a shotgun approach

Three years old, three different homes/Dad looking for work

Grandparents providing food

Raw rhubarb and sugar/Caster Oil/Friar's Balsam

Apartment by the lake/my parents the janitors for rent deal

Dad off to war/School and new friends

Morning 'til night in the summer climbing trees and garages.

Acorn and chestnut fights, pea shooters, balsa wood gliders

Swimming by the No Swimming signs ironically anchored to the lifeguard stands

Begging empty pop bottles from sunbathers at two cents each bought all kinds of goodies and admission to the show. Four hours of films, serials, cartoons, newsreels, previews and live Cheerio yo-yo demonstrations and contests. Exiting with a free black and white comic book to hide with under the covers at night

Orange crates, from the fruit and vegetable store, used for anything the mind could imagine and when moms weren't around, bonfires on the sand

The smell of burning leaves at the curbs in fall and the smell of other things as the bread, coal and milk wagons rolled by pulled by bored horses. The old man with a grindstone on a wheeled cart, ringing his bell to sharpen knives

Lilac bushes that made the air so pungent

Butcher shop with a sawdust floor and carcasses hanging next to customers

Free bones for the dogs

The streetcars with two conductors and a stove for winter

Radio adventure serials every night after school

Emptying the ice box drain tray and always spilling always water

Ashes from the furnace and jacket heater on the sidewalk in winter

Coal gas in the front hall from the furnace

Letters to dad my piano lessons

Getting letters from dad and uncles, all in different branches of the armed forces

Eating lunch in the back of the store where mom worked

A paper route that allowed me to sell the extras for three cents each and keep the money

First pair of long pants/I could go on forever

It was a storybook existence and if I could go back, you wouldn't see me for dust.