THE BOOKMOBILE
Excitement built in me as Emilia and I walked down Ridge Lane and went to the corner of Brook Lane and Barnyard lane. The yellow sun provided a velvet heat and the breeze that grazed our cheeks was soft and cool. the scent of freshly cut grass mingled with honeysuckle and privets. Robins and sparrows crooned odes to summer. As we got close to the corner we walked faster. The blue Levittown Library’s Bookmobile would be arriving any minute.
Each week the bus-shaped vehicle came with its selection of library books to be borrowed by the members of the neighborhood. Most families owned only one car, which was used by the father to go to work. The Bookmobile was a service provided to those who lived too far from the library to walk there. Its convenience escaped me at the time. I simply thought of it as a treasure chest that I could rummage through each week.
By the time the Bookmobile pulled up to the curb a long line of readers had assembled, the leader seeming to know precisely where the door of the vehicle would be
when it stopped. We followed the throng of book lovers up the two steps and into the Bookmobile where we returned our books and began to stroll among the shelves. The Bookmobile was a narrow, one-way affair. People entered from the front and exited in the rear. We followed those in front of us until we finally came to the children’s section. As the patrons browsed you could hear quiet snippets of conversation, but in general a silent reverence filled the small space. The Bookmobile was, after all, an extension of the public library and in those days library patrons whispered.
Standing side by side in front of the children’s books Emilia and I searched the selections. We pointed and elbowed each other and eventually chose a handful of books: The Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew Mysteries, Betsy-Tacy books and Carolyn Haywood’s Betsy books. We picked one or two picture books just for fun and I chose a collection of children’s poems.
I ran my fingers along the spines of the books, tilting my head to better read the titles. The feel of the books, even in their sterile plastic library covers, was second only to the feel of the pages as I turned them while I read. There is a big difference between a person who loves to read and a person who loves books. Reading them is a wonderful trip into fantasy or foreign places.

Touching and smelling books, cracking the spines of a new book and owning books lined neatly along wooden bookshelves, is a sensual experience. As I browsed I would take a book and open it. The odor that escaped was unique and continues to evoke feelings of coziness and expectation. It draws me, as completely as the words, into the imagined lives of the characters. My father who only read one book in his whole life, “God’s Little Acre,” also loved the smell and feel of new books. How glad I am that I feel the same way.
Emilia and I made our final choices and checked out our books. The library cards we carried in the pockets of our shorts were no less precious than our first driver’s licenses would be years later. We walked back to her house and placed our books on her bed, then went to the kitchen for iced tea. We played in the yard on the swings for a while and then I headed home.
“Call me after you eat dinner,” I said.
“okay. Want to ride bikes?”
“Good idea. See ya later.”
When I got home I darted through the side door. Hearing the screen door’s creak my mother came into the kitchen. I showed her the books I had chosen while we shared a snack of summer plums. Of course I was not permitted to touch the books while I ate. In my mother’s house books were sanctified possessions and very often covered with saran wrap while they were being read. I carefully washed and dried my hands before picking up three books and taking them outside.
I sat in the cool grass in dappled shade and sunlight and felt the breeze on my face and soft grass beneath my bare legs. For a few minutes I simply gazed at the clouds. Soon enough I was drawn to the books lying next to me: Betsy and Tacy Go Over The Big Hill by Maud Hart Lovelace, Strawberry Girl by Lois Lenski and Back to School with Betsy by Carolyn Haywood. I picked up the books and stacked them in size order. I browsed the titles, noted the authors’ names , checked the number of pages in each book, read the chapter titles and the dust jacket blurbs and author biographies. Each action pulled me in with quicksand power. Then I chose a book and began my ascent into literary heaven. I was oblivious to everything around me. All that existed were the magic words of my story and the new friends I was about to meet on yet another literary adventure.

Kindergarten in Levittown

The soil left from the potato fields was rich and dark and everything my parents planted in their many gardens blossomed into beautiful rose bushes, peonies and fruit trees. We also grew tomatoes and blueberries and a stand of three evergreen trees that would later be a favorite place for me and my best friend.

The ground was fertile, but so was the family culture of the fifties. I remember those years, and that town, as the best years and the best home of my life. But even then my insecurities were beginning to emerge, like the weeds that grew up through the cracks in the sidewalks that we refused to step on. We would chant, “Step on a crack, break your mother’s back. Step on a line, break your mother’s spine,” as we walked to school, or to the town pool, the bookmobile, or down the block to the grocery store. But that was later. At age four I was still a ward of my mother’s court, carefully supervised in the house, and outdoors. My first taste of freedom came in September of 1954, when I turned five and went to kindergarten.
Wisdom Lane School was four blocks from our house, one of those “blocks” being the big field behind the school that we walked through. In spring the field would be filled with tiny brown toads and the boys would catch them and torment the girls by waving them in front of our faces or sneaking them into our pocketbooks. But that came later, when we were older and less supervised. In kindergarten Mom led me by the hand and deposited me at the doorway of the separate wing of the school where the two kindergarten classes were. The classrooms were filled with delights and treasures for five year olds, including friends and a nurturing teacher. Outside were swings and a sandbox big enough to park a truck in. I liked the soft warm feel of the sand between my fingers. I also liked to ride the strap swings up to the blue heavens, floating far above the realities of life. But most of all it was what was inside those brick walls that intrigued me.

