Indian Summer

It was Veteran's Day, the day once observed as Armistice Day--the eleventh hour, the eleventh day, the eleventh month. Specifically, it was Veteran's Day 1962. The nation was in great spirits because President Kennedy had just the week before backed the Russians down in Cuba. The country was in a happy mood. "The Twist" and "Locomotion" were playing on radios; sixteen-year-old Darla Banks had just been crowned the new Miss Teenage America. In my hometown of Charles City, Iowa, people were extra happy because for the past few days we had been enjoying a wonderful spell of Indian summer.

I was sitting in one of a row of attached wooden desks in Miss Wollison's fifth-grade McKinley School class, eagerly awaiting our early dismissal at noon. The city officials had planned some special events for the day, and soon we would be enjoying them--a free movie at the Gem Theater and a parade. All I had to do was survive the rest of the school day, run home for dinner, and then go to the movie and parade with my older brother, Tony. Miss Wollison was trying hard to painlessly bring us to the end of the morning by reading to us from the novel Rascal, which was about a pet raccoon and the kid who owned him. I was half listening while I played a game where I competed with myself to see how many small balls of paper out of five I could flick into the empty hole in the corner of my desk where an inkwell used to rest. In the row next to me, Brad Olson and Dan Schlick were shooting at one another with the latest fifth-grade fad: little bows and arrows made out of toothpicks and rubber bands. During the past couple of days almost every boy in our class constantly had a toothpick in his mouth that he was softening so he could bend it into his bow. The toothpicks usually still broke when you tried to tie on the rubber band, and it would have taken William Tell or Robin Hood to actually hit anything with one. But Brad and Dan were still trying, and kids were ducking this way and that. The commotion finally got to a level that caused Miss Wollison to look up from her reading.

"You kids quit acting like a bunch of wild Indians, or I'll keep this whole class after school."

We all settled down and at three minutes to twelve Miss Wollison let us get our coats from the cloakroom and line up at the door. When the bell rang we exploded out of the classroom, down the wooden stairs, and out the door and into the bright sunlight. At the corner of the school yard I had to stop behind the outstretched arms of a patrol guard wearing a white canvas harness that hung diagonally across her chest. A silver badge was attached to the canvas. Bob Smith--the county attorney's son--stood watching, in his white canvas harness with the blue badge that indicated that he was the captain of the patrol. While I waited behind the guard I took my coat off; it must have been in the sixties.

When I got home, my mom was in our yard hanging up sheets on the line. She was singing something, but I couldn't make out the song. When she saw me she said, "Your brother is already home. The junior high got out at 11:30. We'll eat in a few minutes."

I walked into the kitchen, and I could hear the shower running downstairs. My brother didn't like to take showers after gym. He would always wait until he got home. I walked down the narrow stairs to the basement. Our house was about one hundred years old, and the cellar had a flagstone floor. Our dad had put in a little metal...