of the nuns from St. Pete’s phoned and asked me to go downtown and make some small
purchase for them. I was not allowed to refuse or make up an excuse - that would be
lying to a Sister. The errand usually meant washing and changing into clean clothes for
in those days looking presentable downtown was de rigeur. I complained to Grandma
how annoyed I was to be taken advantage of. She was understanding and once tried to
console me with: "Anyway, you’ll get a jewel in your crown for every time you go!"
At least I was safe from the good Sisters in the summer evenings when the
neighborhood boys - Ernie Kieffer, Leo “Skinny" McGann, his cousin Bernard
McGann, Francis “Penny" Shaffer, among others - gathered on Fayette Street to play
variations of hide-and-seek. Base was the sidewalk outside Rose Hill Cemetery’s
main gate, right across the street from my house. Most of the time we played kick-
the-can: A player threw an empty soup can as far up or down the street as he could
and while the player who was “It" retrieved the can and ran it back to base, the other
players scattered and hid. “It" had to look for the players; when he discovered one
he yelled “One, two three on So&So" and raced him back to the can. If “It" won the
race, the other player was “Out" and was the next one to be “It." If the discovered
player won the race, he threw the can and “It" had to fetch it back again. And so on.
Although the hiding range was held to a reasonable area, there were lots of trees,
alleys and backyards for hiding places. Only the cemetery was off limits. At nine
o’clock the curfew, a distant wailing siren, sounded, and although the law did not
demand that we then get off the streets, parents did.
Our neighborhood was also a pretty good place for Halloween antics. In the
cemetery, not far from the entrance, there grew a tall tree which in October dropped
its softball-size seed pods - we called them “hedge balls" - which we would gather
for the messy trick of splattering them on neighbors’ porches or wedging them
between the doorknob and doorframe. Those were the days before people offered
“treats" to forestall “tricks."
For us boys, ninth grade inevitably meant a flourishing of interest in girls,
although there was not much “steady" dating at our age. While school was in session
we could give vent to our crushes through flirtations, such as mine with Ann
Hausman, and some couples would walk home from school together. But in the
summer, in our neighborhood, we did not have those opportunities for there were no
girls, except for the teenage sister of one of the boys. Until Ginger arrived. Now
there was a babe - all the girl that was needed to ensure that the Fayette Street boys’
natural interests did not atrophy before school would resume. Ernie Kieffer was
particularly smitten and, for some reason nicknamed the girl “Bess" and smooched a
little with her on her front porch in the warm, dark evenings. But innocence prevailed.
Well, as far as I knew, but then in those days I didn’t know much.
Summer ended and so did my friendship with Ernie, for he moved to Detroit
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