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SOMERDALE
Others may take their car to a vacation spot, out into the country, somewhere to get away from the daily grind, where they can escape, at least for the moment, the pressures and responsibilities that come with life in the real world. Sometimes I escape, not to a distant place to forget the daily pressures, but to an earlier time, an earlier place, which existed long before those pressures ever came to be.
In the science fiction movie, “Back to the Future,” and its two sequels, Marty McFly drives a DeLorean, a sports car converted into a time machine. Not only does it travel along the highway, but it travels through time, decades into the past and into the future. While my own car travels only one direction in time, and that very slowly, I have on a few occasions managed to duplicate that sense of traveling back in time, back to my childhood home, my childhood years, at least in my mind, if not in reality. But in doing so, I realize that those early years are not where reality is to be found.
The fifties.
Sputnik, the Beaver, the hula hoop, Ozzie & Harriet. I could go on. Words whose mere mention stir memories of a time when life was simpler. Happier. When families could sit together in the living room and listen to the radio with its hissing and crackling background. The baby boom was in its infancy. It was an era full of changes. Which meant huge profits for the diaper industry.
There they were, pretty much as I had remembered them. The pharmacy that used to be a Robert Hall clothing store. The bike shop where my parents bought me my first bike. The woods that once held tree forts that we used to build and play in. The old swimming hole. The steep slope that we dared to ride our sleds down when it snowed.
Somerdale had been a quiet, rural community before my parents and I moved in. We and several hundred other families, that is. Who knows what that flat pastureland off the White Horse Pike was growing before the arrival of the heavy equipment. It’s difficult to look at the urban sprawl today and imagine hundreds of acres of cornfields.
I drove past my old house. Our first Christmas tree, which my father planted in the ground after our first Christmas, is still there, and more than thirty feet tall. Hard to believe that it once sat in the living room, covered with electric lights and tinsel, surrounded by wrapped packages waiting for me to open them.
We were among the first to arrive. I remember our new home, the smell of fresh plywood, the plasterboard, the newly-papered walls. Without curtains or carpeting to muffle the sounds, footsteps across the room made the place sound like a hollow cave.
I still remember looking outside the living room window at the tractors running to and fro, regrading the land and raising clouds of dry dust. Cement trucks poured their stony gray slush into forms. Amid the roar of motors was the pounding of hammers as framework rose all over the landscape, as far as I could see. Regardless of whatever last year’s harvest was, it was evident that this year’s harvest would be houses.
And in the many decades to follow, the harvest of this stretch of land would be people. And I would be part of that harvest that would be known as the Junior High School Class of 1964.
A block away was Phil’s house. Phil was the only person I could call a friend. That tall amateur radio tower still stands there behind his house after all these years. One night we were running around in his back yard and I ran into one of its supporting cables. It left a sore on my cheek that lasted quite a few months.
I parked my car in the parking lot at a local diner. Inside the diner were many strange faces. I wonder how many of those faces I might have known thirty years ago. How many of these strangers did I go on class trips with? How many of them were in my reading group? The cashier, about my age. Large build, not at all attractive. I wonder if this could be Diane. For quite some time now, I wish I could meet up with her and tell her I’m sorry for what I did to her one day.
Children can be cruel at times. I was no exception. My birthday was coming up soon, and my mother wanted to invite my entire class to my birthday party. The teacher gave her a list of all my classmates, and she wrote personal invitations to each child in my class ans put them in envelopes. She gave them to me one morning to hand out to all my classmates.
I remember Diane. I didn’t like her. I threw her invitation in the trash, and handed out the rest.
A lot of children came to the party. Cousins. Classmates. There was plenty of ice cream, cookies, games. And most of all, presents for me. The house was full of children having a good time. At one point, I recall skipping into the living room toward the kitchen. The front door was open, and people were standing there. In walks Diane. I was surprised that she found out about the party. I walked up to them and asked, “What’s SHE doing here?” Then I continued skipping on my way into the kitchen for some more soda. Thinking back, I don’t recall having seen there at the party the rest of the day.
