The Smell of Time

We spent each summer of my childhood in Vermont, renting out our house near the beach on Long Island to finance the school vacation of my teacher father.   The scramble to clean out the home for renters and at the same time pack clothes, cat and five children into one car for the seven hour trip north, was an operation we all suffered through.  With last minute cleaning, and timing to miss the traffic that could ensnare us as we skirted the City, we often left in the evening and drove through the night. 

When we got up to the Vermont house, we always set up the big tent in the backyard as an extra bedroom.  With foam pads, inflatable mattresses and half a dozen flannel lined sleeping bags, there was room for as many of us who would choose the tent at night to sleep, even if it meant cold dew soaked feet when we ran back to the house for breakfast. 

The tent was also a favorite place to nap after our midday swim at Fern Lake.  Given that we lived in a place called Leicester Swamp on old maps, refuge from mosquitoes was required, at least until August.  The smell of canvas in the sun, mixed with the tang of well-used bedding, together with the sap of white pine, and in some years the aroma of the summer horse we corralled right next to the tent, was a perfume  I have never found again but can still remember.  It was the smell of all the time in the world.

Childish Pursuits

There has been much ado around here about a little girl selling lemonade at a street fair who got shut down by the board of health. It’s one of those things that the news loves to highlight in order to test the polarity of the community. The anti-government folks can rail against the reach of petty bureaucracy. The pro-child faction can bemoan the loss of entrepreneurial opportunity for eight year olds, and the health conscious can shudder at the possibility for contagion. But it started me thinking about the things I did to make money as a child. Although there was formal employment that adults controlled, such as babysitting and paper routes, most of our enterprises were designed to extract money and goods from each other.

Back in the baby boom years of the sixties, we were old-fashioned enough to engage in games that rewarded success with the amassing of certain tangible, non-currency assets. So, there were the titans of jacks, marbles, and for the boys, baseball cards. These pursuits were usually specific to certain years and grades, but when the fever hit, like tulip fortunes in Holland, it was all we did, all the time.

Occasionally, a group of friends would band together to design an entertainment we called a carnival. We would set up games of chance, gather prizes, advertise, and open our doors in a backyard decorated with sheets and Christmas garlands and strings of lights, to help customers part with their money. I have no idea where the model for this came from, but it was effective in drawing participants, because who wouldn’t want to try for a chance to win a rubberband ball, or some really cool toy soldiers? Sometimes the carnival would offer lemonade or cookies, but adults were far away from these enterprises, Mom only noticing several days later that the packets of Kool-Aid she bought to last the week were nowhere to be found.

For many adults, we try our hardest to superimpose our recalled childhood on today’s children, with results such as the lemonade stand described above. It’s hard to know how to innoculate children with the freedom and curiosity we remember, and at the same time keep them absolutely safe.

First Travels

Neither Out Far Nor In Deep



Going to the beach at the end of our block was the place I traveled to most often as a child. That short trip allowed me to leave our overcrowded home and see the limitless horizon. From the age of six or seven we were able to go outdoors to play anywhere we could get to safely by foot or bike. I remember getting up early on sunny Saturdays, heading to the ocean by bike, riding to where the concrete dead-ended into beach plum and rosehips. I would drop the bike into the sand and walk up to the top of the dunes to check the waves. Even though I was never a surfer, I learned to notice what made good prospects, waves a decent height with a long clean roll, so that I could report back to whomever might need to know. If I was going back to the house for breakfast, I might meet a fellow early riser walking his dog who would ask, “How are the waves?” “Pretty choppy and broken up,” I’d say, instead of hello.

The beach was a place where I could walk all day if I wanted, although my feet would start to complain after a couple of miles of sand. Sometimes a group of us would travel too far along the edge, around jetty after jetty, to walk back. Then we would decide whose parent might be most willing to come rescue us and use one of the payphones on the boardwalk or in any close fast food shack to beg for a pick-up.

Although we lived on an island, I never felt like there was a limit to exploring and the ocean offered new possibilities of treasures on each stroll. Even the way the tide changed the texture of the beach would be different each day. A low tide might create a stretch of hard sand, great for running or drawing elaborate games of hopscotch. A high tide washing up against the soft sand, creating a little cliffs that would make walking tough, might offer the perfect timing to play a favorite sand castle game, where we tried to defend a walled city against a rising tide. We would imagine that we were protecting New York City and it was up to us to keep the millions from drowning. Inevitably, the water always won, but the struggle was as exciting as any disaster movie we imitated.

Maybe growing up with the Atlantic Ocean at the end of the street instilled my need to go outside in order to see what is inside. Going over the dunes to check the waves is a way to see which way my own tide is pulling and what treasures have come ashore.