“One Time”

Chant­i­ng and Rant­i­ng I don’t recall my class­mates’ names at this point so, if any of them were added to the list above, I wouldn’t know. But I can describe a few and attribute bits of info about them. I recall there were three Jew­ish boys in my class, each very…

Burn, baby! Burn! 1967 was also the Sum­mer of Hate. America’s pres­ence in the Viet­nam grew to a stag­ger­ing 475,000 troops and in the states, peace ral­lies and polit­i­cal protests increased expo­nen­tial­ly. There was a spread­ing dis­con­tent with the war in…

Kevin Fer­ring had surfer-blond hair and was speck­led with freck­les on every sur­face he had ever exposed to the sun. Kevin was also ten and my best bud­dy. He joined Joe, Mike and I on our lizard hunts and was a pret­ty good skate­board­er to boot. Harp­er always…

I need­ed mon­ey for albums and art sup­plies and I need­ed a job. We hadn’t been at the base for too long before I was look­ing for work. Although there weren’t many oppor­tu­ni­ties avail­able for a twelve year old, I man­aged to find work dur­ing our stay at the…

I’ll segue into a not-so won­der­ful expe­ri­ence that occurred at around the same time: I met a neigh­bor boy at a scout meet­ing on the base. He seemed pret­ty nice and asked me to come hang out at his place. I’ll call him: Sey­mour.  The husky kid with…

We couldn’t get out of Williamsport fast enough, would be the best way to put it. We received word; FINALLY, that hous­ing became avail­able in Philly. We moved down to the Philadel­phia Naval Base when my Dad was trans­ferred there in June 1967. It was the sum­mer of…

Miss Lily came to our house a month lat­er and just maybe, saved my sis­ter Paula’s life. Well, what hap­pened may not have actu­al­ly killed her, but if Lil­ly hadn’t been there, it would have put a seri­ous crimp on Paula’s abil­i­ty to eat prop­er­ly, chew or…

The neigh­bor in the house next door, on the oppo­site side of the Smiths was a wid­ow in her mid fifties. She went by: Miss Lil­ly. She wasn’t from a hol­low in Ten­nessee, but you get the descrip­tive gist. She was a chain-smok­er and had a wrin­kled hard face. She…

I was in sixth grade inter­me­di­ate school at Saint Boni­face. It felt like mil­i­tary school with a bar­rage of rules and reg­u­la­tions to deal with: White shirts- tucked in, navy blue tie and slacks, black shoes. Hair/bangs trimmed above the eye­brows and ears. It…

PART TWO: WILLIAMSPORT TO WILIAMSPORT A light rain began to fall as I quick­ened my pace, head down, in a use­less attempt to out­run it. The wind blew hair across my face as I searched for a rub­ber band in my pock­et to tie it back. I looked up uneasi­ly and didn’t…