Read a conceit on social media that intrigued me. It asked readers to remember the last time they got together with all or most of the youthful friends who created their closest, steadiest, most dependable adolescent playmates.
For me, it’s a good presumption these curtains came down at the ends of summers. Just before Labor Day Weekend.
In Quarropas, New York, summer never failed to stretch languorously. In a paradoxical way that season awarded acres of idle hours but somehow always managed to speed by faster than event-filled autumn, winter, spring school months combined.
One might’ve thought structured weeks on end would’ve raced. Instead, once one week was conquered another after it loomed. Whereas unformed, amorphous, unhurried summer ought have meandered from late June until Labor Day. But looking back when wasn’t one of those languid days occupied by sporting or recreational activity?
The kind of play that shortens time, unlike the slow-rolling hours during dull classes.
Somehow the social media question didn’t include best friend(s). Contemplating the omission, I understood the likelihood of one’s best friend remaining so through the mounting eras of mutual growth, maturity, experience, knowledge, and that greatest adult burden of all, disappointment.
The question focused on the adolescent/early teens boys and girls who were reliably in certain spots at randomly appointed times. As a matter of fact, they were so assuredly steady one knew they’d join others already there or would be soon.
Seldom were occasions when an absent member needed fetching from his or her home. Since our parents worked, rarer still must we accompany our mothers or fathers to any weekday appointments.
Now, such coincidences in congregating might be regarded as spooky. Then, we naturally expected our appearances. If asked at the time how we knew, it would’ve been just another unnecessarily taxing query for a kid.
For me this period would’ve roughly spanned between 1967 through 1974. Our family moved into a different neighborhood during fall of ‘66, so my first “immersive” summer arrived in ‘67.
The new elementary/junior high school I was to attend underwent expansion. Not the structure itself, but the parking lots and the playing fields. By this time, the last of the row houses which had lined that Quarropas street were skeletal. Behind these bones, workmen made final preparations for an all-weather oval which would serve as the track. The playing fields beyond all this stopped at a steep slope atop which sat an industrial complex as well as bowling alley.
Unlike our former neighborhood which began its climb at the base of a hill, the new one squeezed into a compact valley. Commercial addresses snuggled against residences and low-rise apartments shouldered single-family homes. Besides the school’s fields, a municipal park adhering faithfully to topographic contours served as the locals’ green lungs. It also provided gateway into downtown Quarropas.
While I made acquaintances in school during winter and into spring, I didn’t make friends until summer break. No, I don’t recall mother ever giving me any special instructions during these years. And it would’ve been mother because father had already gone to work hours before either of us awakened.
She just gave me a housekey. Likely reminded me not to lose it, too. Easy enough.
I don’t remember how and where I met this friend or that one. Or how the first invitation to join them in playing ball emerged. But I did have a couple of bats, balls, and a glove. Entry enough.
After cobbling together cereal and milk breakfasts while watching Leave It to Beaver or The Donna Reed Show or whatever former primetime favorites then crowded the daytime TV schedule, urges alone propelled me out the door onto the baseball diamond or football field. Recollecting now, the same siren must’ve summoned us all simultaneously.
Television might have viewers believing members of “the gang” appeared outside one another’s homes then called for the absent to come out and play. It might’ve happened with us, but if so then so infrequently as to be doubtful. We either met on the infield for baseball or, in autumn the gridiron, or on asphalt for basketball.
It was organic.
Unsupervised as we were, we were also quite organized. Parents of today might’ve seen the scenes and be astounded. No discord. No mayhem. Sure. No parents.
Yet that was the early part of the day. Mid-mornings into barely past noon. Once the sun climbed too high and our exertions soaked us, we’d return to our respective homes. There, after shimmying into swim trunks or bathing suits we’d slap some kind of meat between bread for lunch, chasing it with either milk or juice. At least I did. I don’t recall gulping a lot of soda as a kid. Milk or juice, certainly. Iced tea in the summer.
The city of Quarropas took care of its children. Rec sports leagues in springs, seasonal swimming pools erected through the various neighborhoods during summers. Our pool waited for us to splash in it at the base of the park that led into downtown. It was a short distance between suburban worlds.
The park itself looked as if long-ago city planners simply erected fencing around however many acres of old-growth forest then laid down and paved trails cows might’ve designed. In summers leafy canopies above were so thick sunlight seldom dapped grass. In autumn before being cleared away, fallen leaves created fiery carpets.
Probably the easily and most joyous tasks during our young lives was piling departed summers’ shades into mountains which we’d fling ourselves.
