INDIANA INTERSTATE

In my senior year of high school, I signed up with a progressive Jewish youth organization for a summer work program in Evanston, Illinois — our mission, to build a storage barn for a fresh air camp.

I had never spent the summer away from home. I packed a box of stationery and postage stamps to write to my parents and to my high school boyfriend, Terry.

Going away then meant completely leaving what you knew. Maybe there would be a pay phone at the camp for outgoing calls. Just thinking of mail call got me anxious — would I receive a letter from home or leave empty-handed? Would Terry write me twice a week or find new interests, and lose interest in me?

My parents drove me from Linden, New Jersey to the chartered bus waiting at Port Authority for the trip across the Midwest with other college-bound teenagers, mostly from New York and Long Island.

I was sure they all knew each other from high school or Hebrew school or summer camp as they greeted each other in the waiting area. Spirits seemed high despite some tearful goodbyes.

I felt neither high-spirited nor tearful. I simply felt alone.

And I couldn’t figure out what I was doing here. I had a boyfriend back home, but he was off to work as Head Arts and Crafts Counselor at an overnight camp in the Catskills. I had listed the work program on my college application as a volunteer activity that may have helped me get accepted. I dare not cancel it.

The program brochures emphasized safety first. No teens would use power tools or work on the roof. This satisfied my parents enough to give me the okay. Bring leather construction boots and work gloves.

I have a black and white photo of the departure, my dad and I standing together, him with a proud grin, me with a strained smile. He handed me a twenty-dollar bill, “You may need this for food along the way.”

After my parents left the terminal, I felt the weight of a decision that could not be changed settle in the pit of my stomach.

The group leaders, a husband and wife named Jules and Julie, told us to finish up with our goodbyes and board the bus. We piled in and took random seats, boys mostly sitting with boys and girl with girls. I found an aisle seat next to another girl who had claimed the window.

We headed west through Pennsylvania, had dinner at a Howard Johnson’s, then settled in for the overnight leg towards Ohio.

Walking to the restroom at the back of the bus, I noticed a boy and girl cuddled up and holding hands. I felt a pang of jealousy hit me hard in the chest. They get to spend the whole summer together, whether they made new friends or not.

A few hours later, my seatmate, Leah, sprung on me — somewhere on the Pennsylvania Turnpike heading into Ohio darkness — how her mom just died from cancer and that her dad decided she needed to get away for the summer.

I had no idea what to say to a girl my age who lost her mother to a terrible disease. How could she even say the ugly word?

I had never lost anyone. Her revelation froze me to my seat. All four of my grandparents were alive. I was well-protected. Why wasn’t she?

I prayed that she wouldn’t break down in tears. If only I could turn around then and there and go back home to my own mother.

The engine labored on through the night. Leah didn’t say much else and fell asleep leaning against the window. Some on the bus were speaking softly, others splayed out uncomfortably, trying to sleep in their narrow seats.

I sat up straight, sleepless, speechless, and full of regret at leaving my hometown for the summer. I imagined the worst, receiving a letter from Terry saying, “I’ve had some time to think, this is a good time to tell you it’s over.”

As the morning sun began to rise, I saw the tall buildings of Gary, Indiana in the far distance, rising up within an orange glow surrounded by flat plains on either side, horizon to horizon.

I had never seen such a sight in northern Jersey, a densely populated area with cities and towns contiguous along the length of Route One.

I had made it through sixteen hours to a strangely backlit and spare landscape. A sense of excitement rapidly churned my stomach. What was next?

The bright sunlight streaking through the windows soon awakened most everyone on the bus. The leaders announced that we would arrive at the camp in an hour and that breakfast would be waiting for us.

They passed out mimeographed sheets with instructions about sleeping arrangements at the camp and the schedule of daily activities, including weekend excursions. A visit to the Chicago Institute of Art. An evening at the Ravinia Festival, the Chicago equivalent of Tanglewood. A tour of the B’hai Temple. A day trip to the University of Wisconsin campus in Madison.

Some kids in the back started the chorus that helps time go by on long bus trips, “A hundred bottles of beer in the wall, a hundred bottles of beer, if one of those bottles should happen to fall, ninety-nine bottles of beer in the wall.…”

Leah looked towards me with a smile as she joined the bottle countdown that would propel us to our destination. I felt my voice rise with the rest. If she could sing and smile in the morning light, then I would too.

The long, unsettled night on the bus distanced me from all things home. The people in my life had no idea about Leah, miter boxes and rotary sanders, or outdoor concerts near Lake Michigan shores.

Launched, my own summer of ’62. And at the end of the summer, my eighteenth birthday.