I remember Margaret Rose Eaton quoting the following poem:

I remember, I remember nothing further after that

As I wakened in the doorway on some alien lobby mat.

And it seemed that I recalled, though not so very clear,

That I’d spent a merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year!

I remember sitting on David’s rooftop with David and Bo Harris surveying the field beyond their house on our giant double deep lots. I was wondering last week how our fathers managed to mow them with push mowers.

I remember raking the leaves and jumping into the piles.

I remember walking to school at 14th and Mass and someone whistling at me from down below. My chin was up in the air when Judy Walker yelled, “Boy, are you stuck up!”

I remember telling Miss Henderson that she was giving us far too much homework because we had other subjects. She said she was just trying to keep us off the streets.

My mother, I remember, sent me to school with a note saying I had milk allergies and wouldn’t be participating.

I remember Mrs. Peters in 6th grade telling us that Claire Brown would be joining us and she didn’t speak English so be extra nice to her; she’d just left Germany.

I remember Mrs. Peters telling us to be extra nice to Bobby Newman because his mother had just passed away. And I also remember Kenny Hornberger’s death. My father later said that it was very common in his era for youngsters to die because they didn’t have antibiotics. They had special songs to be sung for the death of children…but I found that they weren’t special enough to die for!

I have never forgotten riding with my father past the farm field at 23rd and Louisiana when my father told me that this was where my classmate at Cordley’s father was putting in a new supermarket and when it was finished, this was where we would do our trading. I looked at my little brother and asked, “But what do WE have to trade?”