Read Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories for Free Online Page B

sporting, somehow.
    Whap! Whap! Bang! Something crashed in the darkness.
    â€œGot the bastard!” He laughed exultantly. The battle was over—until the next hot puff of air brought in reinforcements. Our screens served only to keep the more enormous mosquitoes out of the house, allowing the smaller, lither, angrier types free access. During the second lull between attacks, I drifted off to sleep.
    ZZZZZZRRRRIIIIINNNNGGGGGG!
    The alarm clock blasted me hysterically into consciousness. Gray Saturday-morning light filled the house. The old man cursed and muttered sleepily as my mother padded out into the kitchen in her bathrobe and curlers to get the scrambled eggs started.
    An hour later, we were in the Pontiac on the way to the county fair. The ill-fated Pontiac was an inexplicable interruption of the old man’s lifelong devotion to the Oldsmobile. He was an Oldsmobile man the way others were Baptists, Methodists, Catholics or Holy Rollers. He later recanted after this episode of backsliding and returned to the fold with the purchase of a 1942 Oldsmobile station wagon that appealed far more deeply to his flamboyantly masochistic nature. A block or so ahead of us, Ludlow Kissel’s battered Nash, loaded with kids and Mrs. Kissel (who weighed 360 pounds and read
True Romance),
struggled toward the fairgrounds. His Nash laid down a steady cloud of blue-white exhaust that hung over Cleveland Street like a destroyer’s smoke screen. Junior Kissel peered out of the grimy back window, grinning wildly.
    â€œOld Lud is sober. That makes the second time this summer,” said my father as he struggled with the Pontiac,which had started shimmying again. It had bad kingpins.
    Ten minutes later, we were out on Route 41, bumper to bumper in the great tangle of cars all headed for the fair. The sun rose higher over the distant steel mills. Steadily, the temperature and humidity rose until the sky was one vast copper sheet. We inched along like an endless procession of ants across a sizzling grill.
    In the front seat, my mother fanned herself with a paper fan marked ORVILLE KLEEBER COAL AND ICE—REASONABLE. The flat fan was cut in the shape of a lump of coal. It had a wooden handle. She always kept it in the car for days like this.
    â€œWHAT THE HELL YOU DOING, JERK?” barked the old man, head stuck aggressively out the window, at the driver ahead of us. His neck was red from sweat; his pongee shirt clung limply to his wiry frame; and his drugstore sunglasses dripped sweat as he glared through the heat waves and exhaust fumes at the idiot ahead.
    â€œSLEEPING JESUS, YOU GONNA PARK THAT WRECK OR DRIVE IT?”
    â€œLittle pitchers have big ears,” my mother intoned automatically, gazing placidly out her window at a Burma-Shave sign. The old man’s latest curse—one of an endless lexicon—was a new one to me. I filed it away for future use. It might come in handy during a ball game or an argument with Schwartz.
    It was now well past noon, but we were getting close. Far ahead, we could see the enormous, billowing cloud of dust that rose from the fairgrounds. Excitementmounted in the Pontiac as we shimmied closer and closer to the scene of action. Suddenly, with a great hissing, scalding roar, the radiator of the car ahead boiled over. Drops of red, rusty sludge streaked down over our windshield and spattered on the hood.
    â€œOH, NO! FER CHRISSAKE, NO!”
    The old man pounded on the steering wheel in rage as the lumbering Buick wheezed to a halt. The driver, a beet-faced man wearing a stiff blue-serge suit and a Panama hat, stumbled out of the car and raised the hood. A white cloud of steam enveloped him from head to toe.
    â€œGoddamn it! There goes the first heat. Son of a bitch! Gimme a bottle of pop.”
    Silently, my mother opened a bottle of Nehi orange and handed it to him. She passed one back to me and gave my kid brother another. I felt the stinging carbonation sizzle through