Like a becalmed sailing ship, the progression of the seasons is stalled here during mid-summer. September starts the waiting sails to flutter. It's very subtle at first. Crickets, normally nocturnal, join the cicadas in mid-morning song, and late blooming grasses cast a haze over the fields. Goldenrod and asters soon add color. Here and there a gum tree turns magenta in contrast to the still green mountainsides. Low growth such as some sumac and creeping vines start to turn color—-features that we might miss if we forget to stop and observe closely.

People who often wear no clothes outdoors are able to sense September's rivulets of cooling air—-some only inches wide—-that course their way down slopes, through woods and across open, sun-drenched fields. These are the little winds that, for the rest of us, make morning campfires difficult to light, leaving us thinking that our matches must be wet from the dew. While it may be largely due to its contrast with the haze of August, there is no sky so blue as that of a clear day in September.

Stephanie and I raised three beautiful daughters well into the age of legal responsibility with no felony indictments. While this may sound like bragging, I'll even take it further and mention that they have always been voracious readers. Of the many stories that have passed through our household, I seem to relate to one particular story in a special way: “Ramona Quimby and the Perfect Day.”

I was born on September 13, 1953, so the eleventh is obviously not my birthday. However, in 1960, my birthday fell on a Tuesday. In order for my father to be involved in my birthday celebration, it either had to be held on Sunday the eleventh or on the following Sunday, by which time I would already have declared myself “seven and a half, going on eight.”

The party would be later in the day, and would be a successful affair which included nearly everyone in our little Lithuanian enclave, a new bike, and accordion music. The real celebration, though, was the ride through the countryside. My dad celebrated everything with a ride in the Buick. Always a Buick—-in this case it was a 1948 Roadmaster. He paid cash for it during the immediate post-war boom. He hadn't planned to hold onto it for so long, but a serious recession in the late '50s altered his plans.

The Buick ran flawlessly. There were a lot of other cars of that vintage still on the road, though by then Detroit would have us believe that any car without tail fins and a V-8 engine was scandalously obsolete. Heck, the Buick had eight cylinders, albeit in a row. My dad insisted that the car's brakes were insufficient for its weight. This was said to be the “real” cause of a minor accident in which he was charged with “drunken driving,” plain and simple. There were no delicate legal euphemisms back then.

Please don't let the mention of the year 1960 evoke images of day-glo painted Volkswagen buses and flower children. For those of us who weren't there, 1960 was still the era of the '50s beatnik. The historic 1960s didn't kick in until the latter half of the decade and carried well over into the '70s. 1960 was indiscernible from the '50s and, in the rurals, may even have had a close resemblance to the late '40s.

My dad and I climbed into the car, leaving Mom to prepare things on the home front. We headed west, leaving tar and chip roads, past dairy cows grazing in the sunshine, to the bright concrete of route 206. We traveled along this highway only a short distance, then rejoined the network of secondary roads.

We stopped in an idyllic little town. The trees along the street were in full summer foliage, crisply defined by the deep blue sky. Neat houses from the last century and before nestled comfortably amid well arranged flowers and shrubbery. Sunshine filtered through the leaves and glinted off the tall two-piece windshields and copious chrome trim of the cars parked along the street. One could easily imagine Jimmy Stewart exchanging greetings with Spencer Tracy along the shaded sidewalk.

As we waited to cross the street to the little restaurant, a long, shiny, light green Chrysler passed. Since I was quite short at the time, the bottom half of the jewel-like emblem in the center of the rear wheel's chrome hubcap caught my attention. The top half of the wheel was concealed by the lustrous gleam of a chrome-trimmed fender skirt. The tire sported wide white walls.

“There goes the Judge.” my father said as he waved. I would hear this phrase again and again in my mind for the next half century, whenever I happened to attend an antique car show and see those elegantly skirted wheels.

Everyone at the restaurant seemed to know my dad. He ordered coffee and doughnuts and announced that “Little Teddy” (that's me) was seven today. The swarthy Italian plumbers and excavators, the ruddy Polish carpenters, and everyone else offered congratulations. A few might even have said something Catholic.

Back outside a short while later, I took a long look down the quiet street. A small bottle rocket ascended from a back yard somewhere and exploded with its single report above the trees. Being above any obstructions, the little airborne firecracker echoed far and wide. No further launches followed. The rocket was likely a dud left over from the fourth of July, perhaps revived through the genius of a boozy, mischievous uncle—-they're good for things like that.

We headed back home, where I would cash in on having been a denizen of this “veil of tears” for seven whole years. After dark, there would be a campfire beneath the huge hickory tree by the brook. September 11, 1960, receives my Ramona Quimby Perfect Day Award. There have been better days since, but the R.Q.P.D.A. requires that one be about seven years old.

I've heard it said that, typically, people from rural New Jersey who have been displaced by development spend the rest of their lives searching for the Garden State of fifty years ago. Having found the Shenandoah Valley, my search was somewhat shorter than most. Perhaps you know one of us, though you may not understand some of our odd habits and bizarre rituals.

The sun climbs on a clear September day and the windshields of the antique trucks in the back yard reflect the deep blue. I walk outside and am overcome by the beauty of the day. On the bed of the 1954 Chevy flatbed stands a vintage Coke bottle. From it, I launch one bottle rocket—never more than one in a day.

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© 2002 tedkalvitis@yahoo.com