Forays Into The Wider World

I

By the time I stepped off the ferry and returned to the mainland I was thirsty for news. The happenings of the greater world were concealed from us because we were living on an island. There was no communication other than the mail packets that came in and out daily. Those in charge might have tuned in radios that we didn't hear or read news that we didn't see.

I looked at automobiles that, unseen while we were on the island, just looked a little odd — different. I picked up a newspaper and read about a gruesome murder in Chicago that was first page horror. The new Studebacker brought me and my pals back to our known world and the accounts of the lipstick murders in another place evaporated from conversation and memory as easily as all other things that didn't affect us and our place back in Germantown.

The emphasis of isolation from external doings at Treasure Island made it more romantic. We were twelve. Treasure Island was a long journey from Germantown that took us over roads and their immediate views that we had never seen before. Our excitement was tempered with some apprehension because we were subject to the usual threats from older boys who felt obliged to visit at least a little misery on us, the rookies, for a little while. They did, for a little while, and the rest of the week was worth the eight dollars cost to be away from home (and an annoying older sister) at the Boy Scout camp.

A week in the life of a twelve year old is longer than, say, now, when I am much older and time seems to fly. A week at a summer camp was a long time to be absent from parents, my sister, and out of sight of any girls...and Studebakers. More importantly we had to catch up with baseball statistics that changed while we were away. Life goes on, even without us.

No one lay in wait to debrief us. We re-adjusted without someone supposing we were traumatized.

II

When I ran errands to the grocery store I would be reminded by my mother to buy particular brands of food. She had preferences. Her choices had a ring of infallibility in tastes so when she preferred Friehofer's bread over Bond bread, or Heinz's soup over Campbell's, or DelMonte peaches over brand X it must have been because they were better. She preferred the A & P over the Acme but the American Store over the Unity Frankford, though UF over Tartan and Pioneer. She even got fussy about ice cream and I knew her list meant serious choices. Breyer's was preferable over Sealtest or Abbott's or Dolly Madison. If she felt an odd urge usually reserved for the pregnant, she would send me up to Horter Street (about twelve miles on the anklometer that was sent to me for two Wheaties Boxtops and fifteen cents) seven blocks west, to get a pint of Jane Logan vanilla, though the Breyer's could be purchased down at the corner store. I think when she wanted Jane Logan's, it was raining. The butter at the table had to be Land O' Lakes and the milk from Witchwood Farms. Four milkmen from competing dairies had routes on our street. Their wagons were pulled by horses that shit everywhere. I soon became a veteran at picking canned and packaged food and didn't need to be reminded about what not to get. Wrong goods would be returned for right ones.

At Wildwood, the better seashore for nine year olds and fourteen year olds because its boardwalk was better than Ocean City's, I wasn't totally exempt from pulling my share. Vacations had quirks much like back home that we couldn't escape. I had to wear my tie and a coat-jacket when we went to the boardwalk or out to dinner. I had to help with clean up after meals. I had to make my bed. Vacation?

In the early morning the smell of salt air was refreshing. The smell of freshly baked sticky buns and cinnamon from the bakery next door was better. I would volunteer to go down for the day's supply.

Wildwood smelled better in the mornings than at night. Up on the boardwalk the cavalcade of tourists bustled along amidst the odors of dead clams and popcorn and of Noxema and their own sweat.

Mom usually shopped for tablestuffs. One day, after inventory she made a short list of bread and milk and a can of something. She gave me a dollar and sent me off to the grocery store.

I was away for the first time from Friehofers and Witchwood and DelMonte, her brands of obligation that I was trained to understand had no substitutes. The thought crossed my limited understanding that these choices of strange labels would be unacceptable. I hesitated. A small boy, at nine, was a veteran already, not only from bringing home unacceptable Flieschman's bread or Louella butter, but bad haircuts as well. What are these brands? I knew that when Lowell Thomas went to Tibet, he and the Dalai Lama shared Freihofer bread.

She unpacked the bag without comment except to remind me to lay the change on the table where it would stay until needed. The foreign bread went to its tin box, the foreign milk to the ice box, the foreign can to the cupboard. I was amazed at the absence of the hystrionics seen back home. Was it part of vacation's mellowing of spirit?

"Why are you standing around?," she barked. "Go on down to the beach."

III

Schooldays, if not remembered for some little virtues are totally wasted. If you can't record momentous epochs in a first person narrative, you've missed the real purpose of education. Give all adults an assignment. Write, in a thousand words or more, "What I learned in school." Shoot those who come up short.