On the other side of the pike was the school. The wall on the street side used to be so high I couldn’t look over it. Now it’s only up to my waist. I don’t know when they lowered it.
The old brick school building is boarded up now. But as I drive by, I can still picture the children playing basketball on the blacktop. I can still taste the lebanon bologna sandwiches my mother used to pack in my lunch box. I can still hear the creaking of the floorboards echoing down the hallway.
My mother had told me about this place called “school,” where I would be with other people my age. They and I would have opportunities to do things we weren’t able to do before. So would the parents.
I can still remember that September morning. We got up early that morning, had breakfast. My father left for work. My mother dressed me up real nicely. She drove me to this large red brick building. Inside, I saw lots of children. Different sizes. Different colors. There were even some girls there. Most of the children appeared to be fearful and crying. Their mothers seemed to be happy and relieved.
We were all different, but we had one thing in common. We were all the same age. And that one single factor would bind us together for the next thirteen years. It meant that we would learn about Dick & Jane together. Play games of kickball together. Travel on class trips together. Go to dances together. Go out on dates together. Some of us would go off to war together.
In one grade I sat next to Danny. He was always drawing war pictures. But his war pictures were unique. The came with the most realistic sound effects imaginable. As he drew the path of the bullets flying through the air he would dramatize the sketch by muttering, “pow, bang, bam.” He would make whistling sounds as the bombs dropped down from the airplanes overhead. Then came the crashing sound as he would sketch the explosions that followed.
We were still kids. And in our minds, the planet Earth had a circumference of only a few miles. But every so often we learned about evidence of intelligent life beyond the borough limits. We were taught how to protect ourselves from invasions from these enemy life forms. Every few months we would have an air raid drill. When we heard the sirens, we were all supposed to march single file into the hallway and face the wall. It was something like a fire drill, except that you did it inside the school.
Sometimes we would have homework assignments that indicated to us that the world was a little larger than what we had experienced. One assignment was to write about a place called Vietnam. There was some kind of civil war going on there, and we were supposed to find out what we could about it. Which wasn’t much. Besides, it was a small country, mostly jungle, over on the other side of the planet. What could this stuff possibly mean to us?
Behind the school was what we called the blacktop, where we went out for basketball, kickball, or other recreational games. The blacktop has been empty for quite some time. Weeds are growing through the cracks. The painted stripes are barely visible. And fading with those stripes are some of the unpleasant memories of my distant past.
Just before we would go out to play basketball or softball, the teacher would have us pick teams. Psychologists nowadays discourage this practice because of the negative effect it has on the child who gets picked last. And that was always me. Even after the girls got picked. The two most athletic boys were selected as the team captains, and they began taking turns picking teammates from among the class. Usually, each team captain hopes for first pick, so that he can pick the most popular, the most athletic, or his closest friends. And if there were an odd number of classmates, the team with first pick got the extra person. But in my case, if there were an odd number of students, the team captains would look at me and remark that they wanted second pick so that I would wind up on the other team.
Overlooking the blacktop was my 8th grade class. 8th grade would have the beginning of a turning point for me, but cruel fate that year turned me back into the course I had been going all my life. I’m pretty much a loner now. I always was.
My parents were always worried about me. Maybe three years earlier the child psychologist could have diagnosed me as having some degree of autism, but not all the signs were there. But the psychologist also told them that eventually, maybe not until I was almost finished high school, I would find a few friends. I almost did in 8th grade.
By 8th grade we outgrew thoughts of dipping pigtails in inkwells and being team captains. But some things didn’t change. Danny was still drawing war pictures and making sound effects. The air raid drills were the same except this time we couldn’t pray.
