Author: Sam McManus

When we were kids my sister and I would have all kinds of fun during our summers. First off, they started earlier than the public school kids because we went to a private school that was always done the first week of June instead of near its end. That sometimes made for issues when we would go to the Gallery downtown and the guards would want to kick us out for skipping school. It was hard to get across that it was cool, that we were legal so chill out.

Then there was the library. Our nearest public library was down on Baltimore Avenue, which was about 12 blocks away from our street, with the building itself directly across the avenue, so it was fun trying to get over there during heavy traffic. With our mom working every day, though, we had to make the trek on our own once we got old enough to do so. I remember the graffiti on the building more than anything else. It stood out like a beacon, and it wasn’t until much later that I realized it was planned and organized graffiti. Well, most of it anyway.

I recall trips to Dutch Wonderland when we would pile into the old Chevy Nova and rattle our way down the turnpike to a place that in retrospect wasn’t much larger than the block we lived on. But it was like magic, seeing Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble, going on all those rides and getting to spend time with our dad. Those are the few memories we actually have with him before the divorce.

Then there were all the mishaps. I broke my wrist one year and my sister spent most of the time it was healing laughing at me. To top it off I got a blue cast that was incredibly difficult to sign with marker, so I didn’t even get to have it decorated like most others I saw. The time I busted my head falling down the stairs at Nana’s house ranks up there too, which also found my sister laughing at me. It seemed like that’s what she spent a lot of the summertime doing, but really it was only those two times, and the laughing was good-natured. At least I thought it was. Continue reading “Summer Memories”