Summer of '61 Revisited ...

Summer of '61 Revisited ... When school spit us out for the summer, the streets would fill with kids who were trying to negotiate their way into puberty. Some of my friends would be banished to summer camps, where they became harmless in their absence. I never went. Instead, I was wheeling and reeling around the neighbourhood, sneaking smokes and kisses and sometimes a swig of a beer some kid stole from his parents 24 by the back door. We'd gather behind the hockey rinks that were overgrown with weeds and wild summer lilies. Some days, David Brousseau's mother would invite us all to have a swim in the Brousseau's backyard pool, but those days were few and far between. Most days, we melted into the heat and watched ants scurry into the cracks of the sidewalks. Then there were the Saturdays. On Saturdays, the Uptown Theatre would have a matinée for kids with loose change in their pockets and Hollywood dreams in their heads. By noon, rain or shine, we would easily waltz the two block walk to the theatre, where for the price of a quarter, we got to spend the day in the cool dark of an air-conditioned palace, and for a few nickels more, we sipped on syrupy drinks and ate buttery popcorn from plastic buckets. There, we watched Elvis Presley croon his way through Love Me Tender, GI Blues, or Blue Hawaii. Elvis was king, then, our king, the king of everything cool. Elvis never seemed bored for a moment, and always, always, got the girl to fall into his arms by the movie's end. Some of the older kids would double up in the back rows of the theatre, and you knew they were making out, the guys sneaking their hands up a girl's blouse, the girls pushing those hands away, all in the span of a seemingly never-ending kiss. You could peak back through the cracks in the seats, but if you got caught looking, you were sure to get a beating on your way home. That was just the rule. Usually, you just got pushed to the ground or into the Henderson's thorny hedge. Once in awhile, a kid might get a black eye or a bloody nose, but nothing more. You knew what was coming and why, so you took it. Between the feature movies, there was a serial adventure, a short film featuring the demoniac intentions of The Claw or the adventures of Flash Gordon, with the greatest cliffhanger ending you could imagine. For most kids, the serial was a time to get more popcorn for the second feature, but I was always locked to my seat as I watched last week's sure death scene transformed to a remarkable escape from disaster. Before the first feature movie and at the end of the second feature, there was always a couple of cartoons. Woody Woodpecker would peck his way through the screen, and usually there would be a Bugs Bunny cartoon, with the inept Elmer Fudd taking the brunt of the rascally rabbit's ingenuity. The neat thing was that everyone laughed and squealed at the anti-social antics of the red-headed woodpecker or at how Elmer Fudd's shotgun would explode in his own face. We shared a delight in being alive, and young, and innocent. When the house lights came up and ushers told us to buzz off, we would spill out into the streets, and the lingering rays of the afternoon sun would blind us for a moment, before we dawdled on what seemed a doubly long walk home and into a brooding future. Copyright © Kennedy James, 2009. All rights reserved.