Old Julys

I lived in a large subdivision in a small town. The houses were made cheap, built fast and designed for new families, first-time homeowners and down-sizing older folks. The streets were curvy and wide and the blocks sported cul-de-sacs and sidewalks. The houses were close together but the back yards were large. As such, the entire neighborhood was filled with kids.  Lots of kids. If you counted the kids on both sides of the street of my one little block there were close to 50. Not the whole block square, just one stretch of street. All of about the same age.

By day we were out playing and sweating in the July sun.  There was no air conditioning. There was certainly nothing of interest to a nine year-old on the three channels we got on the TV. We raced through sodden bowls of cereal from boxes that boasted of their sugar content.

We headed out to play or ride our bikes. Coming home to have a fried bologna sandwich or peanut butter on Wonder bread for lunch. Kool-aid or lemonade washed it down. The afternoon was spent on adventures. We headed to the little park and the ditch along the tracks to catch crawdads or minnows. We rode the town on our bikes, sweaty urchins on stingray bikes with tall handlebars and banana seats with sissy bars.

Around five o'clock the dads started coming home from work. Smells and sounds of supper cooking seeped through the open kitchen windows. Some kids ate as soon as Dad came home, others later. Calls to supper echoed off the aluminum siding and rooftops all around the neighborhood. The neighbor to our west bellowed an undecipherable "Ruhhggg"  for "Rich" when it was time for his son to belly up to the dinner table. My Mom usually paged my brother, knowing i would tag along, Dad hollered a short, clipped "Boys".

The boy who lived at the entrance to our cul-de-sac was called each evening by his mother. She had a screeching warble that could function as a high-pitch foghorn. She had amazing breath control and the way she stretched out the vowels in "Tracy" would have made an opera singer jealous. You could hear her blocks away as she launched her call into the evening air.  Traaaaaaaaaacceeeeeeeeeeee" Tarzan blushed in shame for his comparatively weak-assed nature call. Train whistles on the Nickle Plate hushed in respect. "Traaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaceeeeeeeeeeeeeee". Everyone in the eastern half of the county could hear her. Everyone except Tracy, that is.

"Hey man, I think your Mom is calling" we would say.

"I don't hear nothing". Every subsequent call was louder and longer than the one preceding. Rumor had it the brass works on the other side of town wanted to hire Tracy's mom to replace their broken factory whistle.

"Traaaaaaaaaaaaceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" Birds took flight in fear. The Civil Defense started their phone tree in fear of a Russian attack with a new weapon.  Muezzin from the mysterious Middle East begged her to teach them her long-distance voice projection secrets to use in their call to prayer. "Traaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee".

She would launch into the "Tracy" wail, even if the kid was standing right in the front yard of his house. The sound of that ear-piercing call still echoes in my memories.