussions. One very early memory -- on Blackburn, halfway between 4th and 3d, on the west side, stood a white two-story house with a tiny “general store” on the first floor, a small metal Wonder Bread sign across the front screen door. My mother would sometimes send me there to get fill-in groceries during the week, and it was there that I – along with a neighborhood pal – committed my first crime, selecting a piece of candy and trying to pay for it with play money. We bolted for the door, with the candy, when it became obvious the ruse wouldn’t work, but we stopped when the old lady who ran it threatened to call our mothers. That may not be why the store eventually closed up, but it probably made retirement seem more desirable. The fact that I was able to negotiate our way out of it was probably the first indication I might succeed someday in law school. I recall one autumn day when we walked through the York College campus, which burned an image into my consciousness, so that I have always associated colleges with crumpled brown leaves blowing in chill autumn wind, between brick buildings along wide sidewalks, under a bright blue sky. And I recall the old stadium by the city park, walled with wooden planks we used to slip under, and how on game nights whichever boys got there first could climb up on the scoreboard and put the numbers up. And I recall playing on the lawn of the National Guard Armory and sometimes inside, since my best friend’s dad was the commander of the National Guard unit – I also remember rifling through the K-rations stashed in my friend’s basement, stealing all the candy bars and canned turkey from the boxes. And I recall swimming lessons at the public pool, in April, when the water was so cold I dreaded getting in, which is probably why I am today both a nonswimmer and extremely averse to cold water on bare skin. I vaguely recall the first and second grade classrooms, the alphabet along thetop of the wall above the black chalkboard, and how first grade had the alphabet in block letters and the second grade in cursive, which was very intimidating. And reading along from a giant Dick and Jane book on an easel (and the smell of those books when first opened and how impossible those new, larger, words could be). One year we did a class science project in which we made “barometers” out of a long hair attached to a coin with nail polish and extended over a milk carton. The most fun part of that was stealing hair from the girls; I recall one girl complaining because someone, probably me or how else would I remember, took a few more than one hair at a time. And the year we made papier mache puppets – that is, sock puppets with papier mache heads – mine was probably the ugliest one of all -- and did a play on the stage, holding the puppets up from behind a barrier? My only line was to turn my puppet to a female puppet, and say, “May I have this dance,” and then the puppets danced, sort of. I also recall the Christmas show one year, when I had the job of narrator; nobody told me that I had to stand out on stage, so I began my reading off to the side, behind a pillar, and no one could hear me until a teacher shoved me out to the front. And speaking of that stage, I cannot forget that gaily decorated fire curtain. I also remember eating lunch downstairs at the school, back when “lunch ladies” really had some authority, and we couldn’t turn in our trays with food left on them. One of the big jokes was to pour salt into someone’s milk, so he had to try and drink it, or face lunch lady ire. More than once that guy (the salt milk drinker) was me. Not that the milk, dispensed from those silver metal machines with white plastic tubes, ever tasted right. I remember history class in 5th grade, when we were reading aloud in class and I would always read ahead to myself, so when Mrs. Kaeding called on me to take my turn, I always had to hem and haw and say “I lost my place,” and how one time she threatened to rap my knuckles if I did it again. Scared me a bit, but didn’t stop me; the lure of the unknown future pages was too strong. And how Mrs. Heywood would respond when someone said “hey” to her – “my name is Heywood, not ‘hey.’” I remember the year that one kid broke both arms sequentially, which impressed me greatly. And since he was Cub scout, that reminds me of being one, and the great pleasure I took in wearing that blue shirt and yellow kerchief one day a week, which looked so much like a cavalry soldier, at least in my imagination. There was also the year that the playground was temporarily unusable, and we would go to the park for recess, and had great fun playing a game of rustlers boarding a train (the “rustlers” would hide in the bushes and suddenly rush the park’s metal merry-go-round). Until the teachers decided it was too dangerous – as though any playground equipment in those days was safe in any way. And there were the summer arts projects in the park, where, on sunny summer mornings, in glorious unawareness of future litigation, we made asbestos potholders for our mothers, or sometimes plastic doilies. We also tried to make cardboard punch-out birds that one pasted by layer into a physical semblance of the real shape, and tried to paint to the real color (mine – usually a Baltimore Oriole -- never succeeded to that stage, though I repeatedly tried till I ran out of nickels, which always irritated dad, who, after all, had to fund things). And, finally, the year that, thanks to someone’s glorious lapse of judgment, we went on a field trip to the local packing house, a smelly and exciting visit culminating in the slaughter and dressing-out of a large, squealing, black-and-white spotted hog (which would result in lawsuits these days for emotional distress, I’m sure), though I don’t know if that was a school trip or a cub scout one. There was also a trip to the local radio station, which was where I first learned, to my shock, that people didn’t sing live there, but instead were recordings and I was surprised my mother already knew that but never told me. So long ago, but still so much with me.