Robert Hodum - The Adventures of a Latchkey Kid

The Adventures Of A Latchkey Kid
Tales of Growing Up On Long Island

2020 Robert Hodum

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

print ISBN: 978-1-09833-080-4

ebook ISBN: 978-1-09833-081-1

For you

A Word or Two

What will it be like
To realize that the last time that Ill say your name
Has arrived.

Will I be able to force my voice to be strong,
Summon words that you can hold in your memorys hand,
Look into your eyes with a smile as I leave,
Be firm in my need to give you strength as I lose mine.
And remember not to say goodbye
Nor hint at your mortality by saying that wed see one another again some day.

Of any words to be shared
In my heart I know Id want to say Thank you
For your love, your presence, for allowing our lives and those of yours to
rub together in the myriad of ways that they have,
For your patience with my fumbling through this life,

If I could, Id ask you to remember to remember ... me.
To share recollections
And to laugh at, with, and because of me,
And keep close a word or two of mine.
And remember to say my name
From time to time.

Sound Beach
August, 2019

Contents

Just like water

T oday, I gave time a chance to be itself. Fluid, unhinged, without sequence, like the blue fall skies over this farmers field.

It appeared on the other side of my lunch break at a job I had taken at a Halloween attraction on Long Islands East End. The owner needed help with the preseason renovation of his haunted house, an old potato barn surrounded by farmland. I signed on until the end of September.

After eating, I stretched out in the shade along the tree line that bordered the farm. I ran my hands over the blades of grass on the rise that overlooked this expanse of sod and clouds.

Sensing that I wasnt alone, I looked up.

The field wavered in the heat of the noon sun. A shadow pushed forward, through memory echoes, imagination and a sense of time that flowed just like water.

And there he was ... I was.

My childhood self waved at me from the middle of an East Northport potato farm. In my minds eye, I sauntered along, stick in hand, my feet caked in mud, under cloud-flushed summer skies. As a kid, I had stood in fields like this one, rubbing my feet into its soil, and facing the shadows of the surrounding woods. I relied on those skies to steward my daily adventures. They drew us latchkey kids far up past the circling seagulls. We drifted on those clouds, looking down on the universe where we ran wild.

In the early sixties, suburbia hummed with novelty. The sounds at worksites in the nearby developments spoke of new families that would be coming to our little town of East Northport. Neighborhoods smelled of recently laid asphalt, and the roads shone with freshly painted, broken white lines. So many newly poured foundations to climb down, framed-out homes left unattended to investigate, and recently dug sumps whose easily-scaled chain link fences led to ominous drainage tunnels. A well-set table of escapades and antics awaited us daredevils. We learned to extricate ourselves from most of the trouble we provoked, and anticipate adventure as our daily course of events.

Those fields and wooded tracts bordered the outer limits of our known domain. Little did we care to know the other world beyond those treetops. Though it filled our socks, and caked under our fingernails, we had no idea that the ground under those fields was timeless, and our memories, unlike the dirt on our jeans, not easily washed away.

That world, turned under by decades of tractor wheels, and largely covered by two-story colonials, still seeps up from this farmers field. The darkness of the surrounding woods whispers adventure, but also caution. Recollections of the conflict, isolation, anger, and fear that colored our childhood palettes lurk in the shadows of those trees like rusted, sharp cornered tractors.

We latchkey kids were alone, marooned on islands of our own creation where exhilaration frequently ended in laughter, or fisticuffs. But for certain, those days concluded with an inevitable return to dark and empty homes. Sometimes we endured the loneliness and sense of gentle abandonment that we came to consider normal. Other times, we did not.

We went to school with keys, dangling around our necks or tied to our belts, tucked away in change purses or stuck deep in pants pockets. Having lost mine twice in the first grade, my family hid my key under the milk box on our stoop. Responsible for locking up in the morning and letting ourselves in after school, turning lights out and radios off, we kids did our best to convince ourselves that we were stalwart keepers of the familys realm.

Locking up and leaving the house was easy for me. Anticipating the shenanigans of lunch and recess with buddies and the smiles of a few good teachers, Id happily step away from my house. Often scolded for being a dedicated clock-watcher, Id crash out of school and start my return home. As Id get closer, Id slow my steps. My walk home always ended the same, at a locked door. I dreaded opening that door to a dark and empty house. Most of us latchkey kids shared that apprehension, rarely voiced to our parents, who expected us to maneuver deftly through that discomforting solitude. Instead, we conspired and hatched adventures together, raised a lot of noisy and unrepentant hell, and ran wild under limitless suburban skies. Whether I was solo or running with the gang, regardless of the weather or season, our antics played out in surrounding fields and woods, our childhoods stage.

I am in times debt for returning me to when my greatest concerns in life were dodging phone calls from my teachers, surviving roughhousing with my buddies, and getting home before my parents did. Always plotting new capers, skirting trouble, playing on the local hill, and digging tunnels deep into its soil, time seemed mutable, an eternal rollercoaster run through seasons, adventures, and farm fields like this one.

So, thank you, time, for allowing me to see once again through a childs eyes, and find a return home.

Summertime Waifs

A bsent parents and teachers, we were unshackled during the summers. Older siblings worked summer jobs. Our parents left home early in the morning. The fathers of our neighborhood left by six thirty to catch the morning train to Manhattan. Theyd return after seven in the evening. Many of the moms were out the door by seven thirty, some after dropping their husbands off at the Northport station. Thats what Mom and Dad did.

Dad started with Sunoco Mobil Oil Company as a runner when he was eighteen. A track star at Franklin K. Lane High School in Brooklyn, he easily qualified for this job which required him to run documents between the companys main office and numerous depots and satellite offices throughout Midtown Manhattan. Sunday nights Id see him seated at his desk, flipping through pages of hand-written columns of numbers. Dad did all his calculations in his head and his work in pencil.

Mom met Dad in the building where they worked. She was a divorced telephone operator with a young daughter, Frances Jane. Dad was a widower with an eight year-old son, Harry Charles. When I was born, Mom stayed home in our Glen Cove home until we moved out to East Northport. When I was seven, she went back to work as a telephone operator for different businesses in Western Suffolk County.