J. was the high status male of fourth grade, handsome, smart, and the fastest runner in the class.. He wore his dark hair slicked back with hair dressing and his heavily starched dress shirts were meticulously ironed to a military crease down each arm. I imagine that his mother enjoyed keeping her son looking like a million bucks. He kept the top button of his shirt buttoned. He walked with a dignity and confidence that set him above the other boys in class, all uniformly dressed in horizontal, wide striped, long sleeved cotton tee shirts of navy and brown, unpressed slacks and unpolished brown school shoes from the local Buster Brown store.

When Mrs. B. , our teacher, called J. to the board to work a difficult math problem everyone expected his neat writing, his straight rows of numbers and his correct answer. J. was destined for greatness.

Fourth grade ended, summer was in luxurious full swing, July arrived and so did a polio outbreak. Polio. The word was whispered over back fences as neighbor ladies clutched their clothes pins to bosom, and looked from side to side with wide, frightened eyes as though to see the black cloud of disease coming for their child.

Saturday was shopping day, my mother, who like most mothers, could drive but did not bother to get a driver's license, drove us through populated areas of town to the local A & P Food Store. My brothers and I secretly called it the A and Poo Feed Store, nudging and laughing quietly in the back seat. My mother glanced kindly at us from the rear view mirror enjoying our giggles. We kept our car windows rolled up in my father's 1953 Chevy sedan, two tones of green and fresh off the assembly lines of Detroit. No hot breeze relieved the stifling heat inside of the car. Polio. Mother wouldn't risk bad air blowing onto us from the tightly packed houses along eighteenth street.

'You stay either in the car or right next to it, and for goodness sake, don't talk to any strangers, and don't take any candy from anyone.' She warned as she went to do her weekly shopping inside. We usually went into the store with her, but not during Polio season. Large crowds. Someone might be carrying the dread disease that only seemed to afflict children. It never occurred to us that we might be left with Dad on shopping day. I cannot remember ever being left behind. Where mother went, we young children tagged along, and were expected to behave.

'Hold your breath.' Commanded my oldest brother as a slovenly family passed by on the side walk, young children in tow. That family didn't have the good sense to leave their precious cargo beside or even inside the hot car. Going in the store during Polio season! Shocking disregard for safety.

Sunday morning we went to church; all except my Dad who stayed behind to prepare his weekly feast of abundance. Cooking was out of character for my Dad, for he was the hunting, swearing, no nonsense, bread winning kind of dad. He loved to cook and prepared for us meals that were spectacular. My favorite meals were T-bone steaks and home made French fries or spaghetti with his incomparable home made sauce, the recipe taken with him to his grave.

In Sunday school the cardboard church was passed from child to child, hot, fat little hands clutched nickels and dimes offered up to the less fortunate. After Sunday school was 'big church'. Mom and my brothers and I sat in the first row of the balcony, my younger brother timed the pastor's sermon, watching the minutes slowly pass on his wrist watch.

'Twenty minutes', G. stage whispered in astonishment. 'He's going for a record.'

'Hush.' My mother gave him 'the look'.

Our pastor asked for special blessing and care on all children during this dangerous season of the year. My mother's head dropped and I watched her fingers whiten with extra pressure on her folded hands.

We drove home with the windows up, and arrived to the expected delicious feast prepared by my father. Mother passed on the news that she had heard at her lady's circle. None of the families of our church members had been stricken, but this cousin and that neighbor child was suspected of having the dread disease.

After supper we stayed close to home, no wading in the creek near our house. All creeks were held suspect, but the creek that ran by the zoo on 38th Street was, to me, the mother of all Polio water. I held my breath as our car passed over the little bridge that emptied the street onto Glenwood Park Avenue. Was it just my imagination that the air held a pervasive threat?

By the time school started the week after Labor Day, the outbreak had diminished and life felt safer, more normal. As I took my seat in alphabetical order on the first day of fifth grade I was surprised to see that we had a man teacher. During roll, J's name was called. His seat was empty. At recess I asked the girls, 'Where's J.?'

'Didn't you know? Polio.'

I don't know what really happened to J. If he recovered, or if, as the rumor went, he was crippled and in an iron lung. It seemed disrespectful and rude to inquire. To this day, I've never heard what became of him, but I see him, in my mind's eye, standing at the black board, a stick of white chalk in hand, so handsome and meticulous in his demeanor and dress. A boy with a great future.

(correlates: OutOfSync, ClosedWindowRisks, PassingInspiration, ...)