Getting Clubbed

59

At the start of my Senior year of High School, I was already shaken by the surprise disowning, but I knew by returning to school I'd return to the continuity and friendships which had sustained me during the previous years' rockiness in my home life.

Right off the bat, the guidance counselor was pulling aside each of my friends one-by-one over the first two weeks to talk with them about their college options and provide suggestions; they would talk excitedly about these meetings and what they were going to pursue. Having entered High School with the goal of going to the Air Force Academy as a stepping stone to the Astronaut program, that goal had been dashed when I discovered that, in order to get into any military service, one needed to first pass a physical. Given my 'situation', I couldn't imagine how I was going to do that and my life long thoughts of becoming an astronaut disappeared. I never imagined doing anything with computers in my childhood, but by dumb luck in my Freshman year I had stumbled upon one and by my Sophomore year I was a 'Computer Programming Genius', so some felt. It was now clear to me that I would, of course, be going into the computer field, maybe even taking it by storm...! Suffering from a bit of ego are we? Yes, but not unjustifiably given how Zack Hatch had been touring me to various computer fairs in my previous years and people showing-up at the grocery to request my help with their computers.

Back in seventh grade, when two of my best friends moved away with the turn of the calendar year, I got a little nervous about losing friends and began the new year talking to my friends about starting a 'Club', we could come up with little rules and by laws, but essentially I just wanted to make sure no other friends in my life were going to abruptly go away. Once I satisfied myself with this, I let the whole club concept fade away. To over compensate for my home life this year, I felt compelled to gather my friends around me once more and revived the 'Club' concept, but this time I was adding the twist of it being a Computer Club. Effectively, once a week we would stay after school on late bus night and have classes to essentially teach computer programming and end the sessions with a bit of game playing.

Luke really liked this idea, whereas my other friends had other things they needed to do. Still, with Luke's enthusiasm, he said we could have the club officially registered with the school and went to the office to see what was needed. Turned out we had to have a teacher as the club sponsor. Zack would have been the obvious choice, but he wasn't available. So we went to the other two math teachers, but one already had the math club and didn't want to sponsor another club, the other math teacher didn't have the time as he had taken on the bulk of Zack's classes for the year. Roaming the school and racking our brains, we checked back at the office and verified that we just needed a teacher, not one who was familiar with the topic of the club, so then we went out to search for any teacher who'd be our sponsor.

The wood shop teacher was a nice guy and we knew he also taught some of the other cool classes, such as 'Photography' and we thought... Okay, I'm lying: We were just walking down the hallway and he walked out of the wood shop door and bumped into us. We each excused ourselves. Then, as an after thought, Luke and I turned back to him and said, ''Hey, we're forming a computer club? Would you like to be our sponsor?''

''Do I have to know anything about computers?''

“Nope.''

''Okay!''

And we were off to the office to register the club. Now 'official', we started recruiting for the next few days. We posted a sign-up sheet and when that didn't attract much attention, Luke and I flat out trawled the school soliciting recruits. We only got a couple of takers from our grade level and began trying to recruit from the Junior level, rounded up a few more takers, and Luke felt that was a good enough start, but ultimately as I was doing this to fill a hole in my soul, I decided to go through the latest Sophomores as well and found two girls who said they'd be interested.

Next was the question of where to meet. The original Trash 80 Model I had been moved from the teacher's lounge to its own little closet halfway through our Sophomore year. This didn't seem like a great place to stuff in a group of ten students and show them how to use a computer. Fortunately, the school had just bought a Trash 80 Model III for the office this year. It came with a printer and, as they didn't have anywhere else to put it, they placed it on a side table in the office's conference room. This room was not only much bigger but had the newfangled 'white boards' mounted on a couple of walls which were pretty futuristic for the nineteen eighties. I checked with the office and they said we could use it for the club. Great news for the club, but also great news for me as it'd give me a chance to familiarize myself with another variation of computer.

All was set and we'd have our first meeting with the first week of October.

