THE SOUNDS OF SUMMER

A TV weather person reported that this was going to be a really big year for Cicadas that have been “sleeping” for 17 years or so and that we would hear their “songs” which is the unique sound they make calling other Cicadas for a date...And then I thought about crickets and the music of my summer nights…

…I hear nothing, not even rain now going to bed in my air conditioned, soundproof apartment high above the street that was once a grove of hundreds of orange trees.  In the summers when I was a kid all the bedroom windows in our cottage were open but the breezes did little to cool me.  However, they did carry the chirp of countless crickets in the pines surrounding our house.  I can still hear their rhythmic love songs in my imagination as I would lie awake trying to figure if there was a pattern to their calls but I never found one.  It would take several years later in high school biology class to learn their purpose in nature.  My home was about 2 miles from our town and half a mile from the state highway.  We had only a few neighbors but plenty of crickets “in the woods” as grandmother Ethel would call our backyard.

And there were other sounds that drifted into the darkness of my room.  Unlike the oaks in our backyard forest the pine trees made a “swishing” sound when a hot wind blew through them.  And when their whispers grew loud, I knew another thunderstorm was on its way.  Pine trees were great to listen to, but not at all good for climbing.  Another sound in my summer concert that I would listen to each night was the horn of a freight train that made a nightly run through our town.  The tracks were miles away, but some night if the wind was just right I  could only hear the clacking of the steel wheels and even the puffing of steam.  And each night as it sounded its melancholy alert I would wonder where it was coming from and going.  Trains always fascinated me.  Making sounds that rode the wind.  Sometimes when the night was very clear and still, I could hear the drone of the glass factory several miles away.  Their behemoth glass machines hummed another tune as they produced a never ending volcano of moltant glass. 

 We learned in school that the famed Carl Sandburg once visited Millville and later wrote about our little factory town...

 

"Down in southern New Jersey, they make glass. 

    By day and by night, the fires burn on in Millville

     and bid the sand let in the light." 

 

And then there were the storms.  I always listened for a far off rumble of thunder. I was afraid of storms.   I think because every time one came by my grandmother made me come in from playing just because the sky was turning purple and black.  I would protest and she always would say, “You don’t want to get struck by lightning, do you?  I knew a boy when I was young who was hit by a bolt because he didn’t come in when his grandmother called him.”  

As the booms became louder, flashes would light my bedroom and each time they got brighter and I got more scared until I put my head under the pillow.  Usually, my mom would quietly come into my room and lower the windows so the rain wouldn’t come in.  I always pretended I was asleep because she got mad when I was awake after my bedtime.  She worried about me got some reason not getting “enough” sleep.  I always wondered enough for what?  And then the rain would pound on our roof fast and hard and then slow.  The rumble got farther away until it was gone.  And soon my sounds of summer faded.  My Summer concert dissolved into the darkness, and I slept until a cawing blackbird woke me to a morning that smelled good…somehow my windows were open. 

As I came in the kitchen mother would always ask me, “Morning…did you get a good sleep?”  And I chirped, “Yes mom… I got a lot.   And she was satisfied once again.

 

 

WEARING OF THE GREEN

There were many mysteries in my life growing up...and why we observed some traditions in my family was one.  For instance, we weren’t Catholic but we had fried salmon cakes every Friday night during lent, “Can't hurt", my grandmother would reply when I asks why? And as she did countless times, she would remind me, "your mother was christened a Catholic" – I wasn't sure what that meant...and it remained a heavenly mystery. Another festive occasion we celebrated every year was Saint Patrick’s Day and we weren’t Irish either.  I pondered this thought about this and looked it up in my encyclopedia because we didn't learn much about feasts for many Saints in the 4^th Methodist Sunday school class.  When I ask mom why we did this – she said, “Because it’s fun!”  That was good enough for me as a nine-year-old.