Junior High students had more freedoms than the lower classes. We were given 90 minutes for lunch breaks. After eating, the remaining time was spent in the auditorium where we could sit at tables and chat, play table games, go to a section of the gym designated for dancing, or form teams to play basketball outside. Basketball and dancing didn’t interest me. I usually sat by myself at the tables and did homework. One day well into the school year, the boys lined up to play basketball outside on the blacktop. They didn’t have enough for two teams. I was sitting by myself at a table nearby, as usual. Some of the guys called to me to go out with them and play basketball. A far cry from the days of the team captains. Being pretty much a loner for the past eight years, I was surprised, and somewhat honored, that they wanted me to join with them. So I did. I was also surprised to find myself playing just as well as they did. In fact, so were they. In the weeks that followed, they invited me out to play basketball even when they had more than enough for two teams.
The last few months of 8th grade were so much different from all the previous days. I was accepted, and even appreciated by the other guys. I had lived my earlier years inside a shell just big enough for me and nobody else. Now I was sticking my head out to take a look, and I found myself become part of the Junior High School Class of 1964 for the first time.
Mrs. C., our 8th grade teacher, was the one we all respected the most. She was the strictest of them all. But she was fair. Several times through the school year college students would drop in for a visit, thanking her for being their teacher.
She had some kind of eye problem, and always had to wear dark sunglasses to class. A word of warning was passed down to us from previous students of hers. If she ever takes her sunglasses off, you will be in serious trouble. It reminded me of the comic strip, The Phantom, in which it is said that nobody could unmask him and live.
She made Craig sit on the front center desk, where she could keep a close watch on him. One day Craig mouthed off at her. She dropped her lesson book and confronted him face to face. He jumped out of his chair and made a fist, ready to swing it at her. She immediately ripped the sunglasses off her face, much in the same manner as Clark Kent used to do in the old Superman television series. Never have I or anybody else in that classroom seen such terrifying eyes as hers. Eye to eye they stared for about five seconds before she put them back on. It seemed as if Craig was about to turn into stone if she had stared at him much longer. Thinking back, I wonder if those statues around the old borough hall were some of her former students.
I can remember only one other occasion in that school year when Mrs. C. showed emotion. It was in the early afternoon one day shortly before Thanksgiving, 1963. She was called out of the class for about ten minutes. When she returned, we could see tears dripping down her cheeks from behind those sunglasses. At first she said nothing, then told us all to go home and turn on our radios. She sat down at her desk as we walked out the door.
Sterling High School. Just a few blocks away, down the road and to the left. Driving by it doesn’t bring back much in the way of memories, as had the other places. Instead, mostly thoughts of what could have been, what might have been. Thoughts of how minor turn in the course of events could drastically change destiny.
The school year was almost over. We would be graduating from Junior High shortly, and would officially become the Sterling Regional High School Class of 1968.
It was around that time that I learned that I would be leaving Somerdale. My father had been accepted for a teaching position at a school in Bridgeton, quite a distance away. After two years there they told him that his job would become permanent beginning the next school year. We moved just before the school year actually ended, but my mother drove me to school and loaded the car with things to be moved each day.
Our Junior High graduation ceremony was held in the Sterling High School auditorium. It was exciting for all of us. We would no longer be junior high students. We were graduating! The auditorium was filled with parents, teachers, school officials, important people in the town. There we were on the stage, marching one-by-one to receive our diplomas as fhashbulbs went off in the room.
Unlike the other students, we had a long drive home. As soon as the ceremony was over, my parents and I walked out for our long drive home, leaving the others, with whom I had spent nine years of school, to celebrate by themselves.
That was the only time I ever set foot in the school. It would be the last time that I would ever see my classmates.
During my years in Bridgeton, I remained even further withdrawn in my self-imposed shell. I began high school, a stranger to my new classmates, and I remained a stranger to them. The rejection was back.
This time, it wasn’t until my last year in high school, that I found myself being accepted by a few people who were willing to have me as a friend. The child psychologist’s prediction had come to pass.
I drove down the street to Marie’s house. Marie was one of my classmates in Somerdale. Her house was not too far from mine. Sometimes I stayed there after school until my parents got home from work. Her mother would watch me.