By the end of September, I noticed that the guidance counselor had finished going through my friends and even all my other classmates that I knew of. Clearly, he'd forgotten about me and so I took the initiative of making an appointment with him. When I arrived, he wanted to know what was up. I noted that he had talked to all of my friends about their college options but seemed to have forgotten me. He told me he hadn't, he just didn't see any reason to talk to me. Oh? Yes, as I already had the job at the grocery store. Huh? Some of my other friends also had jobs at the grocery store and he'd spoken to them about college options:

''Well, yes, that's true. But given your I.Q., staying at the grocery store would be the best option for you. You might even one day work yourself up to the position of stocker,'' he concluded with a reassuring smile.

As I had started out at the branch grocery store stocking shelves at the age of eight, the thought of one day working up to that level seemed like a foolish goal. But what had most caught my interest in what he said, I asked about: ''So you know what my I.Q. is?''

''Yes, they had tested you as well as a number of other students back in Nineteen Seventy-Three.''

''So what is it?'' I asked but in truth I wanted to know how it said that being a grocery stocker was my best option in life.

''Oh, well, it's often counter productive to tell people what their I.Q. score is as they will often give up and not try anymore.''

And I continued to sit in the chair in his office with this slowly-sinking feeling, ''But you can give me an idea of where the score the falls, can't you?''

At this he started flipping through the pages of the folder on the desk in front of him. It dawned on me that the folder must be about me as he continued, ''Actually, I shouldn't, as even giving that could...'' And his words trailed off as he reached a page that caught his attention. ''Well, actually,'' he started again, but suddenly closed the folder and told me I needed to go.

What? What about the I.Q. score? He didn't have time to talk about it any more as he realized he had another appointment or something else he had to do. Apparently he wasn't sure which, but the message was clear: It was time for me to go.

I drifted out of the counselor's office, past the other counselor's door and into the hallway. I realized something had really bothered him when he saw my I.Q. score in the folder and I wondered what it was. I'd later learn that, upon graduation, we could take the school's copy of our file with us. This was what I ended up planning to do.

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Minuses And Pluses

32

By summer break between sixth and seventh grade, my mother told me I had a new job on Sunday mornings: Mowing the meat cutter's yard. He lived in the same town as the branch grocery store we worked at so I was able to ride my bicycle to his place. It turned out being the only meat cutter at a grocery store at that time was a well paying job and he had a huge house for just himself and his wife, and it was balanced by an even larger yard. When I say yard, I should probably say field as the first visit I spent mowing much of the expanse across the road from his house, it was effectively a hayfield taken over by weeds. The following week he had me mow the field surrounding the house itself and after this, he decided on keeping just enough area around the house mowed that used-up four hours of my time from eight till noon. Halfway through this time I was given a break, which was a new experience for me, and his wife would provide me a can of 'Tab' to cool off with. It tasted weird, but I didn't want to offend anyone so I drank it down. By the end of the two years I worked there I had actually come to like it, much like the acquired taste for my paternal grandfather's 'Moxie'. For my labor each week, I received a five dollar bill, this along with the five I received for my time at the grocery store left me rolling in dough and my bank account soon touched the triple digits.

I now suspect my mother 'found' this Sunday morning job for me so she and Joe, the grocery store owner, could spend more time 'counting the money' for the branch store. On my bicycle ride back to the apartment, the branch store was closed by Noon, but my mother didn't get home until around two in the afternoon...

Yet despite having four less hours working at the branch store itself, I did get more responsibility as I had reached the point that it was decided I should be in charge of my own section of the grocery store. It just became a question of finding an area of the store that was small enough that I could maintain it with my two hours after school each day and that lead Joe into choosing the beer case. An open face chilled case about twelve feet long and six feet tall, I would now be responsible for keeping the case filled, 'faced' when it couldn't be filled from leftover stock, and once a week I would make out an order for what was needed in the coming week. Facing a shelf was when one pulled the remaining stock at the back of the shelf forward to make the shelf look full when it wasn't. I found this practice morally dishonest and hated doing it until I came upon the notion that I was helping short armed people reach what was left.

