Swarthmore was really a fun place to be a kid. When I was in college I forgot that and thought of the town dismissively as the reality TV version of Beaver or Ricky Nelson, that is before we knew about their cocaine reality. But as the reunion approached I gotten a wider and truer perspective. We all had bikes and when I was 7 I could get from Wambo's house to mine in less than a minute. A verifiable fact because the Captain Video show -- (outer space on the super cheap) was over at 5:59 I had exactly 1 minute to get home to meet the 6:00 p.m. deadline. (Like most people we didn't have a TV in 1950) If I was late? no desert. But I didn't miss it more than once or twice a week. Not too big a deal really. Although back then desert was a required part of dinner it usually consisted of a canned pear or boxed chocolate pudding. But the best part of life as a kid in Swarthmore was the unprogrammed freedom of life and the vast potential our town had to offer. All that Crum woods and stream, skunky but we used to swim in it, thin but we used to skate on it. Even Ann Hewes. I remember skating with her from the Yale Ave. falls all the way up past the railroad trestle once. Plus the paved play space at the College Ave. School where kick baseball was endless. As was Wambo's madcap race around the black top tennis courts with Phil Swain in hot pursuit. Wambo could cut corners like Michael Vick in those days. Phil skidded out of control trying to match him. His pants were ripped to shreds by the time he finally ran down his prey. The scope of things in Swarthmore was always just right. No need for school buses. Everybody lived close enough to walk. But it was in a lot of ways like that Jim Carrey movie, "The Truman Show." There almost seemed to be no there out there. There was only our enclosed village. What stores did we go to? I guess Hoy's five and dime where I did all my Christmas shopping for a buck and left with change. Years later it was amazing to discover Japanese Quality consciousness. The crap in Hoy's from Japan was made from melted tin cans. Then there was Catherman's where I shop lifted a candy bar and then burried it and then knowing Mr. Catherman would tell my old man, I dug it up and returned it. With considerable gravity Mr. Catherman accepted the dirty thing. Told me to never do it again, but did not rat on me. Hardly my last bad deed. Remember the time we bought all the left over pumpkins after halloween for a quarter or something and then dropped them on the bus going under the railroad bridge on Chester road. I remember Mahlon Boyer targeted with unparalleled accuracy. Any wonder he ended up doing the same thing for the Air Force a few years later. Well this is just a test to see if this forum works. Hope we get loaded with stuff from everybody soon. KF