Summer days and wonderful memories
When my kids and I were on a trip recently, Matthew asked me, more than a few times, if I ever went on vacation when I was a kid. My best guestimate is that he asked me at least once a day during our 10-day adventure. And even though the answer never varied, he asked me, over and over. Matthew does this a lot — ask the same question even though he knows the answers. He loves to hear about times when I was a kid. While I would love to believe it’s because he wants to know everything about his mom, I suspect he just wants to hear more about his true obsession — Aunt Beth.
And so, I tell and retell the stories…mostly so he can hear about his Aunt Beth.
The truth is, once I came along, the Kehoes only went on two or three beach vacations — and for good reason. The trips were nightmares.
The first was a 2-month stay in “Rehoboth Beach.” Full disclosure — I am totally exaggerating the length of time. It was most likely one or two weeks, during back-to-back summers when I was 4 and 5. But for reasons that were no fault of our hostess, Aunt Effie, time stood still.
And the quote marks flanking Rehoboth Beach? Because we weren’t really at Rehoboth Beach. We were in a little house in a cornfield about an hour’s drive away from the sand and surf. No kidding.
My grandmother (Nana Ann Kehoe) had a very good friend we called Aunt Effie. She was, perhaps, the sweetest lady ever. In her extreme generosity she opened her home to a woman and her five children. My dad dropped us off on her doorstep and then went back to Norristown to work. So, for what seemed like the entirety of two summers (which, in reality was probably just a week each summer) we languished in the cornfields.
Five kids from Norristown in a cornfield somewhere in Delaware. Not a basketball court in sight. Just corn. And mosquitoes. I vaguely remember my brothers playing Wiffle ball, but for true sport took swings at those buzzing, stinging monsters that had wing spans of five-feet. Mosquitoes certainly didn’t grow that big in Norristown.
I only have a few “real memories” of our cornfield vacations: the mosquitoes, of course; the humidity; getting a deep cut on my hand after I broke the ceramic bowl that held my ice cream — the scar is still visible; and the ride to the beach in the station wagon with all back seats folded down so it was just one big, flat, slippery surface that proved to be the best amusement ride we experienced in Delaware as my sister tried to keep her younger siblings amused by singing Herman’s Hermits’ hit “I’m Henry VIII I Am,” over and over. I can’t seem to separate the weeks of the summers— they just meld together. The only way I can tell the difference is from photos, one summer my hair is short, another it’s long and pulled in a pony tail.
And then there was our trip to Seaside Heights — my dad’s boss Steve owned a beach house and let us use it for the week — which proved to be a week in hell.
The chaos started within minutes of unloading the car. My dad decided he’d take his boys fishing. A first for all involved. Steve had a bunch of fishing poles lined up, and the four Kehoe men each took one. They had gotten about 10 feet from the house when my dad stormed back in — his face as red as a bad case of sunburn — and the three boys followed, heads hanging down. In my dad’s hands were what seemed to be two fishing poles — one still in working condition. The other one, on closer inspection, was actually 3 poles — all tangled into one.
No fishing that day, or any other day that week.
In hindsight, this incident surely served as an omen of things to come that week — so here’s the highlight reel. My brother Terry gauged open his big toe while trying to retrieve a sand dollar from the jetty rocks. He then came down with strep throat. I got a third-degree sunburn that no amount of Noxema (ugh) could cool down. One of my other brothers gashed his shin on a cement planter and my mom, no surprise here, developed a case of hives because her nerves were completely shot. And to top all that off — my father’s subtle case of chauvinism came reared its ugly head. On a night at the boardwalk I spied a Snoopy stuffed doll luring customers to try to win it. And I desperately wanted that Snoopy. To win it you had to shoot a basketball through the hoop — twice. Considering basketball coursed wildly through the Kehoe veins you would think that my three highly-skilled brothers would each win one. All three tried, all three failed. And after each failed attempt my sister begged to have a chance, but my dad rebuffed her each time. Finally, after the three boys failed, my mom told my dad to let Beth have a chance.
I slept with that Snoopy doll every night for the next year.
I don’t know what I appreciated more — owning a Snoopy doll, or my sister beating out my brothers in basketball.
That was the last vacation the Kehoes took as a complete family. I’m pretty sure my mom needed the next few summers to regain her sanity after the Seaside Heights debacle. And then my dad died — so weeklong trips to the shore were out of the question. Instead, the Kehoe kids spent summer days at Mermaid Lake Swim Club and Rittenhouse. But the truth is, I don’t think we felt we missed out on anything.
My mom used her vacation time to work half-days in the summer, so she would take my best friend Denise and me to the pool every day. (I learned later in life that my grandmother used her Social Security money to pay for our family membership to Mermaid, which wasn’t cheap. But make no mistake, Nana did this to preserve HER sanity — there’s no way she wanted to deal with us five kids 24-7 for 3 months. Smart lady.)
After those afternoons at the pool Denise and I would hang out in the neighborhood, playing basketball or kickball or riding bikes at Rittenhouse, or loiter in the stores at Logan Square.
I’m sure there were days that I was bored, especially when Denise went on her own family vacation. But there were always enough kids at Rittenhouse to play games with that boredom would have been short-lived. I even remember purposely retreating to my room to watch reruns of the Brady Bunch to just get some down time.
And all these memories I shared with Matthew, several times over. He particularly likes the stories that star Aunt Beth. And why not — they’re the best stories anyway.
The other day, while retelling Matthew these stories, I kind of got lost in the memories. I saw visions of my dad sitting on the beach with his legs covered in towels to ward off sunburn (pre-sunscreen days, obviously), of that Snoopy doll, those fishing poles and Denise and me diving for pennies at Mermaid (against the rules, but we were rebels), of playing two-on-two with Kevin Shields and Phil McKenna, of getting about 5 “samples” from Baskin Robbins ice cream shop in Logan Square. As these memories ran through my mind, I realized I’m grateful Matthew doesn’t get bored with these stories, and that he encourages me to tell them. With these stories I get to spend time again with the people I love, but who are no longer here with me — my dad, my mom, my brother Terry, Denise. And it warms my heart that so many people with those shared memories are still with me — but who will no doubt tell me that I got some of these memories wrong — especially the Snoopy doll memory. But with my hand on the Bible, Beth won it for me.