With the start of seventh grade Beth was now in sixth grade and thus taking the bus with me to the Middle School. I made the mistake of sitting with her on the bus ride and saying 'Hi' to her when passing in the hallway, I soon learned it was like my old friend Peter: We could be friends when no one was looking, but in school related places and activities, we kept a distance. Still, as I had become used to this with Pete the previous year, I was willing to do this with Beth without concern. This gave me more time to visit with Brad, my new friend from the new town, and Jonathan, my remaining other childhood friend.

But it turned out Jonathan had a new friend himself, his name was 'Jonathan', too. For clarity I'll call him 'Van.' Van had moved to a house near Jonathan's that Summer and they had come to know each other. It turned out Van was in my 'Social Studies' class, so with a friend in common we hung out together. As time would go on he would become one of my remaining good friends through High School.

At the start of the school year, both new friends John down the street from the apartment and Andrew the younger kid who had taken-up tagging around with me at the apartment complex, moved away. In the case of John, I had forewarning as he knew ahead of time his family was leaving by the end of Summer. In the case of Andrew, I think he only found out the week before. With Andrew's family, so went the Friday night block parties at the apartment complex, apparently they had been the key people to organize them. In my adult years I've come to realize that all groups have key people with whom things can happen and without them things don't happen. Often, these people aren't the one's you'd think of at the time...

By the end of the calendar year, both Beth's family and Brad's family were moving away with short notice, suddenly my two remaining friends in town were gone. This would have been a good time to spend more time with Mathew, but as we didn't have any classes in common in Seventh grade, my out of sight out of mind problem kicked in and it simply didn't occur to me.

My eldest brother, though, had a new friend: A college girl he'd come across. On the rare occasions I'd see him, they now came as a pair, but this just added interest as his somewhat quiet nature was balance-out by her bubbly enthusiasm. And she, often with a beer can in hand, offered me one as well during my visits. As with Tab, it tasted kind of funny but I didn't want to offend by turning it down. It was another acquired taste, though I never truly warmed up to it.

With my apartment town friends gone, I took up a new hobby by Winter. For whatever reason, my mother got some cross country skies and shoes. As she didn't use them much, I asked if I could and went through the woods behind the apartment and discovered a cross country ski trail system was in the woods just beyond the apartment complex. This solitary activity took the place where time with local friends would have been and given my interest, my mother got me my own pair of cross country skies and shoes for Christmas... But unlike hers, which had a special surface underneath to stop the skies from sliding backward, mine didn't have that feature and it gave me a harder time going up hills. Still, with me as a companion, mother started to use her own skies more often as we would take the trails behind the apartment and she began to find other trail systems we could use for a change of pace. Much like the routine Saturday trips for errands and shopping since moving to the apartment, this became a second positive experience I could look forward to with her.

By the Spring of Nineteen Seventy-Seven, I arrived to the store and my mother and Joe had to have a talk with me. I could no longer be in charge of the beer case. The State Liquor Inspector had come and saw me working there. At age twelve, that was illegal in more ways than one. Joe had worked out a compromise where I could continue working at the store just as long as I didn't help out with the beer case. Later that night I was curious why my not working the liquor case, but still working at the store, was a compromise and asked my mother.

She said that there were child labor laws and it had always been illegal for me to have been working at the branch grocery store. In return for agreeing to not have me handle the beer case, the liquor inspector had agreed not to report my working for the store to the state's department of labor.

oh.

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Friends

30

New friends Brad and Mathew lived in the same town as the apartment. New friend Tim lived in my home town.

And then there was another new friend, a 'John'. He was a year older than me and lived a couple houses down from the apartment on the way to the back of the town hall where the school buses would meet. After the first couple of months making the morning walk to the bus waiting area, it was obvious seeing him take the same walk a bit before me or a bit after me. One day it was pretty much at the same time as me and so we walked together and chatted. He was a friendly boy also interested in a new friend near his home and that was that. He visited my apartment a few times, I visited his home a few times, but mostly we'd meet to roam the surrounding woods and chat.