On Saint Paddy’s Day, my mother picked out a green shirt for me to wear to school and she wore her green sweater to work at the glass plant.  I was sure that she would bring me something good to eat wrapped in a green napkin when she came home because she always saved me her treat from her lunchtime holiday parties.  After school that day the kitchen smelled much different – it always did on holidays.  And this afternoon was no different, there was the unmistakable scent of cabbage in the air as my grandmother presided over her version of an “Irish” meal. (BTW...cabbage and Brussel sprouts were not my favorites - my mom made me eat them.  That night we had bland for dinner.  Corned beef which was “traditional” my mother reported.  And for years I wondered where the corn was?  Boiled potatoes and a great pile of cabbage were piled on my plate.  I always marveled at that combination – as it seemed to taste mostly like hot water.  All in all, when I sat down to this meal, I was very happy that this holiday was only one day each year...and I didn’t ask for my usual seconds that night. 

After clearing the dishes my mom presented me with a semi-squashed green cupcake that she had stowed in her pocketbook at lunchtime. 

 "It's home made from one of the girls", she said, and then with a kiss on my cheek wished me the “luck of the Irish.”  And that summed up our tribute to the patron Saint and famed snake chaser of the Emerald Isle.

 Even now after so many St. Patrick days...I still don’t think eating cabbage is all that lucky. (Note: Decades later by son gave me an Ancestry DNA test kit and to my surprise I found that I am a wee bit of Irish after all! And I decided that from now on I would eat Brussel sprouts and cabbage without compliant.

 

BE MY VALENTINE?

Valentine’s Day is here again.  I think of what that day has meant to me over the years…and then I’m in Mrs. Russell’s third grade classroom once again at the R.M. Bacon School and it’s 1952.

The milestones in a kid’s year are made of holidays – the big one is Christmas followed by Easter and then there are the minor ones – but most still have residual benefits - usually involving candy.  Valentines’ Day for a third grader was a minor one for sure – but one of the few that also brought major worries.  Getting ready for this day devoted to puppy love (the only kind of love known in elementary school) started a few days before the 14th. 

The First Worry - Do I make my valentines and seem like a real cheapskate?  Or do I get some from the 5 &10 store?  I opt for a compromise: I would not use all of my allowance and just get the least expensive ones that came in a booklet.  I just had to cut them out.  Plus, I would ask for some of mom's envelopes to insure the confidentiality of this ritual.

The Second Worry - Who do I give them to?  My mom suggested that I give everyone a card but I rejected that immediately.  (I didn’t consider everyone a “friend”, especially Warren who called me “warthog”( I was a bit chubby but still offended by this).  And so I spent an hour looking at the various cards and thinking about which should go to which friend.  One could not send a mushy heart with an arrow through it to a guy; nor a baseball playing bear my secret crush.  These were heavy decisions for a third grader and a miscue could affect the rest of my school year and beyond.  After much thought I decided that Mary Jane would get a special one as She was the girl  I liked this week.  She was my imaginary "girlfriend” – but of course she didn’t know that she was!  Nor would any girl ever know because of my fear that they would laugh when I revealed my secret.  This changed several grades later.  Ah, Mary Jane…pigtails like thick ropes; thick glasses, probably from eye strain doing countless math problems and klutzy well worn saddle shoes -she was a compulsive recess rope jumper.   Yes, love at any age is blind.  And for me MJ was perfect plus she helped me do my homework.  I finished addressing each work of cartoon art and added what I believed was a very elegant touch – I taped a penny candy heart, with those faint hard to read messages, on each envelope.  Be Mine?...True Love…Yours Truly…Hugs & Kisses.  Not exactly my sentiment for everyone but nobody I knew ever “read” their candy, they just gobbled it.

Valentine's day dawned and I trudged to school with my valentine’s in a bag for safe keeping.  The day dragged by because we had to wait until the last few minutes of class to celebrate.  Mrs. Russell picked one of her “pets” to be the Mailgirl; Brenda always got the good jobs.  She made her way up and down the aisles delivering our tokens of friendship. And our party began.  We each got a pink cupcakes baked by Mrs. Russell.  Before we left for home we opened our "mail".  (Many years and a few loves later - I realize that even in third grade there was a  “pecking order” forming.)  We all looked and counted the number of cards each of us got.  Some got only a few and they would be forever relegated to the sidelines and be the watchers of others rivaling in the joys of life.  The “popular” kids had a pile of valentines on their desks.  They were the few who everyone wanted, no, needed as their friend.  To be those with more cards was what most of us would always yearn for as we grew up.

Valentine’s day in third grade, a taste of what love and life would bring to us all sooner or later  – for some a life of joy and belonging and for others, just lonely nights and some regrets.