Summer, Then and Now

Diego and Jackson have three more days of school until summer break. Both are reasonably excited to know the daily grind of book learnin' will shut down for a couple of months and their regimented days of walking in lines and staying quiet are coming to an end.

But they don't seem as excited as I remember feeling, and I think it's because they won't have the kind of amazing summer I used to have as a boy living at 18 Hartford Lane in White Plains, New York. As I remember it, we were given free rein of the surrounding woods and college campus. By "we" I mean our cast of characters: my brother, Mike, Miki Kasai, the Mahoney kids -- Guy and Richie, Jay Siegel, Brian and Henry Jackson, Brian Walker, Eddie Barham, and others from Whitewood Road, like John and Steven Ricci and Matt Karnes. There was Johnny Arndt, from the little colony at the end of our street. Their family had been there before anyone else, and were very different. There were three grown brothers -- Frank, John and Landi. They were like hillbillies compared to the rest of us, and I can recall Landi, the youngest brother, who had long, unkempt hair, patrolling the woods with his "squirrel rifle." Presumably he shot squirrels out of trees, then skinned, gutted and cooked them up.

Their parents -- Johnny's grandparents -- Frank Sr. and Katie, better known as "Oopa" and "Ooma," were Germans from the old country. They had thick accents and just one or two teeth between the two of them. The one time I was in their house -- I don't recall why I was there -- I was fascinated by how OLD everything felt, from the sepia-toned family portraits to the sagging, water-damaged ceilings. I'm sure, in retrospect, that the old house was on a list at the County Clerk's office of condemned buildings from the era before the developers bought up the strip of land now known as Hartford Lane.

Our little crew spent countless hours exploring the woods, which had become the property of Westchester Community College. Some of our favorite spots included a science building with a two headed fetal pig in a jar and two man-made ponds that were stocked with yellow perch and bass. Some of the large-mouth bass got pretty big, so that a mythology emerged . We told each other stories of a fish called "Bathtub." Bathtub was our Moby Dick -- the One That Got Away. Every time we snagged our line on a branch or rock, losing our tackle and bait in the process, it was blamed on the lethal jaws of Bathtub.

One of the ponds, behind the football field and down a nature trail, was our favorite. On it was the Fishing Lodge -- since burned down by some bored vandal or careless idiot -- built for Huntington Hartford, whose land this had once been. We used to climb up into the creaky structure and cast our line off the second floor porch. It was interesting to try and look past all the graffiti and used condoms and try to imagine what this building was like back in its heyday. We'd also discovered a hunting lodge, from the same era, nestled deeper in the woods.

Miki and I eventually even conquered the Hartford Mansion, now used by the college for storage. We jimmied our way in through a lower window into complete darkness, fumbling breathlessly around before finding a doorway into the house. There was graffiti on most of the walls, which told us we weren't the first to break in. Upstairs there was a room with dentist chairs in it. In the attic we found aging black and white photographs and papers we tried to decipher.

It was a fascinating expereince, and I loved the sense of adventure of my youth. I thank my parents for trusting me enough to have these adventures, and I'm saddened by the thought that it's unlikely I'll ever allow my own children the same amount of rope. I'm just not sure it's possible in the world as it is now.