Going Home
Meant leaving Ms. Whitelaw's class fifteen minutes early to don my white shoulder/waist School Boy Patrol belt and badge; grabbing my shiny shellack bamboo pole with red flag attached, heading out to the bike shed in the afternoon sun behind the cafeteria, and cruising on my Schwinn 3 speed to my post on Baltic Avenue where soon girls and boys would cross streets with my best attentions.
My command post view at Corinthian and Baltic includes Braden's Pharmacy, Burlingame's grocery store, my barbershop and a lot of pretty girls with curly hair. Spanish moss hangs ghostlike from the low slung branches of ancient live oaks and pines. Mockingbirds call out and down the hot asphaltc of Baltic Avenue come girls and boys laughing in the sun.
In cicada twilight, waving red flagged poles in the air overhead loud calls from post to post eventually out to me blocks away from Ortega School yelling, "Knock---Off!". Then it was time for going home where my daily dose of Leave it to Beaver would be consumed with peanut butter cookies, cold milk and my dog, Bodger at my side tail-waggingly on the ready, for crumbs.
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