Summer Daze Not Purple Haze

Before a summer job, before a driver’s license, before girls (sort of), was the summer of seventh grade. It was 1969 - the year of Woodstock and the summer of love. If it weren’t for the news coverage I would have missed them both. I did own a pair of button down purple hip hugger bell bottoms but that was as radical as it got in the Carroll household that summer.

My interest that summer was in filling hours of idle time with my friends playing games, eating bad food and wishing we were 17 years old (New Jersey’s painful driving age).

Lacking the ability to text my friends, I would wait until 9 a.m. to phone them because my mother insisted it was improper to call earlier. Eventually I would hook up with my two buddies Gary Costa and Bill Garrabrandt.

A typical day would start with a game of three-way stickball against the wall of a local school. The outcome was predictable because Bill always won but it filled the time which is a theme you will see repeated in this column.

In “the old days” eating lunch out with friends was never considered. Fresh cold cuts from a local deli on a Kaiser roll or the classic peanut butter and jelly on Wonder bread were standard lunches that could be hustled at any one of our houses. The three of us could polish off a half gallon of milk in one sitting although Tang was the drink of choice at the Costa home.

Our afternoon routine usually involved a trek for dessert. We might hit the local candy store where thirty cents could buy three Hershey bars. A more adventurous trip would be a bike ride to Howard Johnson’s restaurant which sat in a rest area along the Garden State Parkway. Ho Jo’s as we called it featured 28 flavors of ice cream and a weird mix of travellers and locals. It was a longer ride from home but it filled the time.

Now well fed, we would cruise the nearby Brookdale Park looking for girls. If we came upon a pack of girls (and they always travelled in packs) we would enchant them with our cycling abilities and charm as we rode bicycles with no hands and shouted at them. This mating ritual sometimes led to an invitation to hang out and fill the time until dinner.

None of our families ate dinner at the same time so we could scout the best meal or meals in advance. If Gary’s mother was cooking a great meal we would get ourselves invited. If we got excused from the table quickly, we could score a second dinner at my house an hour later and so on.

I was surrounded by NY Yankee fans so most evenings were spent in someone’s basement or front porch watching the game. A bag of Wise potato chips and a full bottle of Brookdale Soda each would get us through the ninth inning.

A ten o’clock curfew meant I rarely saw the end of any Yankee games because the Mets dominated the television in my house. I’d then finish off the day with a bowl of cereal and some Johnny Carson with the folks.

Then it was off to bed - satisfied that I had filled the time in more summer day.

Waiting For Walk-In Temperature

My swimming pool reached walk-in temperature this week. Walk-in is not a precise measurement but it’s easy to identify. If you walk into the pool and wince, shriek or balk after the second step then the pool is not ready. If you walk straight and say ahhh – you have reached it.

Living in Texas has certainly spoiled me. Only hot tubs reach walk-in temperatures “up north.” Swimming pools are reserved for the hopeful, the hearty and the foolish. For the first month of summer the hopeful owners clean out the dirt, leaves and occasional dead animals before filling their pools with icy cold tap water. The hearty ones then jump into the chilly but invigorating waters while the foolish ones wait until late August for the water to reach 75 degrees. The hopeful ones then drain the pool after Labor Day determined to use the pool more than five times next season and so on.

Growing up I never would have imagined that I would someday have a pool in the yard. Above ground pools were a luxury that only two of my friends had. The rest of us just waited and hoped we get an invite on hot summer afternoons.

The biggest obstacle wasn’t parents, it was older siblings. We would ride bikes across town to my friend Jack Granger’s house only to find an older brother and friends settled in. Like lions at the kill, sharing was not an option. We just hung around until they finished.

My other friend Steven only had younger sisters so the chances of getting a dip were better. The problem with Steven’s pool was the gang of kids who hung out there. They often combined my two biggest fears –diving and heights into an even more dangerous activity. Using a ladder, the kids would climb onto the garage roof and then leap from the roof into the 5’ swimming pool. The cannonball dive was the preferred technique although a few good ones would quickly drop the pool down to 4’ making it riskier for the last few kids. Most of our time though was spent playing Marco Polo or beach ball baseball.

Our family’s cooling off destination was called the East Hanover (NJ) Swim Club. It was modest 100 yards by 200 yards and could hold about 5,000 people on a busy day. The smell of crinkle cut French fries, chlorine and Coppertone permeated the air while sixties rock and roll thumped out of the jukebox. Today, a corporate park sits where we used to swim with no historical signs to mark the spot.

I never intended to own a pool in Allen but it sort of came with the house. For years our pool resembled a water amusement park with furious games of water basketball, diving competitions and underwater aerobics. Inflatable toys and diving sticks littered our yard and noodles surrounded the pool. Those years of “look at me-look at me” have now mellowed into the afternoon float and the evening dip.

I was reminded of those more hectic afternoons in the pool last week when the LeForte family of five came to visit. Out came the inflatables and the pool toys and I even heard “look at me” a few times. They only had to be reminded of a few pool rules: no running, no potato chips in the pool and please stay off of the garage roof.

It Looked Like a Classic To Me

It was a weak moment. I had been driving by it for several weeks on my way to Elkhart (Indiana) and barely slowed down. Then one day I stopped.
Assuming the price was out of my range, I walked up to the trailer and knocked on the flimsy door.
“How much for the old Buick?” I asked.

“I’m asking $400 and it’s in running condition,” he said. “You won’t find another one like it. Not much else I can tell you about it.”

His hard sell tactic worked and I bought myself a faded green 1953 Buick Special.

Let me insert a little background information here. I had owned a 1957 Chevy through college in the late 1970’s and wanted to relive that fun ten years later with this old Buick. It was one of several miscalculations I made in purchasing the roadside dream.

A 1953 Buick 4-door sedan weighs 4,315 pounds and is a 17.5’ long. Once it rumbled up to 55 mph the only thing that could stop it would be a 53 Cadillac or a train.

If the car seemed a little rough during the test drive, I failed to notice. After all it was a classic, a collectable. I might even drive it in the Mishawaka Fourth of July Parade someday.

I stopped for gas along the way home and was disappointed when the car wouldn’t restart. I called the previous owner who offered little sympathy and muttered something about flooding the engine.
I opened the hood and stared blankly at the engine. It was an inline or straight 8 engine that was massive by today’s standards. I pulled off the peculiar air filter and promptly spilled motor oil on the engine. It was my first experience with an oil bath air filter.

The car eventually started and I drove the behemoth home to show my wife. She was more bewildered than angry and I later agreed that calling her before buying the car may have been a good idea.

Over the next two weeks I came to realize that owning a 1953 Buick Special was not a good idea either. It smelled badly of motor oil that had been spilled on the old carpet. The exhaust system was exhausted and the brakes were shot. The car had great curb appeal – it just drove like a tank.
I swallowed my pride and parked the car out front on our country road. A few days later a gentleman and his son rolled away with a $300 bargain.

The lesson in all of this is that one man’s dream car may be another man’s nightmare. Leave the classic car restoration to the experts or at least to the guys with lots of tools in their garage.
Speaking of classic cars, the Foundation for Allen Schools hosts Allen’s fourth annual Customs and Classic Car Show this Saturday at the Village of Allen Shopping Center outside Dick’s Sporting Goods store.

The show, which is free to the public, is a drive-in event for custom and classic car owners who compete in numerous categories including a People’s Choice Award. Bring the family and cruise the car show on May 21 from 10 am – 2 pm (weather permitting).