Series: Jake and Me

Me and Jake wasn’t going to waste this day off from school. No siree.

Winter only comes ‘round once a year, and great snows like that one last night sure don’t hap­pen often.

The two of us lived near to our school here in town and because it was a city school, we sure didn’t get much time off since all of us had to get there on our own, while the coun­ty kids got to ride buses.

But today was spe­cial, and the snow was so deep that even teach­ers didn’t want to get out their galosh­es and tramp through knee-deep snow just to put up with a full day of row­dy kids.

Also, in the city, nobody had the job of clean­ing snow off the streets. If a per­son had to dri­ve some­where, well, that was just tough. DO THE BEST YOU CAN!

Boy, it sure was hot that day.

Guess you got to expect that when it’s July in Kentucky.

Hot or not, two young boys ain’t gonna be denied the chance to spend the day out­side, look­ing for adven­ture wher­ev­er it springs up.

Jake and I got togeth­er that morn­ing, as we did just about every morn­ing dur­ing sum­mer when one or the oth­er of us wasn’t havin’ to go to sum­mer school to make up for bad grades durin’ the reg­u­lar school year.

Don’t know why but teach­ers just seemed to be more ‘onery dur­ing the sum­mer. Reckon they didn’t want to be in school any mor’n we did.

Looks like today was gonna be one of those days for some pea shootin’.

But first, we had to find us some Indian “see­gars” and have a short smoke… after we snitched a few kitchen match­es from the house and found a place where our moms weren’t like­ly to look.

Don’t real­ly know why we smoked those awful things. They didn’t taste good at all. I guess it’s just ’cause it’s some­thin’ to do that might make our par­ents uncom­fort­able. And we nev­er had mon­ey to spend on cig­a­rettes even if some store clerk would be inclined to sell some to us. For us, cig­a­rettes were those chalky things that came in a nick­el pack, white with red tips that you could pre­tend to smoke and then chew them up since they were just can­dy anyway.

Saturdays were always the best time for Jake and me, ’cause it did­n’t make any dif­fer­ence whether it was win­ter or sum­mer, a Saturday meant sleep­ing in late and doin’ what­ev­er we want­ed for a whole day. ‘Course, in the sum­mer, it was anoth­er day tacked onto a whole week out of school. Jake and me

It was win­ter. It was 1951. I don’t remem­ber what month it was, but school was in session.

The thing that char­ac­ter­ized the sea­son was the fact that it got dark much ear­li­er, espe­cial­ly in those days when day­light sav­ing time was not yet thought of.

There was a new sci­ence fic­tion movie show­ing at Leeds. Jake and I knew it would be gone before the week­end — when the typ­i­cal week­end fare at the the­atre would be Abbott and Costello, the Bowery Boys, Dagwood and Blondie, or one of the many west­erns show­ing in those days.

So, with our par­ents’ per­mis­sion, Jake and I hur­ried to the the­atre to catch the after­noon show­ing of the new movie, The Thing.

IT’S SATURDAY!

For two nine-year-olds, it’s a day of thanksgiving.

After a full five days of slav­ing away in a class­room ruled over by a teacher intent on forc­ing facts into our devel­op­ing-but-resis­tant brains, it’s def­i­nite­ly a day for cel­e­bra­tion. How much math can a teacher expect a kid to absorb in a week’s time?

Five days of work­ing over a hot note­book, try­ing to get the hang of frac­tions. How much can a young­ster take? How long ‘til summer?

It’s also September, which means two things. First, it has tak­en only a very few weeks for us to be burned out by school. And sec­ond, it’s that time of year when all the new car mod­els hit the market.

And this, of course, means that all the local car deal­ers are going to have shiny col­or­ful brochures which illus­trate all the mod­els avail­able by each manufacturer.

“Hey, Jake, let’s you and me go out to the golf course and see if we can cad­dy today. I could use a lit­tle spendin’ money.”

It was sum­mer, not much to do, so what bet­ter than try to raise a cou­ple of bucks to sup­port our oth­er habits, such as buy­ing sodas, can­dy, com­ic books, and going to the movies?

As Jake and I walked to the coun­try club about a mile away, we each dreamed of what we could do with a lit­tle cash. Of course, it hard­ly occurred to us that sav­ing a por­tion of it would be a good thing too. Life is too fleet­ing to con­sid­er such mun­dane things.

Arriving at the coun­try club, we took seats near the club­house, under the shade of a large maple tree, and wait­ed for some will­ing golfers to show up who need­ed a cad­dy to haul around their bags.

Late September. School had only been in ses­sion for a short time, and the days were still warm and sun­ny, await­ing the advent of fall, falling tem­per­a­tures, and falling leaves.

It was a typ­i­cal after­noon, and Jake and I had just got­ten home from anoth­er bor­ing day in the class­room. It’s too late to go to a movie and, besides, there’s only some soapy love sto­ry show­ing right now, not Lash Larue or War of the Worlds. We’d have to wait for the week­end when the movie selec­tion was almost always ori­ent­ed toward youngsters.

Jake and I were walk­ing home from school that fall day, a day when the leaves were just begin­ning to take on their fall col­ors and were not yet drop­ping. The air was crisp but not cold, and two kids could eas­i­ly enjoy their walk home at the end of the school day.

I sug­gest­ed to Jake that, instead of head­ing direct­ly home, we go down­town and vis­it my mom who was work­ing that day in her usu­al posi­tion as a tele­phone operator.

Her place of work was on the sec­ond floor of the red brick build­ing locat­ed on the north­east cor­ner of Lexington Avenue and Main Street.

“Boy, Jake, it’s rain­in’ cats ‘n’ dogs at my house; how about yours?” I asked over the phone, lis­ten­ing to the rain pelt the roof and the win­dows and know­ing full well that the same cats and dogs were falling at his house only a half block away.

I called Jake kin­da late in the day, but for a good reason.

“Jake, the wind’s up and I got me a new kite. Wanna go fly it?”

Jake was nev­er one to refuse a chance for play.

“Sure,” was his quick response.

“Okay. Meet me in the field in five minutes.”

In this nos­tal­gic rec­ol­lec­tion — the lat­est in his part-fic­tion­al and part-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal series “Jake and Me” — Chuck Witt recounts a day spent with his friend Jake gath­er­ing wal­nuts to earn some mon­ey. After a polite phone call, they embark on a quest for wal­nut trees, fill­ing gun­ny sacks with the nuts.