Summer in the City

When I was a wee lad we spent much of the summer at Aunt Louise's resort on Bangs Lake. But not the whole summer. Not by a long shot, the WHOLE summer. No, most of the summer was spent at home, in the city. In the hot, sweltering city. No lake to jump in. No cooling breezes springing up during the heat of the day. Just long, hot, incredibly bright days of cicadas in the trees and sweat rolling into your eyes.

In the city, you ALWAYS wore shoes. The sidewalks got too hot to go barefoot. And the streets. The streets would get so hot they would melt. We used to pick up tar from the streets and chew it. Honest to God.

We had quite a gang in our neighborhood. Not a territorial, 'this is our turf' kind of gang. No, we were just a bunch of kids whose fathers were all home from the war (WWII) and we were the babies that got made from all that pent up energy that was expressed upon their return home. So there were a LOT of us. And we all hung around together.

I remember one summer ....

Gloria and Valerie were two girls, neighbors to each other, who lived across the street. We lived on a narrow side street that didn't see much traffic, so the street was never a barrier to us - it was more a playground than anything else. So everybody knew everybody else. And in the days before air conditioners and closed up houses, with screens and sheers in the windows, everybody KNEW everybody else. Gloria and Valerie were very close in age, but much older than the rest of the kids in the 'hood. And Gloria and Valerie seemed to take special joy in their position as the 'older women' in the neighborhood; because they 'knew' more than us, and they were willing, from time to time, to spread that knowledge. And one of their teaching methods involved undressing in front of the window. Behind the sheers, yes, but with a light on in the room and just a sheer between her and the rest of the outside world, neither girl was going to be hiding much of anything, even if she wanted to. Neither one of them wanted to. Hide anything, that is.

Our 'gang' soon caught on to the willingness of these two young vixens to put on a show. They HAD to know they were being observed. For one thing, we could never get Joey S. to stop giggling once the show started, and I'm sure they heard him, if not our efforts to shut him up. And, of course, when Bronco fell of the roof of the garage behind Valerie's house we were SURE it was all over - but it went on, completely undisturbed.

Yes, that was a summer to remember. I was 10. And I was educated. At least, I thought so. I found out in later years that what went on back then was wrong on so many levels - but we were boys and we didn't know any better. But it sure generated some fond memories. The next year my Dad started bringing home this new magazine, Playboy, and he hid them under his bed. That was the source of a whole new set of fond memories as our 'gang' discovered that Gloria and Valerie were SO yesterday. And besides, Gloria's older brother had found out what was going on and threatened us within an inch of our lives. So the show stopped. And the magazine grew in circulation.