This week I begin my last week in my 50s. In celebration of that, I'm dipping into the archives every day this week to feature something I've written in the past. This particular piece is from my book Father Knows Nothing, Today would have been Nancy's birthday...
It was just an ordinary summer day in 1973.
The old neighborhood was filled with kids. There were a dozen or more kids on my street about the same age as me, give or take a few years, and we played together outside for hours and hours at a time. The games of choice were Spud, Kick the Can, 500, Capture the Flag, and of course, baseball.
On this particular day I was watching some of the older kids play baseball at the park across the street from my house. They weren’t letting me play because I wasn’t good enough, but I didn’t mind. My best friend Stu was allowed to play, and I was lending my support by rooting for him, and chasing foul balls.
“Hey Ricky!” I heard from across the street. I recognized the voice of Stu’s sister Nancy, but I didn’t see her anywhere. “Up here,” she said. “In the tree.”
The tree in the front yard of her house was our favorite climbing tree. The lowest branch was low enough to allow even little kids access. Some of the neighborhood kids could climb nearly all the way to the top, but I was afraid to go that high. It was a pretty tall tree. And Nancy was up higher in that tree than I had ever seen.
“You can see the water tower from up here,” she said.
Now she had my attention. This was a small town with absolutely nothing exciting, but we did have a water tower downtown a few miles away. It seemed impossible to be able to see something of that magnitude from the bucolic confines of our little side street. So I wandered over to take a look.
When I stood at the base of the tree and looked straight up, it seemed like Nancy was a thousand feet in the sky. There was no way I was going that high.
“C’mon,” she said. “You’ve got to see this.”
She was right. I had to see it. So I started climbing, and this tree was made for climbing. The branches were smooth. They were staggered perfectly. They were sturdy. There really was nothing preventing me from continuing my climb except my fear.
I made it past the mid-point of the tree (my new all-time record) and saw something for the first time in my life: the roof of the school across the street. I could see a couple of dodge balls that had been kicked up there–an incredible find. But I still couldn’t imagine that I would make it as high as Nancy.
She was urging me on as I hit the 3/4 mark, but I still couldn’t see the water tower. I saw something else, however. Our Ford LTD was making it’s way down the boulevard on it’s way home from the train station. Inside that car was my dad’s car pool–my dad, our next door neighbor Mr. Reiss, and our backyard neighbor Mr. Walsh. It was my mom’s turn to pick them up.
I knew that car meant the end of my climb because dinner started moments after dad walked in the front door, so I put my fear aside and kept climbing. I made it just beneath Nancy as our car pulled into the driveway, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. There it was; its gold glimmering paint shining from a few miles away. A giant “1917″ was painted on its side, the year our town was founded.
“Can you see it?” Nancy asked.
“I can see it,” I replied.
We could hear the car doors open beneath us, and I couldn’t contain my excitement.
“Dad,” I called. “I can see the water tower from here.”
“Get down from there,” my mom called. “You’ll kill yourself.”
“Look at that,” Mr. Reiss said. “Ricky’s really all the way up there.”
He didn’t sound concerned and neither did my dad, who just told me to come down for dinner.
I never made it up that tree again. A few months later my little brother fell out of it, and one of the neighbors broke her arm saving him from getting hurt. After that, Mr. Page (Nancy & Stu’s dad) enforced a no-climb zone.
We moved out of the neighborhood the next year–all the way to Germany.
The Pages moved away in the mid-80s. By then Nancy was married, and Stu was in the Air Force. Many of the other neighbors eventually moved too, but one constant had always been Mr. Reiss. That era ended a few weeks ago, when he passed away. He had been the last living member of the carpool.
When I attended Mr. Reiss’ funeral, I couldn’t help it, I flashed back to that summer of 1973. I pictured him getting out of that Ford LTD, and looking up at the only tree climbing accomplishment of my life.
Sadly, it wasn’t a long journey back to 1973 for me, because I was already there, ever since Stu called me a few days earlier to tell me that his sister Nancy had also died. She died of ALS the same week as Mr. Reiss. Nancy would have been 50 this summer (2011), 38 summers after she reached the top of the tree.
The neighborhood hasn’t physically changed much; the same houses on the same street in front of the same park. Even the tree is still standing, and if you’re crazy enough to climb it, you can still see the water tower, which was recently repainted.
But you can’t see what I can see.
I can see Nancy. I can see Mr. Reiss. I can see Dad.
And I can see a perfect summer day in 1973.
