The boys of summer....and Love's Baby Soft

Free column today. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to access all my posts. I can’t do this without my paid peeps. You keep me going. You keep me feeling young. You make summers bearable…..

When we were kids in Dunmore PA, summer was magic. The clouds of school and homework suddenly parted, and we were all weightless. We were still in that pre “you need to get a job” area…..10, 11, 12 years old. The neighborhood was ours. We’d wander for hours, inventing things to do, or doing nothing at all. Down to Pagnotti’s drug store for a Pepsi and a bag of Jax (total cost? a quarter). We’d climb through the broken garage window in an abutting yard to get there….instead of walking around the block like those who didn’t know our secrets. We could scratch out a baseball field just about anywhere. We’d use rocks for bases, or our own shirts, and somebody always had electrical tape to salvage the dented whiffle ball. We once created a golf course in somebody’s back yard, using curtain rods for clubs and a carpet we found in somebody’s garage as the “green”. Adult supervision was not really a thing back then, because the world was less brutish and mean. Parents might not know exactly where we were, but it would not take them too long to find out (neighborhoods were rife with informers). And that was good enough. Nothing was ever planned. There were no play dates organized by grown-ups. We were winging it. We were self-contained. We were also geographically boxed in. If school friends lived more than walking (or biking) distance away, well then we’d see them in September. That’s just how it worked.

We’d “call for” each other. That’s how you summoned somebody back then. Just show up at their back door and yell out their name until they appeared. If nobody answered you might leave a message for them in chalk on the sidewalk. If a storm rolled in we’d wait it out on someone’s front porch. I always remember the steam rising off the road after a deluge. The rain never seemed to last more than a few minutes. And then the humidity would return with a vengeance. And if we were lucky, a rainbow would follow…..rising over the rooftops like a sentinel.

When it got dark we’d place “chase” amongst the fireflies and the moonlight (“alle alle in come free!!”), with the sound of baseball on the radio and popped Schmidt’s cans coming from our parents on front stoops. We felt safe. Hell, we were safe. Our only worry was the occasional grouchy neighbor who took exception to our shortcuts through his backyard because he just re-planted his grass.

Ours may have been the last generation that wasn’t constantly bombarded with the threat of every conceivable danger lurking around every conceivable corner. Today, as a parent, the mere thought of my own kids running out of the house in the morning and me not knowing their precise location at all times is preposterous.

Nobody had backyard pools back then. We’d make do with garden hoses, or we’d find our own watering holes. Creeks and streams and reservoirs and ponds. We’d catapult ourselves off rocks into brown water filled with god knows what coming from god knows where. We’d leave our sneakers on to prevent our feet from getting chewed up by the ragged rocks on the bottom. If we didn’t have towels we’d just stretch out on a sun-baked rock to dry off, dipping into the bucket of Middleswarth BBQ chips we pooled our change to buy at Riccardo’s market on the way. Word of mouth travelled fast though. If you discovered your own water hole, chances were by the next week it would be filled with “older kids”. That’s what we called them. They were constantly sponging off our finds. They would invade and bring beer and girls with them…..girls dressed in cut-off jean shirts and bikini tops……girls that made us feel certain things that we’d never really felt before. We were told to make ourselves scarce. Like it or not, perhaps against our will, we were growing up. We were learning that life was not always fair.

And then one day, the testosterone took over. It must have happened gradually, but I don’t remember it that way. One morning we woke up and there was something going on down there that could no longer be ignored. Your buddies were still your buddies, but now there was always a third person in the room. And she smelled like Love’s Baby Soft.

Our lives would never be so simple again.

But that complexity was a layer that could be oh so wonderful, despite the broken hearts. It’s that scar tissue that drives us forward, after all. Without it we not only could not deal with life threw at us, we could not comprehend what life threw at us.

As Marvin and Tammi once sang…..”it takes two baby….”

***

But now we’re old, and summer is just 3 months of relentless mosquitos and your glasses fogging up and sliding down the bridge of your nose. It’s trying to find a spot on the beach not already overrun by an extended family of 50 playing sand pickle-ball during a $350 a night Jersey Shore run. It’s sitting around waiting for football season to start and for baseball season to finally get interesting. It’s kids sitting inside with air-conditioning and eyes glued to their phones while the wonders of childhood sit around playing cards with each other, wondering where all the 10, 11, 12 years old’s have gone.

It ain’t the same, and I wish it was.

In a bit…

—tf