A lot of girls and some of the boys would eventually be impressed into the National Honor Society for their academic excellence. It might be a stepping stone to the Key Club, Phi Beta Kappa, Rhodes Scholar, Doctor of Philosophy. They're credentials. But there's no guarantee of lasting success. Charles Whitman is the most famous Eagle Scout that I remember. His lifesaving and first-aid merit badges were washed away to irrelevence when he climbed a flight of stairs at the University of Texas and shot a lot of people dead. The virtue of honors is fragile at best.

The first day of school was the last day of equality. Things would be sorted out later. At one end would be one set of vocations: psychologists, lawyers, captains of industry, doctors, brokers. Thank God for uneven response. Others would have to pick up the garbage and wash cars and dig graves. But not yet. Alphabet blocks gave way to handwriting. Tables were recited by rote not unsimilar to other children's Baltimore catechism. Blackboards were the focal center of vision. Stories were read to us; of biblical epics, of American heroes, of fairy tales. The routine was protected from both boredom and overintensity by recess and lunch and recess again.

Good teachers arranged outward-bound expeditions. The first was to the arboretum. We would walk to the park and be taught by our teacher and by observation under a willow tree. Ticks and spiders would drop off the tree onto the shoulders and laps of girls. At a later time we would be bussed into the city to Independence Hall to touch the Liberty Bell and to poke around somewhat ignorantly in the place where our country was conceived. Then we would hike up to Betsy Ross' house, the central shrine of the flag we saluted in the morning. Afterward we were taken to Ben Franklin's grave. He lay under a slab on which pennies were dropped in ritual tribute. Some people suspected that he dropped more than a few pennies in places where other people lay. We weren't privy to that kind of scandal. Now imbued with childish piety we entered Old Christ Church. Boys shoved and pushed their way to George Washington's pew. I sat on the same spot on the same bench that his ass and a million others afterward did.

We made other field trips. We went to the zoo to see the animals that weren't allowed in the arboretum. For the most part they sat dolefully in their cages. We were encouraged by vendors to buy peanuts to feed the elephants and the monkeys. We would call to them and talk one-sided conversations that we had mastered with our own pets and our teddy-bears and imaginary invisible friends. They ignored us for the most part. The carnivors might wish us to come closer. The monkeys and gorillas would do naughty things. The smell and the sight of excrement was pervasive.

Museums invited us to antiquity, to discovery, to the display of individual talents that belonged to masters...known and anonymous.

It's not in a class with the Hermitage or the Louvre or some others but the Philadelphia Museum of Art has some precious stuff in its collections. I liked "Promethius Bound" and "Saint Sebastian" and "Waterloo Bridge." When I first saw the "Bridge" I thought that it was slop. By accident I stepped back and saw it "in a better light." Little kids didn't see much gore in my time so Promethius and Sebastian, accepted exceptions, were "cool." I wasn't a critic then. I'm not a critic now. I do appreciate things that "critics" don't have to try to win me over to. Sometime in the nineteen forties our teachers took us to the museum and didn't complicate the day with prejudicial commentary. For some boys the highlight of these expeditions might have been mischief: stuffing paper in the bowl to clog the toilet or hiding from the group to exasperate our guide. I was capable of that and I did that but I also saw Promethius Bound and Saint Sebastian martyred...and the Waterloo Bridge wrapped in fog and I never forgot them.

The Museum of Natural History had displays of deer and buffalo and wolves and eagles and apes, all stuffed by taxidermists. I thought I saw one move. The beasts, once ahoof, afoot or aflight, were killed by the curators so little kids could see them, not in the cages of zoos, but in a recreated environment. In the long run, they saved money. They didn't have to feed their exhibits or clean-up after them. And the live ones out in the zoo weren't much more active.

There were three mummies on display. Boys saw them as the best attraction in the house. Lecturers couldn't compete with the mummies. They're not supposed to. When we grew-up we could come back to hear the lectures. And of course we'd take another peep at the mummies. The mummies were spooky...but "cool." Ryder Haggard put the effect of our curiousity into the right words. "I thrilled with horror."