Still, there were the old home town friends as well and I don't know if it was my mother or me that came up with the idea that, since I had the spare bed in my room and it was too far to drive for just an afternoon visit, how about an overnight visit much like I was doing overnight visits to dad's house during the week. It was thought best to do these for Friday/Saturday where there was no worry of homework that needed to be done and it provided most of the following day for visiting and play. Once this plan was settled on, the first person I invited was Pete. Despite the fact that he had become distant at school, I was hoping the overnighter would mend fences.

He accepted and rode the bus to the apartment town with me after school. The branch grocery store was open into the evening on Fridays and so my mother worked late and then had to spend sometime with Joe after closing hours for stuff, so we pretty much had unsupervised free time from the walk to the apartment after the bus reached town until around nine thirty when my mother would get home. Frozen pizzas and making popcorn kept us fed as we visited and maybe played a game or watched a little Friday night television.

Sure enough, Pete's and my friendship seemed to be back to where it was in the previous years as we spent the following day exploring the woods behind the apartment, seeing the tree house, chatting and playing some more games. Mother actually made lunch for his visit. Then we got to take him home around three in the afternoon so he'd be there in time for dinner. All and all the sort of reunion I had originally hoped for once school had started and I could see my old friends again... But then the following Monday at school, it was the same distant Pete as he had started out the school year, again I presumed to not jeopardize his new friendship with the upperclassman. And yet, he was back to being my old friend again the next time I invited him for an overnighter. I, myself, had to work hard to switch how I interacted with people when locations changed. I wondered if it was easy for Pete, it seemed to be.

Given the success of this, I invited Jonathan for an overnighter and it was equally successful, though he had remained friendly during school hours as well so I hadn't any doubts before hand. Things roughly worked out to three overnighters with Pete that school year and two with Jonathan. By the following years Jonathan would be less able to come as his father would progressively want him to spend more and more time on his studies at home, which included doing homework Friday evenings while Friday classes were still fresh in his mind. So with Jonathan down to once a year for an overnighter, I thought I'd invite new friend Tim. Also a success, he reciprocated by inviting me over to his home a few weekends later.

Unlike me having a spare bed in my room, Tim shared his bedroom with his younger brother, so he was displaced and I got his bed... Which included a plastic under sheet as his brother had problems wetting the bed. Oh, kinda icky, I thought but I toughed it out sleeping in the bed. The following morning his mother made a fried egg breakfast for us, though apparently his family liked the whites of their eggs runny. It kind of grossed me out and I just ate the edges around the eggs and avoided the less cooked centers. The toast was good and having juice for breakfast was a novelty for me. Then, unlike with my parents, or Pete's and Jonathan's parents even, Tim's parents didn't like us leaving the yard of his home, so roving the woods was out and this was especially disconcerting as my family home was just a quarter mile walk away and I would have loved the chance to have shown it to Tim. So we did a couple of things in his yard and played games in his home and visited, but by the time three o'clock came along I was ready to be back at the apartment and have more freedom. I wondered if this was how my other two friends had felt during their overnighters to my place, but I concluded 'not' as they came for return visits over the years. In the case of Tim, I was afraid of inviting him back for another overnighter for fear that I would get a return invite and wouldn't know how to turn it down without offending him or his parents. Tim and I would just remain school-time friends for the rest of Middle School and then just acquaintances by High School.

My routine during the school year, for those days I was at the apartment town, was to return on the bus and go to the store and work for two and a half hours until it closed at six and then get a ride home with my mother. She soon encouraged me to only work two hours and walk home as she and Joe had to 'count the money' after the store closed and she knew I'd be bored hanging around during that. So I would work at the store two hours, then grab myself a frozen pizza for dinner and walk to the apartment. On Fridays when I didn't have friends over, I would work three hours due to the store's extended hours, have Saturdays off as did my mother, then work Sunday mornings as, unlike the main store, the branch store was open then and made a fair deal of money as the town included quite a few working class single parents who couldn't shop the weekday hours.

