Days of Ease

If someone were to ask me, “What were the best days of your life?” I would struggle to reply. I have been blessed with many “best days.”

However, if I were asked about the easiest days of my life I would answer with no hesitation. They were the three years from when I started kindergarten in August 1960, until August 1963, with the approach of my eighth birthday and third grade.

Those were placid days in Camden, our small county-seat town in the Sandhills of South Carolina. Few cares or worries. It was a tranquil time of contentment, comfortable relationships, play, and learning. It was childhood.

Starting in August 1960, my mother drove me five days a week to Grace Episcopal Church. I made friends, sang “Onward Christian Soldiers” to start each day, learned a lot, and could even take a peaceful nap. Occasionally, during the lengthy morning prayer, a boy behind you would silently pull away your chair. You would hear Amen and sit down assuming that your chair was where it had been. One morning they did it to me. I fell hard, and two or three guys laughed. Those fellas gave me a painless introduction to meanness.

Christmas morning, 1960, my father appeared in my room. “Paul and Bob, time to wake up. Jimmy, you, too.” Pop was not his usual calm self. He spoke with urgency. “Go to the bathroom and put on your clothes. Santa Claus has come, and you can get your presents. But Dr. and Mrs. Potter are coming over. You will stay with the Potters this morning and have breakfast with them. Then Uncle Lewis and Aunt Martha will pick you and take you to Bethune.”

I was the oldest of three sons. Bob and Jimmy were next-in-line. But that day three became four. Soon we returned to Camden to meet our little brother Chip. He was a wonderful Christmas gift.

Our middle-class street was a circle with about twenty-five modest houses. Micky Mitchell, who lived on the opposite side of Kirkwood Circle, was the first boy I admired. Why? He had a mystique because he had come from another town and carried himself with a cosmopolitan air. I was in awe of his father because Mr. Mitchell managed a large, important store, where I went with my mother and brothers once a week. It was Camden’s A & P grocery store. Plus, Mickey was a year older than I. For a while Mickey had me star struck. He knew the ways of the world.

Stephen Potter lived four doors down the street. He was my brother Bob’s age. Stephen’s dad held a doctorate in chemistry and worked at the new Dupont plant across the Wateree River in Lugoff. Stephen was bigger, stronger, and more confident than the rest of us, except for Mickey, of course.

Four doors away in the other direction lived the McManus twins, Eric and Julie. Their father worked for the City of Camden. One day when the twins were not around Mickey whispered that Mr. McManus took naps in the nude. I wondered how Mickey knew that. Soon I realized it was just one of his tall tales.

Pop was an obstetrician and gynecologist, busily riding the crest of the Baby Boom. He had delivered Stephen and his younger sisters. He was the doctor of two of my teachers. Those two assumed I was brilliant.

I didn’t have any sisters, and Julie was the only girl in our neighborhood gang. One day we fellows convinced her to show us what a girl’s body looked like. Singing a song composed on the spot, she began a slow, dance-like striptease. She entranced me. My mother caught sight of her when Julie was down to her panties. To my disappointment, Julie’s show ended when Mama raised the kitchen window and shouted, “Julie McManus, put your clothes back on this very minute!”

From that day on, I wanted a sister.

Feminine beauty was key to one of Mickey’s flights of fancy. His mother’s name was Myrtle. As a teenager, Myrtle had gone to the beach and taken part in a beauty pageant. She won, and the town was so struck by her good looks that the people voted to rename their beach. That was the day Myrtle Beach got its name.

Mickey should have won an award for creativity.

In 1961, Viktor Jonkoff moved next door, and we welcomed him into our docile band. Like Dr. Potter, Viktor’s father, also a PhD chemist, worked for Dupont.

In 1956, when Viktor was a toddler, he and his parents had escaped Hungary to avoid the Soviets and their tanks. His mother and father gave him sleeping pills to ensure he would not cry. Their secretive night-time trek across an international border led them to freedom.

Viktor’s arrival on Kirkwood Circle introduced me to the Cold War, to foreigners, and to refugees. His mother cooked the first foreign food I ever ate. We went to their house where she served Hungarian goulash.

Kirkwood Circle lay on the south-facing side of a long ridge, a Carolina sand hill called Hobkirk Hill. It had been a Revolutionary War battlefield. On the crest of the ridge were some of Camden’s largest estates. They were two-story houses with tall columns, expansive lawns, and enormous live oaks. Overall, our small company created precious little mischief. But one day as we strolled past five- and six-foot tall azaleas, we gave into temptation. We turned on a sprinkler system and sauntered on toward the YMCA.

The “Y” stood behind the large houses and beyond the old polo grounds. Older kids taught us how to play pool. Our moms took us there for swimming lessons. I received the YMCA Day Camp “Honor Camper” badge for my good manners and respectful regard for the counselors.

One day, as we left the “Y” and took a sandy road back to Kirkwood Circle, Julie saw a used condom lying in the sand. “What is it?” asked Bob. “I don’t know,” I replied. Mickey retorted, “You tell me you all don’t know about those things? They’re called rubbers. Businessmen put them on before long meetings in case they don’t have time to get up and go to the bathroom.”

We listened wide-eyed and with suspicion.

The summer of ’63 brought my first memorable dose of troubling news. Our schools were to be desegregated. Not that year, but eventually. There was no stopping it. Our state and county were slowly yielding to the realities of Brown v. Board of Education.

I still feel remorse that I, the honored son of a physician, climbed a backyard oak and shouted a bitter taunt toward the Black neighborhood about a half-mile away. Up in the oak I felt courageous. Back on the ground, my courage turned to fear. Had the colored kids heard me? Would they jump me somewhere along Greene Street and take revenge? I had much to learn about Black people, Jim Crow, and injustice. Soon thereafter, fear and a good upbringing led me to reject such abject racism.

Those were carefree days on Kirkwood Circle in Camden. But as summer ended in 1963, the most comfortable chapter of my life concluded and a troubling one began. News of a cultural earthquake, the Civil Rights Movement, was soon followed by a painful and dangerous stint in the Medical University of South Carolina where my left kidney was removed.

In November, our principal interrupted the school day to announce that the President of the United States had been assassinated. Then a few days before Chip’s third birthday (Christmas) our family moved away. Mama and Pop had finished building their dream home. It was a one-mile bike ride back to Kirkwood Circle. Julie bitterly announced to me I was a rich kid. She predicted I would never return to our street.

Bob maintained a close friendship with Stephen Potter, but I seldom saw the twins. After a few years, Viktor and I saw each other again at Boy Scout meetings. But being a year older, he was always a rank ahead of me. Mickey’s parents bought our old house, but before long, Mr. Mitchell was transferred to another town and another A & P. My halcyon days on Kirkwood Circle with the happy gang had ended.