Approaching her house, I could see Marie’s mother, much older and more frail than I remember her, sitting on the front porch. I couldn’t resist the urge to stop and talk, maybe catch up on two decades of gossip. Stepping out of the car made me feel as if I were looking at an old photo album and somehow managed to step into one of its photographs. Here I was, the very spot where we played spin the bottle at Marie’s birthday party. It looked just the same now as it did back then.
Marie was in the house. She came out to talk. She had two children, both in school. She had been married, divorced, and now engaged and planning on moving to Florida. “You remember Danny?” She asked me. How could I forget those pictures and sound effects. It seems that Danny quit school before his senior year and enlisted in the Marines. He was sent to Vietnam and was killed.
A few months ago I came across one guy, Mike, who said he lived in Somerdale. I asked where. It was a few doors down the street from me. But did he know anybody from the Class of 1968? That was his brother’s class. His brother and I were classmates. I got to talk to Mike’s brother and their parents, who were up there in years, but still remembered much of what has happened in the town. I learned a lot. Linda, who lived a few blocks away, was in a mental hospital, and died only a few months ago. Joseph, another classmate, also went to Vietnam, and suffered illness from Agent Orange. He died six years ago from that illness. Phil was caught manufacturing methamphetamines in his apartment, and won’t be out of jail for quite a while.
I remember leaving that meeting with Mike and his family, thinking to myself. This isn’t supposed to happen. They were only kids. They were never part of the real world. They never knew anything of drugs, divorce and mental hospitals and Vietnam. They should still be up there on that stage, waiting for me to come back.
We’re all grown now. Those things which symbolize childhood are long gone. The high school prom, the homecoming queen, the college preparatory exams, the first love, the wedding, the birth of yet another generation of children, these things have all come and gone. But in my mind, the picture of my Junior High classmates, the friends, the bullies, the girls, the fire drills, are frozen in time. They’re all still up there on that stage, where I left them.
Thomas Wolfe once wrote the oft-quoted statement, “You can’t go home again.” He was on the right track. But the truth is that home, as we pictured it, sputnik, The Beaver, the hula hoop, Ozzie & Harriet, never really existed.
Others may take their car to a vacation spot, out into the country, somewhere to get away from the daily grind, where they can escape, at least for the moment, the pressures and responsibilities that come with life in the real world. Sometimes I escape, not to a distant place to forget the daily pressures, but to an earlier time, an earlier place, which existed long before those pressures ever came to be.
In the science fiction movie, “Back to the Future,” and its two sequels, Marty McFly drives a DeLorean, a sports car converted into a time machine. Not only does it travel along the highway, but it travels through time, decades into the past and into the future. While my own car travels only one direction in time, and that very slowly, I have on a few occasions managed to duplicate that sense of traveling back in time, back to my childhood home, my childhood years, at least in my mind, if not in reality. But in doing so, I realize that those early years are not where reality is to be found.
The fifties.
Sputnik, the Beaver, the hula hoop, Ozzie & Harriet. I could go on. Words whose mere mention stir memories of a time when life was simpler. Happier. When families could sit together in the living room and listen to the radio with its hissing and crackling background. The baby boom was in its infancy. It was an era full of changes. Which meant huge profits for the diaper industry.
There they were, pretty much as I had remembered them. The pharmacy that used to be a Robert Hall clothing store. The bike shop where my parents bought me my first bike. The woods that once held tree forts that we used to build and play in. The old swimming hole. The steep slope that we dared to ride our sleds down when it snowed.
Somerdale had been a quiet, rural community before my parents and I moved in. We and several hundred other families, that is. Who knows what that flat pastureland off the White Horse Pike was growing before the arrival of the heavy equipment. It’s difficult to look at the urban sprawl today and imagine hundreds of acres of cornfields.
I drove past my old house. Our first Christmas tree, which my father planted in the ground after our first Christmas, is still there, and more than thirty feet tall. Hard to believe that it once sat in the living room, covered with electric lights and tinsel, surrounded by wrapped packages waiting for me to open them.
We were among the first to arrive. I remember our new home, the smell of fresh plywood, the plasterboard, the newly-papered walls. Without curtains or carpeting to muffle the sounds, footsteps across the room made the place sound like a hollow cave.
