The Sunday Memory Drawer - When Summer Ends Every Year

You start to see the tell-tale signs around the middle of August.  When you're playing your nightly baseball game on the local vacant lot, it seems a little darker a little earlier.

While the hot and humid days often continue, you occasionally get an afternoon where, out of nowhere, cool breezes blow through your kitchen window.  The window fan is spinning and it's not even turned on.

And, worst of all, there are posters and billboards all over the place that promote...gasp...the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon.

For those of us in Mount Vernon, New York, this meant only one thing.

It would soon be back to school.  

And the fall season is arriving.

You'd see dead kids walking all over my neighborhood.  Freedom was waning.  The yearly ritual would begin anew.

I'd get dragged down to the Fourth Avenue shopping district by my mother.  We'd blow through the boys' clothing department at Genung's Department Store.  She'd try to guess what the smart fourth-grader would be wearing this season.

Sometimes it was turtlenecks built into sweaters.  Or pants that were bell bottoms.  Or, during the years I had to do so at Washington Junior High School, an assortment of ties.  

"We'll get you some of those clip-on ties so you don't have to worry about tying one after gym class."

As well-meaning as this gesture was, a clip-on tie was deadly.  If some kids saw you wearing one of those, they'd love to pull it off as you were moving in the hallway from class to class.

It wasn't often that I'd look at my neighborhood friends and envy that they all went to Catholic school.  Their wardrobe was always a standard uniform.  Crappy looking colors, for sure, but a life less complicated.  

Back at home, the end of summer found my grandmother in her rhubarb garden.  She'd cut down the remaining stalks in bulk and then cook them up for the freezer, ensuring that she'd have plenty of pie filling for Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Meanwhile, she'd watch the commercials ballyhooing the upcoming Jerry Lewis fundraiser.

"That thing is on too damn long.  Who can watch all that?"

Well, Grandma, it's a telethon.  It's supposed to be long.

"There's never anybody good on."

On this, there was no argument.  While the ads promised big stars, I'd always tune in and find comedian Morty Gunty.  Who, you say?  Exactly, I say.

"This is boring.  All Jerry Lewis is doing is asking for money."

Well, that is the point of any telethon, Grandma.  She'd eventually shake her arms at the television set and switch over to some game show hosted by Bill Cullen.

Upstairs in our end of the house, my mother wouldn't on the telethon until the very last hour.  She wanted to be there when Jerry would sing "You'll Never Walk Alone" and eventually break down into sobs.  One year, though, Mom was working in Manhattan for the accounting firm that audited Muscular Dystrophy.  She actually had to work there and had a very soft spot for Jerry Lewis after that.  

"There's a secret reason why Jerry does this every year."

I asked my mother, the insider, what it was.

"I can't.  It's a secret."

Hmmm.  To this day, I have no clue whether my mom really did know.

In my room of the house on a nightly basis, there was another annual ritual going on.  The fated re-adjustment of bedtime.  Getting set to go to bed earlier on school nights.  Naturally, this was not welcomed.  I had become accustomed to later hours.  On summer Sunday nights, I could be up all the way to 11PM so I could watch "Candid Camera" and "What's My Line?"  But, for the school year, it had to be much earlier.  Except, as I got older, later times on selected nights would be open to negotiation.  

I'd have to first do some research before I plead my case.  This involved the annual TV Guide Fall Preview issue which was always long awaited in my world.  I'd keep going down to Bob's Luncheonette and Newsstand on First Street every day to see if it had arrived yet.   There was one year where I got there in time to watch Bob actually cut open the package that contained my Bible.

I'd run home with the gold and spend hours with it, reading about all the new TV shows, the changes to my returning favorites, and, most importantly, the prime time schedule grid.

Similar to the plans that they likely used to storm the beaches at Normandy during World War II, this schedule would allow me to pick which school nights I needed to stay up all the way to 10PM.

Monday night was a given.  CBS had all the best shows on there.  And, even though Andy Griffith eventually got moved earlier, there was always something at 930PM that I wanted to see.  

But choosing the second night had to be done carefully and strategically.  Sometimes, the TV networks moved shows around so I had to really know this schedule by heart.  I'd eventually decide on a second day for a later bedtime and then provide my argument to the judge AKA my mother.  

The good news is that, once she went back to work at nights just like my dad, my grandmother was the ultimate TV and bedtime custodian.

Which means I was up at 10PM almost every night, as we gleefully watched "our shows" together.

You'd trudge back to school on the first day, worrying that this year was going to be the toughest of all.  Perhaps kids a year ahead had warned you.  Going into the fifth grade, we heard bad things in advance of our new instructor, Mrs. Lillian C. Ian.   She's an ogre.  She's a troll that lives under a bridge.  Two children went into her homeroom last year and never came out.

We soon discovered that none of that was true.  And, while Mrs. Lillian C. Ian was tough, it was a rewarding experience.  And nobody disappeared.

You spent your first school days, surveying all the new expectations and assignments with trepidation.  How would you get this all done?  How hard does this look?  How the heck am I going to do all this homework and still watch my TV shows?

Somehow, we all managed.  And, if you went to a public school in Mount Vernon, New York, you got a wonderful bonus usually the first or second week of September.

Since most of the teachers in our school system back then were Jewish, we got off for both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.  Summer didn't leave completely after all.

I'd enjoy the time off but look longingly around my neighborhood.

Crickets.

That's the problem of having all Catholic friends.  They'd be off for things like All Saints Day and the Feast of Saint Whoever.  Me?  I was off for three days in September.  All by myself.

I'd go up to my room and open the now dog-eared edition of TV Guide's Fall Preview.  Gee, what did I miss the first dozen times that I had read it?

Dinner last night:  Grilled bratwurst at the Hollywood Bowl.