Summer Break
Summer break was always a welcoming relief from the dreadfulness of school. As much as I hated change, I hated school more. School days were an endless maze of bullying on every social hierarchy. Summer days and nights were filled with biking, skateboarding, hide and seek, whatever fancied us weirdos. Only summer school interrupted the freedom of summer. Summer school and tutoring was a leaden, wearying, dreary time of recycling work from the past year. Luckily, it didn’t last the whole summer.
Summer vacation began with a trip to Yogi Bear Jellystone Park on the Eastern Shore. My mom and us kids would travel with longtime family friends to the campground. The best part of the campground was the large pool; I loved the water. The pool seemed to wash away the drudgery of the constant bullying during the school year. Every first day, I would recklessly run barefoot to the pool where the entrance of the pool was made up of large pointy gravel. Every first day, I would bust up my toes - blood everywhere.
My mom would bandage up my sore toes. We didn’t have fancy bandages, so she plastered several on my toes to cover the wounds from the nasty gravel. It was a great injustice to me: why would you put sharp, large stones at the entrance of a pool? But by the afternoon, I had returned to the pool, staying until it closed. I would return to the campsite full of water-logged and full of wrinkles,repeating it all again the next day (including busting up different toes). I was too hard headed to learn to walk, not run, to the pool.
Later in the summer our family drove to western Maryland. I never had a friend to come along, because I didn’t have many friends. My sister and brother had tagalongs. We drove in an old beat-up, seatbelt-free station wagon. My brother and I rode in the back without seatbelts and with unrestrained suitcases. It was fun. My dad would always find roads that weren’t on the map. They began as traditional asphalt, then rough gravel, then parched dirt. One actually ended in a lake. Maybe that is why it was not on the map, because at some point a lake consumed it! My dad liked to stop at every historical market from central Maryland to our cabin in western Maryland’s New Germany State Park. He took a photo and read what was on the marker. He would have us reflect on the importance of the site, even when the site had no semblance of what was on the marker.
New Germany State Park was a fairytale-like place of large evergreens like the Black Forest in Germany: a beautiful, crystal-clear, spring-fed lake, paddle boats, fishing, an ice cream-filled snack shop, large old evergreens, paths, ranger’s station, sandy beach, rescue center. The cabins were built during the depression. They were simple with a kitchen, bath, lofts with bunks, a fireplace, and a living room. It was quiet and clear at night. The night sky was dotted with many stars. We visited Swallow Falls, which is the largest waterfall in Maryland.We rode our bikes to the lake, swam in the cold water all day, and ran up to the snack shop for afternoon ice cream. No phones, TVs, or other electrical devices at that time. Sadly, all this fun only lasted seven days.
Back home, my brother and I started building all kinds of ramps for BMXbmx and skateboarding. One summer we built a quarterpipe against the old single car garage. We rode up to the highest point in town, and peddled down as fast as we could. No fear! We rode around the house and up the ramp and over the garage. If the tree caught us, we would slam down onto the nasty old singles. Those singles created the worst road rash! Pieces of singles would embed into the rash. Eventually my mom figured out what we were doing. She made us tear it down (LIke I hadve never been to the ER!. The local ER knew me by first name! Why tear it down???) Our yard was always littered with bike parts, skateboard parts, and lumber.
Another summer activity was picking apples from the almost-dead tree. I hated picking up apples. The apples were not good to eat, but they did attract bees. Our home was built on an old apple orchard, and the tree had seen much better days. It was rotten inside and out. Working with my sister and brother was not fun. My sister bossed us around. My brother didn’t work much. He liked to find big sticks to hit me with. My mom always looked out the window just in time to see when I got him. She never saw him hitting me with sticks. (He did admit to it to my mom much later in life.) Then I would have to stand in the corner.
The corner was my place of punishment. I hated this. I had to stand still and quiet. My corner time seemed endless. I couldn’t stand still. I couldn’t stay quiet. Corner time was a great injustice to me. It was a heinous punishment. I told my mom that I would design a round house so no other kid had to suffer this. I told her my nose is pointy due to the corner. I never saw my other siblings have corner time. That made it even worse. Why did they not have to do corner time? Why was I the only one being punished in the house? Once corner time was up, I was out like a light.
Outside was a freeing world for me. I would stay out from dawn to late night. Once in for the night, it was clean-up-wounds time or bathtime if I had no wounds, which would not be often. Rushed into the tub, my sister would happily pour peroxide over my wounds. It would burn, and mom said the better the burn the better the cleaning. After the peroxide dousing, came a bath. I loved baths. I would soak underwater for hours if I could. It was so quiet under the water. I was still for a bit, but my mom would hasten me to bed. It would all repeat on the next day until Labor Day, and then, back to the prison of school...