The Summer Wind

At 29 Old Colony Road, the smell of salt air was trumped by the Sunday sauce of Nonna and Mrs. Fazio. I always knew what was for dinner on Sundays, but it still excited me while I was outside in my sundress, waiting for my turn at bat in kickball. We couldn’t play in the busy main road we lived on back home in Wethersfield, but that’s what made Old Colony Beach all the better.

The gates at the top of each street in our beach neighborhood alternated staying open every summer. When it was Old Colony’s turn to unlock for the summer, my neighbor, Mikey Bacarella, came up with a chant to signal everyone off the road while a car passed by. “Car, Car, C-A-R! What’da you do when a car comes? R-U-N, RUN!” By the time he got to the end, we’d all chime in to shout “RUN!” and then book it to either side of the road. I always thought Mikey was so cool when he’d start walking back onto the road mid-passing of the car, but his mom never thought so.

The chants and jeers of the outfielders taunting whoever was up at home plate got drowned out by Jimmy the Music Man’s cottage. He was a music aficionado, and the rectangular plaque on the chipping green clapboard read “Speakeasy”. I never knew what it meant, but I knew Jimmy, so that meant it was cool by association.

The tunes that blasted through his tiny fairy-tale like cottage filled Old Colony Road and there was always an eclectic mix of song choices. But today was Sunday, and Sunday meant one thing in Jimmy the Music Man’s record player: Frank Sinatra. To an outsider, it may have seemed cliché since all the families in ear shot were old school Italians, but to us, it was just tradition.

There was my family, the Carbone’s and Iannucci’s who lived halfway between the gate and the beach, the Fazio’s, Colangelo’s, and D’Amato’s lived together across the street from us, the Carella’s and Bacarella’s who sandwiched our cottage, the Gallo’s and Lapila’s were towards the top of the street near the gate, while the DeFrancesco’s, Reale’s, Orfitelli’s, Meucci’s, Russo’s, and the Sisti’s were down closer to the sand.

Jimmy’s music faded to the background when the King Freeze truck caused a standstill in the 5th inning. Joey Bacarella, the fastest 4 year old on the street, would fly out of his yellow cottage, naked as usual. His mom would lunge to grab him, but the mixture of suds and water dripping off of his half showered body made it easy for him to slip through her grip. Talk about a serious dedication to ice cream.

We’d line up behind little naked Joey, knowing that it wouldn’t be long until his mom would snatch him back into the cottage, usually without an ice cream. Mikey always made sure he got a Bomb Pop for Joey too, and he’d take a time out from the game to go put it in the freezer for later.

After dinner time on our decks, the Music Man would shift the mood from Sinatra’s big band swing style to an evening play list of Frank’s slower jams. Gina, Chrissy, Ali and I would sneak down to the dead end, our meeting spot for our club, the Wildcats. Gina was the oldest, and therefore our President, her sister Chrissy served as Vice President, our neighbor Ali was Secretary, and I, the youngest, was the nurse.

We claimed the dead end as WildCat Territory, even though we always let the other kids on the street come down to play too. There was a fence at the bottom of it that separated us from the public beach and three hip-height poles were cemented to the ground where there was an opening. I was always scared when I rode my bike through there out of fear of crashing into one of them.

The center pole was the only one that wasn’t cemented shut on top. The ashtray like hole that was left became the WildCat altar. Every time we walked through the fence to go to the Carousel Shop, bocce courts, or Arcade, WildCat code called for us to dip a finger into the rain water collected in that center pole’s top, and trace a WC over our heart.

Once when Ali and I were riding bikes in the dead end, she flipped over her handle bars and smashed her mouth on the pavement. Jimmy the Music Man was walking back from getting donuts when he saw me sitting with Ali on the ground, trying to use my bandana to soak up the blood on her mouth. Jimmy scooped Ali up, carried her home, and then walked me to my cottage when her Mom and Nonna drove off to the ER.

The Music Man always closed down our summers at the annual Labor Day party in Gina and Chrissy yard, the biggest one on the street. He’d spend the entire morning of the party hooking up speakers, passing records and wires through his window and into Gina and Chrissy yard. It never seemed like luck that he happened to live next door to them, it just was fate that the party yard was linked to the Music Man.

Jimmy always winded down the night with “The Summer Wind ” by Sinatra, of course, as our parents clank plastic cups of wine, and we ran with sparklers, serenading summer goodbye.