Mrs. Connolly, my kindergarten teacher, was a middle-aged woman with graying hair and a comforting voice who gave me my first thoughts of becoming a teacher. I wasn’t aware of the movement inside me, but I must have known, at a subconscious level, that I wanted to spend my life in a classroom.

In the fifties five year olds weren’t pressured to learn how to read and write. Our two hours in school were occupied by the difficult work of learning who we were through play. There was a block corner, where the boys usually played. And there was a doll corner, which was the girls’ domain. Gender equality wasn’t even a germ of a concept, and no one seemed to mind.
As if my desire for solitude was already embedded in me, I cannot remember too much about the other children in that classroom. My mother tells me today that Mrs. Connolly was concerned that I preferred to play off by myself. Was it sensory overload, an extreme shyness, or simply the habits of an observant, introspective girl? I remember Mrs. Connolly and I remember the art activities and the dolls. And I know I had a genuine need for acknowledgement and attention and would do anything to get it. I fought an internal war between shyness and a need to be noticed. One way I got that attention involved a kitten.
I don’t remember how it started, but I know it ended in my getting caught in the first lie I would tell to gain some validation for myself. What disconnection from the world, what inner need, what desire for self-esteem, attention and recognition possessed me to bring some stray kitten to school with me and tell Mrs. Connolly that it was mine?

My teacher gave the kitten a saucer of milk, which it devoured the same way I devoured the attention from the teacher and the other children. A shy, quiet, miniscule girl had found her moment of glory. A moment which ended two hours later when Mom came to pick me up and revealed that the kitten wasn’t mine.

Coming to Levittown

In 1946 William Levitt saw acres of barren farmland and had the wondrous notion of creating a low-priced housing community for the GI’s returning from World War II. My parents, being WWII veterans themselves, were able to take advantage of that opportunity. Though they wouldn’t buy that little Cape Cod house until 1953, that advantage given them, became an advantage of mine--growing up in a wonderful place, at a wonderful time.


We arrived in Levittown in Daddy’s black Buick in the year 1953. All my worldly possessions were packed into cardboard boxes, except for my Saucy Walker doll that I cradled in my arms. At four years old I wasn’t quite sure what this whole moving thing was about but from the car window I saw a square gray house with white and turquoise shutters. The house sat on the corner of Barnyard Lane and Gun Lane. The opened door looked like a smiling mouth ready to welcome us in. The two front windows greeted us like soulful eyes offering a promise. I trusted that promise of a warm home and a happy childhood and I was not to be disappointed.


For the first time I would have a bedroom of my own. A small, rectangular room that held my bed, a dresser for my clothes, a shelf for my books, toys, dolls and records. My first sanctuary. One of many more to come. Indeed, as Virginia Woolf proclaimed, every woman needs “a room of her own,” and this was mine. Unpacking my things and putting them on the shelves was just the beginning of my fairytale childhood memories.

Introducing Levittown Stories

Summers came like a giant gift, wrapped in bronze sunshine, the rippling shadows of maple trees, the music of children's laughter and the scent of honeysuckle and privets. On the first day of vacation I awoke as the sunrise painted a stripe of gold across the horizon and sleepy birds prodded the damp ground for worms. I put on shorts, a t-shirt and a pair of red PF Flyers and went to the kitchen. I felt the cold milk as it touched my throat, but barely tasted the cereal floating in it. When you are eight years old there is no time for eating. Adventures await you that cannot be missed. I was outside bouncing a pink Spaulding ball on the concrete sidewalk when my best friend, Emilia, arrived.

We weren't interested in the news of the world. We lived in Levittown, a small cookie cutter community on Long Island, in the state of New York. And nestled in the gridwork of streets and sidewalks was everything we needed for our idyllic childhoods.

What adventures didn't come our way we created for ourselves. There were no computers or video games. The television had a total of 6 or 7 channels and was a novelty that we watched for only an hour before bedtime. We found our stories between the pages of books and those we couldn't find we gladly made up. It was a world remote from the one we live in now. It was a chidlhood rich with possibilities. This blog will post a collection of stories about growing up in Levittown and give my gentle readers a sense of the time and place I grew up in. And, too, the sense of friendship between two young girls that has grown and lasted over fifty years.