For this work week, I'd get handed a five dollar bill and I was rich! This I cycled into school lunches so I could finally find out what my other school friends had been enjoying all these years, yet I still had plenty of money left over. There was a branch bank across the street from the branch grocery store and my mother would go there from time to time. So one day I took that week's five dollar bill and asked to open an account. I was eleven at the time and the bank personnel met this with some good humor. The answer was 'maybe,' but they'd have to check with my parents first. I told them that my mother worked across the street at the store and so they opened-up the phone book and called. Being just across the street, my mother came from the store and quickly signed some paperwork and left and I completed the rest and had my own bank account with passbook showing my account balance. This spent most of its time in my keepsake drawer until it was time to deposit more money or less often withdraw some money. This was my primary bank account until I left New England and moved to Colorado seven years later.

For my twelfth birthday, my mother wasn't able to assemble the family gathering as she had the previous year, so she recommended I think of some friends to invite, though they'd have to be local ones, not from the old home town given the driving time. Further, when my mother asked me what I wanted for my birthday, I just told her money. The previous Christmas had been a disappointment for me as my wish list of things to have got translated into generic knock-off versions of those things. By having cash in hand, I would be able to make sure I got exactly what I wanted. She gave me twenty dollars the next time we visited the capital city, and I pulled another ten of my own from the bank. While she spent her time visiting the various stores on main street, I studied the aisles of the toys-only store on the back side of the block. Seeing all the things I'd like to have, I did the math and figured-out the combination of games and toys that would perfectly use up my money. Mostly games as I knew I'd be able to have a group of friends over for my birthday the next Saturday. This was my most rewarding birthday haul and I insisted on cash from mother for all my future birthdays... It would just be two.

As an additional surprise, when my mother came to pick me up at the toy store, she wanted to go back to the department store on the corner as they had adult sized ten speed bicycles on sale and she was going to get me one! While I could only pick from the style on sale, I did get to pick the color and we then had the scarey time at the loading dock wondering if we could actually fit the box of the disassembled bike into her car or have to leave it behind. We finally got it in, though the trunk had to be tied partially closed. The next day I assembled the bike on my own and was riding it around the apartment parking lot that afternoon. Unlike last year's bike, this one fit me without having to raise the seat and handle bars high into the air. When my father picked me up for my midweek overnighter, my mother recommended I show him my new bike and enthusiastically I did, riding round the parking lot for him to see. My mother smirked as my father frowned, then he got to load the bike he had bought for me the year before into the back of his wagon so I could now have it at my old home.

For my birthday, I had settled on inviting over John from down the street and Brad and got them confirmed. I wanted to invite Beth over but, as I had friends of both sexes when I was younger, I had noticed an implied division of the sexes as I had reached my preteens. So instead I was thinking I'd invite Mathew... but when my father brought me back to the apartment the following day my mother said she'd seen two boys with their families at the store and invited them! Oh, ah... okay then. Mathew was now out as she said that would be too many kids. The good news, though, was I knew the other two boys from school and liked them so my brief fear, that one or both of the boys might be from the final quarter of Science class, was dispelled. When the day came and the boys arrived we pulled-out the pile of games I had gotten the weekend before only to find that they were for 'Up To Four Players.' We debated how to handle this as with the boys and me there were five. As we began to settle on the thought that one of us would sit out each game as we went through playing all of them, mother intervened and pointed out that, as a good host, I should let them play the games and I could be the banker: “After all, you'll have plenty of time to play the games later, yourself.” It turned out most of the games didn't need a banker and I got to spend from noon into early evening watching the four boys play through the various games I had gotten for my birthday. I discovered the games were not very fun when I later tried to play them alone...

The following year, when my mother asked if I wanted to have another group of boys over for my birthday, I said ''No.''

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Surroundings

26

After my entire life at one family home, how did I settle into my new surroundings?

To properly set the next four years, I should probably explain the townhouse and the surrounding area. The bottom floor was a concrete pad that had golden shag carpet over it, the stairs and upper floor were smooth hard wood floors. My mother was so fearful of slipping down those steps that she took the two foot wide strips of orange shag from the temporary living room at the house and sliced it up and glued it to each stair step using a vast quantity of white, all-purpose glue. While this insured no one would ever slip off a step, I doubt she got her security deposit back. The remaining strips of orange shag were used to carpet the attached storage shed where the clothes drier was located along with any yard items.