I still remember looking outside the living room window at the tractors running to and fro, regrading the land and raising clouds of dry dust. Cement trucks poured their stony gray slush into forms. Amid the roar of motors was the pounding of hammers as framework rose all over the landscape, as far as I could see. Regardless of whatever last year’s harvest was, it was evident that this year’s harvest would be houses.
And in the many decades to follow, the harvest of this stretch of land would be people. And I would be part of that harvest that would be known as the Junior High School Class of 1964.
A block away was Phil’s house. Phil was the only person I could call a friend. That tall amateur radio tower still stands there behind his house after all these years. One night we were running around in his back yard and I ran into one of its supporting cables. It left a sore on my cheek that lasted quite a few months.
#
I parked my car in the parking lot at a local diner. Inside the diner were many strange faces. I wonder how many of those faces I might have known thirty years ago. How many of these strangers did I go on class trips with? How many of them were in my reading group? The cashier, about my age. Large build, not at all attractive. I wonder if this could be Diane. For quite some time now, I wish I could meet up with her and tell her I’m sorry for what I did to her one day.
Children can be cruel at times. I was no exception. My birthday was coming up soon, and my mother wanted to invite my entire class to my birthday party. The teacher gave her a list of all my classmates, and she wrote personal invitations to each child in my class ans put them in envelopes. She gave them to me one morning to hand out to all my classmates.
I remember Diane. I didn’t like her. I threw her invitation in the trash, and handed out the rest.
A lot of children came to the party. Cousins. Classmates. There was plenty of ice cream, cookies, games. And most of all, presents for me. The house was full of children having a good time. At one point, I recall skipping into the living room toward the kitchen. The front door was open, and people were standing there. In walks Diane. I was surprised that she found out about the party. I walked up to them and asked, “What’s SHE doing here?” Then I continued skipping on my way into the kitchen for some more soda. Thinking back, I don’t recall having seen there at the party the rest of the day.
#
On the other side of the pike was the school. The wall on the street side used to be so high I couldn’t look over it. Now it’s only up to my waist. I don’t know when they lowered it.
The old brick school building is boarded up now. But as I drive by, I can still picture the children playing basketball on the blacktop. I can still taste the lebanon bologna sandwiches my mother used to pack in my lunch box. I can still hear the creaking of the floorboards echoing down the hallway.
My mother had told me about this place called “school,” where I would be with other people my age. They and I would have opportunities to do things we weren’t able to do before. So would the parents.
I can still remember that September morning. We got up early that morning, had breakfast. My father left for work. My mother dressed me up real nicely. She drove me to this large red brick building. Inside, I saw lots of children. Different sizes. Different colors. There were even some girls there. Most of the children appeared to be fearful and crying. Their mothers seemed to be happy and relieved.
We were all different, but we had one thing in common. We were all the same age. And that one single factor would bind us together for the next thirteen years. It meant that we would learn about Dick & Jane together. Play games of kickball together. Travel on class trips together. Go to dances together. Go out on dates together. Some of us would go off to war together.
In one grade I sat next to Danny. He was always drawing war pictures. But his war pictures were unique. The came with the most realistic sound effects imaginable. As he drew the path of the bullets flying through the air he would dramatize the sketch by muttering, “pow, bang, bam.” He would make whistling sounds as the bombs dropped down from the airplanes overhead. Then came the crashing sound as he would sketch the explosions that followed.
We were still kids. And in our minds, the planet Earth had a circumference of only a few miles. But every so often we learned about evidence of intelligent life beyond the borough limits. We were taught how to protect ourselves from invasions from these enemy life forms. Every few months we would have an air raid drill. When we heard the sirens, we were all supposed to march single file into the hallway and face the wall. It was something like a fire drill, except that you did it inside the school.
Sometimes we would have homework assignments that indicated to us that the world was a little larger than what we had experienced. One assignment was to write about a place called Vietnam. There was some kind of civil war going on there, and we were supposed to find out what we could about it. Which wasn’t much. Besides, it was a small country, mostly jungle, over on the other side of the planet. What could this stuff possibly mean to us?
