This Just In – School on Saturday? Not really.
On this day in March of 1968, my family began its move from Manchester, Connecticut to the neighboring town of Glastonbury. This was a do-it-yourself move, involving a big U-Haul truck and the assistance of my Uncle Chris, who was then 35 years old. It’s good to have a big (6’4”) strong younger brother. (I have one, too – my uncle’s namesake. He was four years old when we moved – not much help with the boxes.)
The most fun about this move was, of course, going up and down the ramp of the truck and having pizza for dinner. Time with our Massachusetts uncle was a prize, of course, but a close second to exploring our new, larger house where all four kids had their own bedrooms. Heaven.
The U-Haul was parked out on the street and my older brother, Dave, was a sprouting teenager of 14 –big enough to be helpful in loading boxes onto a hand truck and wheeling stuff into the house. It was a big house, and those bedrooms were all on the second floor. Thirteen wonderful steps to traverse with five complete sets of bedroom furniture.
My back hurts just thinking about it.
In the middle of this exercise, my brother spotted something that nearly stopped his heart – a school bus. Dave swallowed hard and asked my father what that school bus was doing out there on a Saturday.
My older brother should have kept in mind what my father told him when my younger brother (10 years younger than Dave) was born. Dave had two sisters already and told my parents he really, really needed a brother. Knowing that Dave had gotten his wish, Dad came in with the news. “It’s another girl,” he said. (Was this the origin of Fake News?)
Dave matter-of-factly went to his room and began packing. Eventually, Dad admitted his deception and got a good laugh out of it – at Dave’s expense.
Now came yet another opportunity. Dad grabbed this chance to take Dave’s leg and give it a hard yank.
“Oh that … didn’t I tell you? In Glastonbury, they have school on Saturdays,” he said. Dave was on the way out of the truck with a full load on his hand truck. He spun around to bring everything back.
I imagine it took Dad and his kid brother a few minutes to convince poor Dave that this was just a joke. There were subsequent occurrences. Perhaps the best is when Dave returned home long after curfew and found my father sitting at the kitchen table, drinking a cup of tea.
Managing his risk, Dave elected to walk in and confess to his wrongdoings of the day (too complicated to list) and at least get credit for his honesty. He did get that credit, but it was decades later that Dad completed the story by telling Dave that he was awake at that late hour because he’d had a severe headache. He knew nothing about the incident to which Dave was confessing – not until Dave spilled all of it without being asked.
My late father was an attorney, but never a litigator. It’s too bad, really. He had an unusual talent (even for a father of four) for extracting information and sweating a witness.
So many stories … I’ll save some for Father’s Day.
Jean Bolduc is a freelance writer and the host of the Weekend Watercooler on 97.9 The Hill. She is the author of “African Americans of Durham & Orange Counties: An Oral History” (History Press, 2016) and has served on Orange County’s Human Relations Commission, The Alliance of AIDS Services-Carolina, the Orange County Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, and the Orange County Schools’ Equity Task Force. She was a featured columnist and reporter for the Chapel Hill Herald and the News & Observer.
Readers can reach Jean via email – jean@penandinc.com and via Twitter @JeanBolduc
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