In my pre-teen and early teens, the highlight of the fall was new school clothes. The late fifties was a time of fads; we all wanted to have what the other kids had, and the other kids wanted what we had. September was my favorite time of year as a child. Meeting my new teachers. Meeting the neighborhood kids at the end of the block…
When I grew up in the 1950s, there was no such thing as a play date. We kids roamed the neighborhood backyards or up and down the side streets to visit the other kids, roller skate, ride our bikes, or hang out inside on rainy days playing Monopoly or Chinese Checkers. Most of the families knew each other; the mothers knew every kid, and we…
When I was four years old going on five, we lived in a top floor apartment in Newark, New Jersey – me, Mom, Dad, and my baby brother Stuart. I attended nursery school at the YMHA near our building and graduated summa cum laude (just kidding!). Next, I entered kindergarten at the public school at the bottom of the block. I walked down the hill…
My hometown friend Betty Ann (not her actual name) was a year ahead of me in school. As far as I know, all she ever wanted was to enjoy her cozy apartment, take long walks into town and back, hold a steady job, study and listen to opera, design and sew her own clothing, and pursue her favorite pastime, correspondence with friends and classmates who…
ACT ONE I never went to overnight camp, but for the summer between eighth and ninth grade, thirteen going on fourteen, my parents signed me up for a month-long teen program at the YMHA in the next town over, Elizabeth. You could say it was a coming of age experience; I had never been away from home in the summer. Staying with my grandparents didn’t…
🐸 Did you ever dissect a frog? I did, in tenth grade biology, a mandatory subject in Linden High. I loved school and all my teachers, but when it came to geometry, I faltered, and shied away from taking calculus or physics in my senior year. I didn’t mind biology and could understand it well enough, starting with amoebas, but when I realized that lab…
The three assignments I remember most from high school English are the classic short stories by two famous authors you know—The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe and The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County by Mark Twain—and a third one written in 1948 by 31-year-old Shirley Jackson, The Lottery. I must have been 14 or 15 when I first read The Lottery, the…
In this year of the pandemic, our younger generations will miss the opportunity to attend school in the ways we took for granted—reporting to homeroom every morning, a classroom for each subject, cafeteria lunch breaks, assemblies, interscholastic sports, debate tournaments, proms, field trips, so much more. In my junior high days in the 1950s, we complained about the red romper suits required for gym. Miss…
I had a BFF, Phyllis, in my Linden, New Jersey childhood. I grew to 5’ 6” but she leveled off at five feet, if that. We went through elementary, Hebrew School, junior high, and into high school together. I often stayed over at her house, where she shared a bedroom with her younger sister. They had an energetic little brother who we considered a pain,…
I was the victim of a scam in junior high. The library was my safe haven. On the way home from school, I stopped in at the main branch on Henry Street to get a start on my homework. I wasn’t on a sports team, not my thing. I didn’t stay after school for glee club rehearsals—I failed the audition. I wasn’t part of the…
When I was a high school junior in 1961, my classmate, Barbara, was killed instantly in an automobile accident. The driver was her friend, a senior with a new license. It shocked me, a sixteen year old, that someone I knew died. Even my four grandparents were still alive. I didn’t know Barbara well, other than that she was smart, friendly, and destined to do…
The seasons of the year in New England are distinct, demarcating almost exactly at the three-month mark. Each asserts its strong identity, worthy of poetry. In New Jersey, spring comes earlier, fall arrives later, playing games with the calendar. Tonight, cozy in front of a crackling fire, I muse at the moonlit winter scene outside my window. Memory transports me to another winter, sixty years ago,…
Linden, New Jersey is surrounded by the industrialized New Jersey Turnpike and the congested Garden State Parkway. Most know it by the huge Bayway Oil Refinery visible from the Turnpike as they pass through the state from somewhere else to somewhere else. But to me, Linden was my hometown from 1949 to 1972, the scene of my first day of kindergarten with Miss Standish at…
My dad spent a portion of his weekly paycheck on books for me and my little brother Stuart. If household funds were tight, my mom implored him to go to the library instead, but my dad had no will power when it came to buying books. He followed the publishing news to find out which new titles won the Caldecott or Newbery Medals, that brushed gold circle on the cover with embossed impressions for young fingers to touch…
Fall is the beginning of time for me. I was born on August 30th, and each new year of my life coincided with the opening of school. The night before the first day of school, I set out my clothing after looking through my drawers and closet a thousand times. One year, I had enough inventory to wear a different outfit each day for two…