#
Behind the school was what we called the blacktop, where we went out for basketball, kickball, or other recreational games. The blacktop has been empty for quite some time. Weeds are growing through the cracks. The painted stripes are barely visible. And fading with those stripes are some of the unpleasant memories of my distant past.
Just before we would go out to play basketball or softball, the teacher would have us pick teams. Psychologists nowadays discourage this practice because of the negative effect it has on the child who gets picked last. And that was always me. Even after the girls got picked. The two most athletic boys were selected as the team captains, and they began taking turns picking teammates from among the class. Usually, each team captain hopes for first pick, so that he can pick the most popular, the most athletic, or his closest friends. And if there were an odd number of classmates, the team with first pick got the extra person. But in my case, if there were an odd number of students, the team captains would look at me and remark that they wanted second pick so that I would wind up on the other team.
#
Overlooking the blacktop was my 8th grade class. 8th grade would have the beginning of a turning point for me, but cruel fate that year turned me back into the course I had been going all my life. I’m pretty much a loner now. I always was.
My parents were always worried about me. Maybe three years earlier the child psychologist could have diagnosed me as having some degree of autism, but not all the signs were there. But the psychologist also told them that eventually, maybe not until I was almost finished high school, I would find a few friends. I almost did in 8th grade.
By 8th grade we outgrew thoughts of dipping pigtails in inkwells and being team captains. But some things didn’t change. Danny was still drawing war pictures and making sound effects. The air raid drills were the same except this time we couldn’t pray.
Junior High students had more freedoms than the lower classes. We were given 90 minutes for lunch breaks. After eating, the remaining time was spent in the auditorium where we could sit at tables and chat, play table games, go to a section of the gym designated for dancing, or form teams to play basketball outside. Basketball and dancing didn’t interest me. I usually sat by myself at the tables and did homework. One day well into the school year, the boys lined up to play basketball outside on the blacktop. They didn’t have enough for two teams. I was sitting by myself at a table nearby, as usual. Some of the guys called to me to go out with them and play basketball. A far cry from the days of the team captains. Being pretty much a loner for the past eight years, I was surprised, and somewhat honored, that they wanted me to join with them. So I did. I was also surprised to find myself playing just as well as they did. In fact, so were they. In the weeks that followed, they invited me out to play basketball even when they had more than enough for two teams.
The last few months of 8th grade were so much different from all the previous days. I was accepted, and even appreciated by the other guys. I had lived my earlier years inside a shell just big enough for me and nobody else. Now I was sticking my head out to take a look, and I found myself become part of the Junior High School Class of 1964 for the first time.
Mrs. C., our 8th grade teacher, was the one we all respected the most. She was the strictest of them all. But she was fair. Several times through the school year college students would drop in for a visit, thanking her for being their teacher.
She had some kind of eye problem, and always had to wear dark sunglasses to class. A word of warning was passed down to us from previous students of hers. If she ever takes her sunglasses off, you will be in serious trouble. It reminded me of the comic strip, The Phantom, in which it is said that nobody could unmask him and live.
She made Craig sit on the front center desk, where she could keep a close watch on him. One day Craig mouthed off at her. She dropped her lesson book and confronted him face to face. He jumped out of his chair and made a fist, ready to swing it at her. She immediately ripped the sunglasses off her face, much in the same manner as Clark Kent used to do in the old Superman television series. Never have I or anybody else in that classroom seen such terrifying eyes as hers. Eye to eye they stared for about five seconds before she put them back on. It seemed as if Craig was about to turn into stone if she had stared at him much longer. Thinking back, I wonder if those statues around the old borough hall were some of her former students.
I can remember only one other occasion in that school year when Mrs. C. showed emotion. It was in the early afternoon one day shortly before Thanksgiving, 1963. She was called out of the class for about ten minutes. When she returned, we could see tears dripping down her cheeks from behind those sunglasses. At first she said nothing, then told us all to go home and turn on our radios. She sat down at her desk as we walked out the door.
