AT HOPE AND MAIN: WAKIN' UP IN THE SUMMERTIME

Waking up before anyone else in the household is losing its charm since nowadays it seems to be a rule rather than an exception.

There was a time when waking up and remembering there was no school was the greatest thing on earth. If no one was up, the biggest thrill was to take my bowl of Cheerios and milk out to the curb and have a picnic breakfast. I guess just being independent and breaking the rules a little was my idea of fun.

The ice cream man, staying out after dinner, catching lightning bugs and playing kickball defined summer, period.

On Walnut Street, we had an itinerary for summertime recreation. There was no day care and really no formal, planned recreation like there is today.

Before lunch and after dinner there was always kickball, unless the ball couldn't be found or had a hole in it. There were five "Hardy" kids on the block and they all played kickball. Bobby Hardy was pretty sports-minded. Kind of a manager and umpire for both teams. There was never a question of wanting to play kickball, it was just a part of the agenda. Brothers Bobby and Michael would oftentimes get into an argument over rules or cheating. Michael, the younger one, would often walk away crying. Jean Marie, the oldest Hardy, would step in and stick up for Michael if he was right and then the battle would be between Jean Marie and Bobby. It was almost predictable. Other than that, kickball was pretty enjoyable. There was no pressure like in organized sports. You got out there and did what you could. No one was humiliated for not running fast enough or not catching that fly or running when they shouldn't have.

When kickball was over, the girls played jump rope and street games and the boys vanished. We tied one end of the rope to a car door handle so we'd only need one rope turner. For the life of me, I cannot remember one jump rope song in its entirety; I guess there were just too many. The older girls would enlist the help of the younger girls by honoring them with the duty of rope turner. Otherwise, they'd hold us up because they'd do a lot of missing.

Chalk, a piece of slate rock or a piece of drywall were the necessary tools for street games. The girl who possessed the tools received the honor of drawing the hopscotch board or whatever game it was we were playing, on the pavement. For boxball you'd need a ball, and for Scullies you'd need a bottle cap, for hopscotch, anybody could play 'cause all you needed was a rock.

Even though there were undeniably good players and bad players in all our neighborhood recreational activities, no one made mention of it. There was an unwritten code. A code of honor, so to speak. The kids on your block were almost like your extended family. Heck, you'd been with them since diaperhood, had chickenpox together and maybe even been with them through a blackout or two. Competition existed on the outside, but not on the block.

There was still an interdependence going on in the suburbs, during the '60s and '70s. We kids needed each other. Mom was not going to take us over to little Johnny's house, a mile away, just to play. We had to get along, we were all we had. We weren't allowed off the block, except maybe to take a walk around it, and for that we had to tell our mothers. This interdependence or relying on each other was on its way out though. Mothers would start going to work, and fewer kids would be available. In another decade, many kids would be in day care. Due to economics, social change became a fact.

Mom's often relied on each other, too. They were each other's support group, adult company, whatever you needed. A cup of coffee got you in the door, and from there it was unloading time.

With the morning taken care of, kickball, jump-rope and street games behind us, it was time to eat lunch. Moms on the block would use their high-tech communication devices. They'd go out the door, stand in the driveway with their hands cupped around their mouths like a megaphone and holler for their kids. You didn't procrastinate either, especially if you wanted to go out after lunch.

You already know that after lunch it was way too hot to do any real physical activities. Now bike riding was an exception because you got a breeze when you went fast enough. Sometimes the girls would play dolls or school or maybe go under the sprinkler. Who knows what the boys did -- somehow they just seemed to vanish -- until after supper and kickball was next on the agenda.

There was one kid on the block with a pool, but she was only allowed to have one guest over at a time. Since there was a lot of us, we didn't often swim in her pool.

Then that sound would come about everyday at the same time and it was like being in heaven. Ding-a-ling-a-ling, it was the ice cream man. You could hear that he was around the corner. You'd move fast, find Mom or your piggy bank and hope that you had liquid assets available. We scattered around at the speed of lightning. It never occurred to us that he would wait, just to get our business. We were well blessed in our neighborhood, for we had two ice cream men and sometimes the Good Humor man, but you could hardly count him; that white uniform he wore was something a kid couldn't trust, it had authority figure written all over it.

Mister Softee and the Generic Ice Cream man were always first on our list of priorities. Mr. Softee was a soft serve ice cream and you could get a double cone -- if you had enough money -- with sprinkles and two chocolate-covered mint cookies for ears, and they'd call it a Mickey Mouse cone. By a tremendous stretch of the imagination -- hey, we were kids, by golly -- it resembled Mickey Mouse, but who cared, it was sensational. Most days it was only an Italian Ice. They were just 20 cents. The first thing you did with an Italian Ice was turn it over. In the cup. It sure did take practice and you usually performed the procedure over grass, not pavement, because if it fell, all you had to worry about was maybe a few ants or blades of grass. Once you had it upside down, it was pure heaven. The bottom was where all the sugar had collected and it was by far, the best part. Nobody waited till they got to the bottom.

The Generic Ice Cream man was your second choice. He had no soft serve, but he had candy, gum and sunflower seeds. If you were low on cash, you'd hold out for him, 'cause you could buy a single piece of gum or a lollipop or something. I guess that was all that really mattered, you got something.

Good Humor Man was last on the priority list. Sometimes I might even save my money for the next day. Just about everything in his truck seemed phony. He was a pretentious ice cream man. He tried too hard to look friendly. His truck was like a convertible-open style. Not only did he have the all-white uniform, but he had an official hat, white too. The one redeeming part of his whole fashion statement was the coin changer. It was really shiny and he was super fast at making change. Other than that, it was hard to trust ice cream that came on a stick. It just didn't compare with Mister Softee or Italian Ices.

At the end of the day, after supper, it was kickball again, and maybe lightning bugs. If your Mom called you in early, lightning bugs were out. If not, you got to put them in your bug catcher and have a living night light by your bedside.