Summer Everlasting

When I was a boy Summer offically began on the Last Day of School---no matter what the calendar said.

It wasn't a real school day, because you didn't really have to go. Maybe half the class would show up. Sister would ask us about our summer plans, there would be treats---cupcakes, candy leftover from the weekly candy sale, baseball cards for the boys---before we were dismissed with the admonition to stay out of trouble and to pick up a book once in a while on a rainy day.

Though I was a poor student and no favorite of the nuns, I was always among those who stayed behind to straighten up so the room would be neat and in order when September rolled around again. With the windows open wide and a sweet summer breeze undulating through the room, life was transformed. The torments of the late school year were completely forgotten. It was the first day of summer. The very first.

And I think now the reason I stood behind was to extend for as long as possible that moment of absolute beginning. Maybe some part of me already understood that once the sands begin to run through the hourglass it’s only a matter of time before they run out completely. I wanted it to be the first moment of summer as long as possible. Then I’d bound down the rickety stairway, home to lunch and my friends, the freedom of time and Brooklyn completely our own.

What did we do for three long months? Once Mikey smuggled his mother’s cigarettes out of the house and we smoked in the park until we turned green and sick to our stomachs. We were maybe nine then. Mostly we played tag in the bankyard, punchball in the street, went to the movies, explored new neighborhoods, hung out on rooftops, ate hot dogs with mustard and onions from the street vendor and salty pretzels from the German bakery, told outrageous lies, and wondered what it would feel like when we were all grown up.

And because it was a working class city neighborhood and no one had a swimming pool, we’d open the fire hydrant on 90 degree days and dance madly in the streets under a hundred pounds of ice cold water pressure until the cops came and shut it off.

But for all the fun I had with my friends I mostly liked to be alone. I spent hours wandering the stacks of used paperbacks, comics, and monster magazines at the Grand Book Center. Or I’d go down to the pier with my copy of Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe, and read until the weight of words forced my eyes shut and I feel asleep in the afternoon sun.

“Life passes by like a dream,” my father used to say.

I didn’t believe him then. But always when I awoke the air was crisp and the shadows were long and it was time for school to begin again.