#
Sterling High School. Just a few blocks away, down the road and to the left. Driving by it doesn’t bring back much in the way of memories, as had the other places. Instead, mostly thoughts of what could have been, what might have been. Thoughts of how minor turn in the course of events could drastically change destiny.
The school year was almost over. We would be graduating from Junior High shortly, and would officially become the Sterling Regional High School Class of 1968.
It was around that time that I learned that I would be leaving Somerdale. My father had been accepted for a teaching position at a school in Bridgeton, quite a distance away. After two years there they told him that his job would become permanent beginning the next school year. We moved just before the school year actually ended, but my mother drove me to school and loaded the car with things to be moved each day.
Our Junior High graduation ceremony was held in the Sterling High School auditorium. It was exciting for all of us. We would no longer be junior high students. We were graduating! The auditorium was filled with parents, teachers, school officials, important people in the town. There we were on the stage, marching one-by-one to receive our diplomas as fhashbulbs went off in the room.
Unlike the other students, we had a long drive home. As soon as the ceremony was over, my parents and I walked out for our long drive home, leaving the others, with whom I had spent nine years of school, to celebrate by themselves.
That was the only time I ever set foot in the school. It would be the last time that I would ever see my classmates.
#
During my years in Bridgeton, I remained even further withdrawn in my self-imposed shell. I began high school, a stranger to my new classmates, and I remained a stranger to them. The rejection was back.
This time, it wasn’t until my last year in high school, that I found myself being accepted by a few people who were willing to have me as a friend. The child psychologist’s prediction had come to pass.
#
I drove down the street to Marie’s house. Marie was one of my classmates in Somerdale. Her house was not too far from mine. Sometimes I stayed there after school until my parents got home from work. Her mother would watch me.
Approaching her house, I could see Marie’s mother, much older and more frail than I remember her, sitting on the front porch. I couldn’t resist the urge to stop and talk, maybe catch up on two decades of gossip. Stepping out of the car made me feel as if I were looking at an old photo album and somehow managed to step into one of its photographs. Here I was, the very spot where we played spin the bottle at Marie’s birthday party. It looked just the same now as it did back then.
Marie was in the house. She came out to talk. She had two children, both in school. She had been married, divorced, and now engaged and planning on moving to Florida. “You remember Danny?” She asked me. How could I forget those pictures and sound effects. It seems that Danny quit school before his senior year and enlisted in the Marines. He was sent to Vietnam and was killed.
#
A few months ago I came across one guy, Mike, who said he lived in Somerdale. I asked where. It was a few doors down the street from me. But did he know anybody from the Class of 1968? That was his brother’s class. His brother and I were classmates. I got to talk to Mike’s brother and their parents, who were up there in years, but still remembered much of what has happened in the town. I learned a lot. Linda, who lived a few blocks away, was in a mental hospital, and died only a few months ago. Joseph, another classmate, also went to Vietnam, and suffered illness from Agent Orange. He died six years ago from that illness. Phil was caught manufacturing methamphetamines in his apartment, and won’t be out of jail for quite a while.
I remember leaving that meeting with Mike and his family, thinking to myself. This isn’t supposed to happen. They were only kids. They were never part of the real world. They never knew anything of drugs, divorce and mental hospitals and Vietnam. They should still be up there on that stage, waiting for me to come back.
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We’re all grown now. Those things which symbolize childhood are long gone. The high school prom, the homecoming queen, the college preparatory exams, the first love, the wedding, the birth of yet another generation of children, these things have all come and gone. But in my mind, the picture of my Junior High classmates, the friends, the bullies, the girls, the fire drills, are frozen in time. They’re all still up there on that stage, where I left them.
Thomas Wolfe once wrote the oft-quoted statement, “You can’t go home again.” He was on the right track. But the truth is that home, as we pictured it, sputnik, The Beaver, the hula hoop, Ozzie & Harriet, never really existed.
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