Journal of an Underachiever – Wilmington

The trip from Missouri to Delaware was not particularly memorable. In fact, the only thing I recall was driving through Pennsylvania on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. It was my first encounter with a limited access highway and with a toll road. I think the thing that fascinated me most was the gas station/cafés in the islands in the middle of the road.

I’m not sure what Dad did at Chrysler or, for that matter, what Chrysler did in Delaware, but Delaware was our new home. We moved into a duplex in Wilmington on Van Buren Street and when summer was over I started school at P. S. Du Pont, which was a high school then. There were more kids in my class than there were in my whole school in Blue Eye.

When we left Missouri, school was already out, but it wasn’t in Wilmington. Mom and I went to P. S. Du Pont and set up my schedule for the coming year. Because Blue Eye didn’t have algebra for the ninth grade, I was a little behind. I decided it would be best for me to catch up. I signed up for algebra and geometry for the tenth grade. The counselor wasn’t optimistic, but signed me up anyway. Then I went on summer vacation.

While the other kids my age were still in school, I wandered around becoming familiar with my new environment. Wilmington was the first city I had ever lived in so it was intriguing. One of my excursions took me down Van Buren Street to Brandywine Park. Somewhere near where the zoo is I found an odd treasure, a collection of foundations where the building(s) had been demolished (or that’s what it looked like to me). All of these concrete or stone relics stood out in a kind of bowl where grass had overgrown everything. I encountered a policeman there. He asked me why I wasn’t in school, and I told him. He took me at my word. I’m not sure whether he believed me because I didn’t have a Wilmington accent or he decided my explanation was too good to be an excuse for playing hooky.

That summer I met Edwin and his cousin Michael (I think). Edwin and I became close friends for a while. They lived next door to each other on Elliott Place so they were really less than a block away. I can still vaguely recall a kind of ball game we played. Across the street from them was a multiple garage structure (still there) so we didn’t have to be concerned about breaking windows. We took turns throwing a rubber ball at Edwin’s front steps. The only objective I can remember was trying to hit the edge of the step so the ball went up like a fly ball. Because of daylight savings time we could be out playing after 9:00 o’clock. One other thing about Edwin, his family had the smallest station wagon I have ever seen, a Cushman four-seater.

Across 25th Street from Edwin on the corner of Monroe Street lived Carol Ann and her sister Nancy. Carol was as tall as I was and a little thin but good looking. I can remember seeing her (across Market Street) several years later. She was wearing a gray suit and looked like a professional model. She and I became close friends.

On the corner of Van Buren and Concord pike there was a deli (still there, although I believe they’ve changed the name). I’d save up my money and as often as I could afford it, I’d go there for goodies like apple pie a la mode and chocolate sundaes when I’d saved up enough money.

I walked to school that year. We didn’t have a lot of money because Dad got laid off and was job hunting much of the time, so when it was mildly cold I wore Dad’s sports coat to school. It didn’t cover me a much as my cold weather jacket. About half way to school an Irish setter would bark at me. I wasn’t afraid of dogs, and I would just walk on by. Then one day he changed his tactic. He sneaked up on me from behind and nipped me on the back side where Dad’s Sport coat exposed me. From then on I didn’t trust him and was careful to walk by his house on the opposite side of the street. I also kept my eye out for him.

When I got to Delaware, I joined the Boy Scout troop in our church. I worked my way up to First Class but stalled out there because I had to contact someone to be my adviser for the merit badges I needed. I was too shy to do it. The one thing I remember was in one of our meetings four of us got together and formed a quartet. To my ear we sounded good, but that was the one time we did it.

While we were in Wilmington, Richard got into some kind of beef with the pastor of the nearby Presbyterian Church. I think it started out as a disagreement with his sons. The upshot was the pastor punched Richard and broke his jaw. While he was recuperating I picked up his job as a paper boy. The route wasn’t that hard, but at one point I had to collect and my shyness got in the way again. I had a dickens of a time just knocking on his customer’s doors.

We only spent about a year in Wilmington. I want to cover one more item and move on to Clayton.

My Boy Scout troop went on a bike ride in rural northern Delaware where it’s really hilly [The highest point in the state is fifty feet above sea level]. We were riding in a wooded area on a cobblestone road that led downhill to a creek and a stone bridge. On the opposite side of the bridge the road took a sharp right, and a rock retaining wall blocked any possibility of going straight ahead. As I started down the hill, the brake locked up. Only this time it locked up the wheel to the sprocket which meant that the pedals were turning with the wheels. The pedals knocked my feet clear, and they were turning so fast I couldn’t get my feet back on them. I remembered the bike on Guam and bailed out. This time I landed without getting hurt.

The bike was one I had borrowed for the ride. Once I walked it down the hill, I was able to jump up and down and put enough weight on the back pedal to break it loose. I was able to finish the ride, but I was very careful on hills and at stop signs. An interesting sidelight of this incident is that after the ride was over, I bought the bike from my friend for two dollars, learned how to work on the brakes while I was fixing it, and used it for several years.

Next up, we move to Clayton.