Counting Cars at Lunch

Sitting on the front steps
and eating lunch on a warm day–
but not a hot day–
we picked colors
and counted cars
with those colors
zipping down the street.
(the cars zipping, not the colors)
Silver won a few times,
then we kicked silver out
and picked other colors.
The clouds filled in when
we grew tired of the game,
and we told each other
about the shapes we saw.
Dog to dragon to bear to evil monster.
There’s a whole busy world up there
floating along.
We left them alone as we went
back inside the house
to read and work.

Books, Coffee, Crabs: Lives of a Building

In summer, I often think back to the summers of my childhood. I grew up (ages 2-13) in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware — and I returned there every summer until I finished college. Back then, summers centered around my grandparents’ store: Gingerbread Square Books.

In the above photo, I’m the one sitting and my older brother Ramsey is standing. The photo is from the mid-1970s. It’s before the store’s sign was added to the pediment (if that’s the correct word) above us. I like that you can see, in the darkened interior behind me and above my head, a stack of books resting on a stair.

This building is on Rehoboth Avenue, next to the Post Office (at the corner of Rehoboth Avenue and 2nd Street).

Unfortunately, I don’t have a photo of the building with the bookstore’s sign. But here’s a painting from 1984 with more vivid color than the older photo. The brick walkway next to the building led to a small courtyard, then a mall with spaces for several stores.

Working at the bookstore shaped me a great deal. I already enjoyed reading the books we borrowed from the library, then the store broadened the array of books I saw.

When I sat at the cashier’s counter, I read when I didn’t have a work task to do, such as restocking shelves. Typically, the store was quiet in the middle part of the day — as tourists were enjoying the beach and ocean.

I inhaled whatever caught my eye: comic books (X-Men, Batman, Richie Rich, Spider-Man, Daredevil, etc.), The Three Investigators, colorful children’s books, Choose Your Own Adventures, photography books, Calvin and Hobbes, Garfield, novels by Stephen King, Ernest Hemingway, Tom Clancy, etc.

In all that reading, I fell in love with books. I saw them as delivering a kind of magic to transport me to other places and times, seen through the eyes of various characters.

I wanted to someday be able to create that kind of magic, to become a writer when I grew up. That stayed only a desire until my late teenage years, when I started writing stories.

Wasn’t until my 40s that I finished longer projects of novellas and a story collection — after a stretch of too many years when I didn’t write. Now I’m a hobby writer. I still hope to become a full-time writer, but that may have to wait until I retire.

My grandfather sold the property in the late 1990s. The building became Java Beach Coffee House and Cafe. I visited there with my wife and two daughters in 2005. Seeing the building with a different sign and colors and purpose was surreal…

My family visited earlier this year, and we saw that the building became Claws Seafood House. Not only a new sign and colors, but a side room was added. Also, the brick walkway leading to the mall is blocked. The mall became The Pines restaurant, with an entrance on Baltimore Avenue.

Now the only bookstore in town is Browseabout Books, an independent store. It used to be a competitor to our family business. Times and minds change. I enjoy visiting Browseabout, and I’m very glad it’s still around to serve as a source for books. What is a town without a bookstore? I hesitate to say one without a soul, but then I’m biased due to my love of books. If you ever visit Rehoboth, please check out the store — located at 133 Rehoboth Avenue…

Hibernating Funland

Behind closed locked garage-style doors, all’s quiet in Funland, been quiet since the end of last tourist season, the amusement park closed up tight to hibernate through autumn, winter, early spring.

The rides sleeping the deep sleep of gears and pistons. The horses on the carousel lightly snoring. The dragons on the ship loudly snoring. The Paratrooper and teacups and helicopters turning a little side to side. The bumper cars sliding on the slick floor, then returning to position. The haunted house rumbling.

All dream of summer’s return, flashing colorful lights, kids laughing and shrieking and wide toothy grins while riding the boats and swings and motorcycles, hurrying from one ride to another, parents trying to keep up, thrills of pretending to steer your very own plane for a time, hopped up on pizza and ice cream and cotton candy, some kids crying because they didn’t win the big stuffed monkey, who is also hibernating and dreaming of being hugged by a kid who mashes her face against it and cries out, “You’re perfect!” and carries it to the hotel room and sits next to it on the car ride (not nearly fast or colorful enough of a ride, c’mon you boring parents) to home and introduced to the other stuffed animals and joining the family.

The rides gather energy during the long hibernation, patient for the day they will wake and be launched into motion, the rides beaming with delight as the kids and grown-ups enjoy them. The rides joshing each other for which is the most fun for the humans, but they’re not nearly as competitive as the horses in the horse racing game, for they take that race over the plastic green track very seriously.

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Funland is an amusement park on the boardwalk in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware — where I grew up.