Somewhere between the museums of art and natural history is a little place dedicated only to the work of the French Sculptor, Auguste Rodin. "The Thinker" sits out front, pondering something. We thought he was sitting on a toilet. The great bronze doors to the museum commemorated Dante's hell in bold relief. The portals of the inferno were fascinating to us and they confirmed our belief in hell. We saw the pictures. Just inside the little museum was a marble piece: "The Kiss." Oooh! This one got a lot of attention, some serious examination and we (boys) judged it the best work in the museum. The rest of the exhibits of the great chisler fell from our interest. Later examiners with investigative powers looked at "The Kiss" a little more critically and determined Rodin didn't do it. The embarrassed curators threw it out of the museum. It might have gone to the curb with the trash but someone with good taste not unlike my own but with more influence shipped it up to Memorial Hall (the old Art Museum). Now it sits in the grand foyer in solitary grandeur. Anyway, I thought it was a better work than The Thinker on the can or that other rough stuff that Rodin hacked out. That's a boy's opinion influenced by hormones. That sort of rationale has saved the race.

IV

"Children under twelve...." At the movies it means a cheaper admission price: a dime. On the train it was a nickel as opposed to a full fare. Children under twelve got breaks. When you become twelve you're treated like people who are forty. I'll have a beer and vote Republican (in nine more years).

The nickel for the train or the dime for the movie came from allowance or was paid directly by mom so when kids turned twelve they might announce it with some pride but their parents are trying to save money so they lie to cashiers. We get sermons all our life and then mom cheats. "He's not twelve." No, he's thirteen and a half and still underfed so that parents can save a nickel here and a dime there.

Major league baseball wasn't nickel and dime stuff. Children under twelve paid seventy-five cents. Height, weight, or a cracked voice would end that. Ex-kids would pay a buck-thirty to root for their heroes.

When I first went to Shibe Park I was in tow with other kids. We got free passes to the bleachers: cheap seats in left center field. Our sponsors covered the "cheap" appelation with a title that made us feel important. We were in "the knot-hole gang." Anyway, the bleachers were good enough for a while because going to ballgames hadn't yet taken on the intensity of religion. We spent a lot of time running around like small savages.

Once I got one of those seats that beer-drinking Republicans paid a dollar and thirty-cents for I didn't want to go back to the knot-hole.

Shibe Park was not in our neighborhood. It was a far-away place. I had gone there to watch big-time baseball with friends and with friends and chaperones. Those people must have been into pain. Look around sometime at them and their charges. Once a kid reaches the age of reason a chaperone is his fool.

I was somewhere along in Junior High School when my parents gave me the okay to go to Shibe Park alone to a night game. Considering my track record under the charge of others I think that was a wonderful concession. When I was about nine my uncle took me from our summer home in Ocean City over to Steel Pier in Atlantic City. He was a teenager with different ideas about fun than mine. I lost him on the pier and he went back home alone on the trolley car. I followed a few hours later oblivious to the anguish my family suffered and to the smacking around that he got for leaving me alone. Then there was the time that our YMCA camp crowd was taken to Riverview Beach for a day long excursion. That was a boat trip. LeRoy Reed and I lost the group at the dock and while the others were secure in their beds that night we begged carfare to get home.

In these instances my parents thoughts went full cycle from fear of a Charlie Ross replay while I was missing to rage at my return. I didn't quite get the same treatment as the Prodigal Son or young George Washington.

I guess I was a proven survivor. I guess there was a small conference to determine if I could be on my own to go to a ballgame. It was an important step. I could sit next to authorities who would tell me of earth-moving sagas: men who saw Jimmy Foxx hit a legendary home-run over the flag-pole in center field. Every man who sat next to me told me that story of the awesome hit. Was anyone elsewhere that day? I reckoned several hundred thousand men saw that hit. Others told me of an eccentric pitcher named "Rube" who left the mound one day to chase fire-engines down Lehigh Avenue. They all saw Babe Ruth and Christie Matthewson and the other gods and immortals who had long since hung up their gloves. Connie Mack survived them all and still pontificated from the dug-out. They taught me etiquette: to stand proudly during the playing of our National Anthem. To boo the umpires arrival, to boo the visitors, to boo decisions unfavorable to our home team, to boo our home team if they lost. To cheer whatever hits our guys made.

When I listened to the ball-games on the radio I heard distinctive voices in the background. They were hecklers and other loud-mouthed rooters. Now I sat with them and I picked them out. I had heard them. Now I knew them. They were celebrities.

In those days of lesser evils I would come home from night games alone on the trolley car and the bus and quietly tip-toe up the stairs to bed. At breakfast the next morning mom was sure to ask "What time did you get in?"

I dunno!

One, two o'clock I guess which upon analysis would have been unacceptable. I dunno, and it was left at that. It was far better than a noisy arrival that would have disturbed their sleep.

My parents were easing me into the wider world a little.