The upstairs was divided into two halves, the front half was the master bedroom which my mother let me have as I ''would have more room to play in,'' but with the bunk beds stacked in one corner with the chest of drawers directly next to it, it left the room very empty. The remaining half of the upstairs floor was cut in half again for the second bedroom which my mother took with the remaining portion sliced up for the bathroom, towel closet and hallway between it all. My mother bought a large round throw rug to put in the master bedroom to take up some of the vast floor space, but it looked rather lonely in the center of the floor, making the room seem that much larger.

Once I had finished the penicillin and regained my strength, I moved from the lower bunk to the excitement of the upper bunk. Before the age of safety rails, one night I rolled in bed only to fall off the edge. My head collided with the chest of drawers while the rest of my body hit the floor. I soon moved the chest of drawers against the wall at the foot of the bed and pulled up the throw rug to the base of the bed to cushion any future falls. By August, the thrill of sleeping on a high bunk had passed and I remembered the bunk bed came as two halves. I took them apart and I put the top half in the corner where the bunk bed had been and the lower half parallel to it halfway down the remaining wall. I slid the throw rug to the center of the smaller open floor space and this made the room look more naturally filled. I had chosen the top bunk half for the corner to use as my bed because its half had shorter legs and sleeping on such a low bed reminded me of the time my eldest brother slept on the mattress in my old childhood bedroom.

The townhouse complex was three buildings of four apartments each, set-up in an 'L' shape, with our apartment in the lower half of the long line. Inside the 'L' was a solid flat parking area with each apartment having enough room to park two cars in front. There were no lines. Between the buildings were large patches of lawn and behind them a smaller ribbon of lawn after which there was a forest. As I had enjoyed the tree houses my brothers had built at the house, my mother had Joe provide some assorted scrap wood so I could build my own tree house in the woods behind the apartments; she had gotten the permission of the landlord she told me. I then spent the next few days scouting the woods for an ideal spot.

The scraps of wood weren't much, so I talked my mother into going to a nearby town's hardware store so I could get a couple two by fours to support the base of the tree house, we also got some nails and a saw. My mother had kept my maternal grandfather's turn of the century hammer after clearing out his house, so she got herself a small toolbox to put it in and a set of screw drivers for use in the apartment. The tree house started out as a small platform between two tress with strips of the scrap wood nailed across to create the floor. With the remaining two by four wood, I created a ladder to get up to the platform, but found it was too short to reach from the ground to the platform. To accommodate this, I nailed one side to one of the trees about halfway between the ground and the tree house floor, the other side of the ladder hung in the open air. While not structurally sound, with my childhood weight it actually held up pretty good. From the platform I surveyed the woods and looked across a large rock touching the two trees I was at and it stretched to a third tree about six feet away. I fantasized about one day having the floor of the tree house reach that third tree, but I didn't have anywhere near enough scrap wood.

Then soon after, the remaining unused scrap wood I had in the backyard disappeared. My mother panicked as she saw the project of the tree house critical to keeping my interest in living at the apartment rather than deciding to move back with dad at the house. In reality I didn't realize I had a choice so she was safe. But still, she called around and found that the landlord's guy who came to mow the lawn assumed it was trash and took it and threw it out. As the landlord had given permission for the tree house to be built, he felt guilty about this and, as he was a house developer, had two four foot by eight foot sheets of half inch thick plywood brought over to replace the scrap wood. I was vastly better off with the deal and we ran to the hardware store to pick up five dollars more of two by fours and I was quickly across that rock and had a solid floor to the third tree and a roof to boot!