After summiting a gentle rise of maybe 100 yards, suburban splendor abruptly ended. At the crest, the bucolic looked upon and heard suburban hustle and bustle. Noisy, steady auto traffic, sidewalks coursing with secretaries, shoppers, professionals, deliverymen.
Other than dart across those streets to reach downtown movie theaters, we wouldn’t really start venturing beyond our sweet spots until our mid-teens.
The fields and the pool provided several kinds of revelations. None immediately perceived, only gradually. The kind maybe not fully comprehended or appreciated until some adult age. Or maybe never grasped at all.
Three girls comprise the picture. Patricia. Bella. Clare. Their respective blossoming into teen girls would neatly coincide with the inexpressible stirrings inside male peers.
But this part of the post isn’t about that. Rather, see three girls whose distinctions set them apart.
In an earlier time, Patricia would’ve been labeled a “tomboy.” She hit, ran, fielded, and threw as good as or better than several of us boys. Yes, not knowing we were ahead of our time – neither farsighted nor judgmental – she was a regular fixture at games boys predominated. She was always among the first picked for teams. A few others girls attended, but they were a scant few content to watch us and chat among themselves.
Patricia stood out no matter the metrics used.
Reflecting now, she was pretty, yes, though in a plain manner. Maybe if vanity coursed through her, she might’ve eventually fussed with her hair, learned how to flirt in ways that enflamed, and perhaps attired herself in feminine styles.
Instead, Patricia was always seemingly dressed for action. Even during the school year. If not on a ballfield, then a pickup basketball game, or ready to skip, swing, and slap around a paddleball court. It’s no exaggeration, but it’s easy to declare believing the only skirt she wore most often in junior high school through senior high might’ve been for field hockey.
Her casual garments would be regarded as active wear today.
When we weren’t ripping and tearing around bases, in the field, or on some court during the summer, we could reliably be found cooling off loudly as we splashed at the neighborhood rec pool. Boys wore baggy trucks. Girls wore two piece suits whose upper bands gradually became fuller as one summer eased into the next.
Certainly, even Patricia’s. Hers would be a hard femininity. Womanly as she became, wider shoulders and noticeable musculature differentiated her contours from other girls. If remembered correctly, her two-piecers always occupied the neon spectrum. Lime green. Loud lavender. Yes, even electric blue.
She wore them easily. As we grew, she emitted a composure that somehow enhanced her athleticism. Should we have been guided by dopey teen movie portrayals, Patricia ought have been the “strange girl” those forming the insecure Queen Bee cliques might’ve ridiculed behind her back as well treated snidely in person.
Not that she was given wide berth, but even the most shallow and superficial of girls throughout our junior and high school years sensed Patricia exuded much more than lipstick and powder could project. Adolescent and teen girls aren’t known for their kind natures, are they?
Poor Bella. What we didn’t know at the time. And had we inklings, we each lacked the presence to extend her any grace. Today we recognize anorexia. Then Bella was just bones under stretched skin. Cartlidge in Bella’s nose outpaced the rest of her sharply aligned face. That nose awarded her an elongated prow. Clothes did not hang off Bella. They billowed. Since ours an era for platform shoes, footwear which shod her daily, the meaner less circumspect girls would announce “Olive Oyl!” whenever she first appeared. These heralds just loud enough to grate our ears and rattle hers.
By a year, Bella was our senior member. She would’ve vanished into high school a year before the best part of our combine. Nonetheless, she hung with us. In doing so hers must’ve been the thickest skin ever. An ungainly girl, she was clumsy. She threw worse than a girl. The cinder blocks binding her feet further added awkwardness when she ran.
Unlike too many of the girls, particularly the crueler prettier ones, we boys did not belittle her. Each other? Constantly because we were boys. Bella, though, not like she got a pass from us but seeing what the girls flung her way maybe we obeyed some innate sense of kindness on someone we recognized as vulnerable.
Perhaps now more than 50 years on it’s explicable. That clarity coming through decades of scar-leaving experience and the edifying results of trial and error. Then, that we didn’t besiege a helpless girl may’ve forecast the men we might’ve become.
Bella was included in this dispatch because unlike Patricia and soon Clare, I don’t recall ever seeing her again after her last junior high summer. Nor in high school. Again, a Bella year older than most of us, high school threw several hundred more teens into her mix sooner than ours. Also, a year’s absence further smudged connections.
