Do you remember when summers never ended? Sidewalks were your playground. At night, you chased fireflies with the sound of crickets chirping. you wore a captain’s cap and played with a cap gun. Every puddle gave you a soaker, and your haircut was a crew cut. Your mother treated scrapes with Mercurochrome, and the cry of “Oly Oly Oxen Free” ended the game unless a kid suggested another one. A prize in a cereal box was something meriting three cheers and a hip, hip, hooray, and comic costa. dime, which also deserves a hooray.

You stayed up late on firecracker day and learned the Dick and Jane reader. You mouthed “God Save the Queen” and “O Canada” at school assemblies. Watching something romantic on television, you would close your eyes and say, “oh mush.” You watched Howdy Doody and later the Mickey Mouse Club, and your bedtime was always too soon.

I want to take you back to a time when the mail came on Saturdays; the elevator operator asked your floor, the gas stations offered full service, you waited on Sunday for the comic section of the paper to arrive and staying up late was past nine o’clock, which sometimes is my bedtime. This book is a series of stories and adventures reflecting how I remembered, experienced and viewed the world as a young boy and teenager in the fifties and sixties. Everything in this book happened but permit the storyteller to have a little fun with his recollections since it makes for a better story.