For birthdays, while my friends would have parties with lots of other friends, I pretty much just had one friend over, if that. But for my first birthday at the new apartment, my mother wanted to make it big and memorable and insisted that both my brothers attend and even had Uncle Ronny and Aunt Harriet come out. So everyone could come, we celebrated my birthday the Sunday before and we had lunch and cake, and I got to show-off my tree house and my mother took lots of pictures... In fact, that was one of my very few birthdays that pictures had been taken of and had ended-up in the photo album. For that birthday my father had one of my brothers bring a ten speed bicycle as my present. It was in a box and needed some assembly, which my brothers helped with, and it was child sized. While my mother had at first fumed that the bicycle was father's way of upstaging any present she had gotten me, those feelings were soon replaced with shy laughter. As I was just turning eleven, I was already no longer child sized, at least the size the bicycle had been intended for, thus my riding it was a little like the way clowns would ride tiny bicycles at the circus. By the next week I had found a longer handle bar brace pole and bicycle seat and installed them so I could ride with my legs fully extended. The side effect of this, though, was there was the bicycle down by my knees and feet, then about a foot of the extended poles to where my arms and seat were. Still, I was thrilled with it and the first time my father picked me up at the apartment the following month, my mother insisted I ride around the parking lot for him to see. I was more than happy to but, while I did, I noticed my mother smirking as my father frowned.

Once September came and I was going to go back to school, my mother returned to working the day shift at the local branch store and thus we discovered that the apartment complex had a block party every Friday night. The lights and loud music horrified my mother, but by the second Friday they drew me out of the apartment building to see what was going on and I got to meet my neighbors and one of them had a boy, 'Andrew', a few years younger than me whom I would later impress with the tree house and he would become my tag-along buddy whenever I was up to something on the nearby grounds as he wasn't allowed to leave the property without his parents. His parents didn't like the diminutive 'Andy,' but when we were out of their ear shot, I would call him Andy as he got a tickle out of being called by the forbidden name. With him in mind, I added middle height safety rails to the tree house and eventually filled the space between the safety rails and the floor base with slats of wood to make walls on either side. I eventually replaced the ladder that hung out into space with a structurally sound one at the back of the tree house.

Wandering the woods as Fall came, I found a girl, 'Beth', sitting on another large rock in the woods meditating. I introduced myself and while she was initially hesitant, we soon became good friends. She also lived at the apartment complex so it made it easy to visit. She was a year younger than me and had an even younger brother and a single mother about my sister's age. Having a mother so much younger than my own meant there was a whole different generations' worth of interests. Where my mother was into Herb Alpert and Dean Martin records, her mother was into rock and even Cheech & Chong albums. They had a bean bag chair which was all the modern rage at the time and her mother made Jello with a third of the water in a cookie sheet, then once solid, sliced it into squares which could be eaten as rubbery finger food.

With Fall came a shock. Once the ski area was closed for the Summer season this year, my father took Sundays off. It was the first, and I think the only time, he had either day of the weekends off on a regular basis. And he was taking them off just for me! Each Sunday he would pick me up early in the morning and take me places, typically touristy places but sometimes nature places. There was the Boston Museum of Science one time. Another Sunday he took me to visit an old timey railroad station and take a scenic steam train ride and he showed me how to squish a penny by placing it on the track for the train to run over. A trip to the capital city to bum around and see a re-release of Vincent Price's 3-D movie ''The House Of Wax'', this was one of the very first polarized light 3-D movies and I kept the special glasses in my keepsake drawer for the next few years. Once we visited the ski area where, at the base of one ski lift, there was a stream that a beaver had damned up making a pond; we got to watch with binoculars as the beaver worked, then later walked up to the damn and took a closer look. There was the time to visit the Boston Aquarium and the Bunker Hill multimedia experience nearby. There were a couple more of these and then they abruptly stopped and my father would just take me to the house and read the Sunday newspaper inside while I raked up the fallen leaves and pine needles for him. We never did anything like this again.

After another boring Sunday of just raking leaves or bumming around the house, as having friends over was not allowed, I asked my mother what I must have done wrong for him to have stopped taking me places? She laughed and told me they had finished the separation agreement two weeks earlier and ''He didn't have to put on a show anymore.''

Once the ski season started, my father was back to midweek days off and I would visit him and stay at the house on those days after school, and at the apartment the rest of the week. And so things remained for the next four years...

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