Individuals of our one-time group spiraled off into new, different, bigger circles during high school. Occasionally these overlapped and acquaintances were renewed, no, reaffirmed, after a sort. But no Bella.
Mostly, though, our one-time closest of associations became phantoms passing through ever less than sharp memories of play. Though never again Bella. Gone.
Clare was an infrequent presence. Hers were more like cameo appearances. Two years younger than the main assemblage, Clare also had to work. Her mother operated a neighborhood bakery. So, at an age none of us needed never consider punctuality, discipline, diligence, Clare assisted her mother. Having been inside and passed by that shop often, I don’t recall any others toiling in it besides Clare and her mother.
Even then gravity possessed the younger girl. No, not gravity. Being firmly grounded. During that span of youth, none other than Clare exhibited this. Only later did I realize one couldn’t be a goofball behind a register or mixing batter or around ovens or decorating cakes.
At that age, I would’ve made a lousy baker.
Those rare days when excused from the bakery, Clare didn’t exult, didn’t exhale in glorious relief, didn’t mention anything during previous hours that might’ve suggested freedom from any arduousness left behind. Surely happy to be outside among us cavorting on fields or in the pool, even beside us in a movie theater’s darkness, her release could never be mistaken for relief.
It took effort to remember this, Clare was a placid girl. Diminutive, her black hair always in a bob, eyes lively, smile ready, her voice could’ve been heard as a caress. When older, I don’t doubt that as a woman she cultivated a demure nature that ensorcelled then ensnared quite willing men.
When she wasn’t in the bakery, when she wasn’t weaving spells, when she was along with us on the diamond, Clare was prone to pull wormburners or rockets depending on from which side of the plate she batted. That said, she exemplified, “All stick. No glove.”
Throughout the decades I would cross Patricia and Clare. During our respective college years, I’d occasionally pass the donut shop where Patricia grabbed hours while attending a local college. She’d received a scholarship, but middle-class children as we were, who didn’t know there was no such thing as too much extra cash?
After graduating, Patricia found sinecure in a Quarropas municipal office. She also starred on city rec leagues women’s softball teams.
One year in my mid-30s, I had an appointment with a Quarropas lawyer. Astoundingly Clare served as one of his associates.
We hadn’t seen another in maybe 20 years. Yet neither of us had changed – appreciably. We recognized one another instantly. Maybe vision and our minds have the greatest ability to recall who we’d been then to determine who we’d become.
The old bakery had changed hands. Clare’s mother seldom baked cakes anymore.
Our confab was brief. Not enough time to fully catch up then. Our respective lives’ obligations also didn’t permit any mutual carveouts elsewhere at another time to color in our divergences.
Writing this, I knew Patricia verged on retirement. We maintain spotty touch. Like me, she’s waiting to call it quits first before envisioning and planning the last third of life. We both share that trait. Secure the dream first. Then act.
I looked up Clare. From a New York attorney she’d become a Florida Realtor. Didn’t know what to make of this. Perhaps the presence she developed while litigating eased selling swampland to Northeasterners and Midwesterners.
I cannot conjecture on our combine’s last summer day together. One before Labor Day Weekend. Did the first Monday of September fall early? Or did six days pass before the season’s accepted conclusion?
Patricia was there. Where else would she have been? Maybe Clare joined us. Bella, immersed in high school, couldn’t have descended to rejoin us puny humans, could she? Tossing it around, let’s have Clare join us for the final time most of us would be together.
Wouldn’t some families have stretched Labor Day Weekend into a four-day trip somewhere? So, let’s figure our last day on the fields – by then the city would’ve closed and dismantled the pools until next summer. A Thursday maybe? No, there wouldn’t have been any feel of autumn in the air. The last days of August, the start of September, Greater Metropolitan New York would’ve remained toasty. It might’ve been sticky enough yet to easily sweat.
Nothing would’ve been remarkable about this last occasion. Just another several hours of frolic which followed incalculable ones before it. So normal as to be unexceptional.
We never would’ve known this was the end. Kids don’t feel any portents of change. We would’ve played as if it were just another day before tomorrow. Or as it were thanks to the holiday weekend, next week, when we’d play again. The elevation from junior high to senior high wouldn’t have crowded the forefront of any minds making the jump until after Labor Day.
What kid knows “impending” and “imminent”?
If any poignancy developed, this occurred way after the last batted ball smacked into a now long-lost mitt.
Our defile off the field towards our homes and dinner needed to have been done under the last reluctantly darkening sky of a final true summer early evening. It wasn’t sad. The walk only might’ve become so five decades later.
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