the endless summer of ’79

Time is a funny thing. As I sit here writing this, it is almost the middle of July 2024, which means that summer is almost half over. To me, it feels like Memorial Day was just a little while ago, but you can’t argue with the calendar. This summer—like many summers, lately—seems to be flying by.

One summer that didn’t was 45 years ago. In 1979, my mother, who had been divorced for five years, moved us from Phoenix, Arizona to the suburbs of Washington, DC for better job prospects. While she handled all the logistics, she sent me to Elk Grove Village, Illinois (outside Chicago) to spend the summer with my friend Bob Hughes (whom I had met a few years earlier, when he lived in Phoenix) and his parents, Bill and Chickie. So, right after my 7^th grade year ended, off I went, flying unaccompanied (as kids often did back then) to O’Hare, where the Hughes’ picked me up.

I’ve written before about Bill Hughes, but the TL/DR version is that he is, without exaggeration, the greatest man I’ve ever met. Smart, brave, generous, kind, a self-made success: they don’t make guys like Bill Hughes anymore. In the few years that I had known him, he had quickly become a father figure to me, and I wanted very badly to be his son.* For three wonderful months, I got to be.

*After my parents divorced, my biological father moved to LA, and the last time I ever saw him was in 1978. We briefly reconnected by phone and letters in the early 1990’s, but that didn’t last. He died in 2014, with our last conversation (which ended poorly) being about 20 years before.

Time Crawls in Elk Grove Village

Each day, Bob and I would get up and do his newspaper route, Bob on his bike, me on a spare that they had in the garage. After that, we’d join Bill at breakfast, which Chickie always made for him, and then he’d go off to his office: he was in real estate, and his partner was a fellow named Gene Hoffman (IIRC), whom he introduced us to (in my memories, Mr. Hoffman looked like Walt Disney, but that couldn’t be right….)

Bob and I would then go out on adventures. The weather was usually hot and sunny, and there wasn’t much to do in the suburbs, but Bob and I had a good time, anyway. We’d ride our skateboards, or meet up with Bob’s neighbor friend Scott Price (who, at the tender age of 13, had a thing for Diana Ross), or maybe shoot some baskets, or visit the public pool. Bill and Chickie had a tandem bike that we’d borrow, which was simultaneously dorky and cool. And Bob had a big dresser drawer full of Star Wars action figures, which we had yet to outgrow. 

Bob also had a beautiful, brand-new gold-top Les Paul guitar that Bill had bought him. I have no idea how much it cost Bill back then (they go for north of $2500 now), but it must have been a lot. Bob had a practice amp for it, and Bill took him to regular lessons every Friday afternoon. Bob wanted to be a rock star, and he and I were going to be in a band when we grew up, with me playing drums (like my idol, Peter Criss of KISS), and both of us writing and singing songs.

We actually wrote some songs that summer and over the following year, which were, of course, terrible. Needless to say, we never got that band off the ground, which was just as well.

Bob and were inveterate troublemakers, but the only stunt we got caught for was when the Elk Grove Village police pulled us over one afternoon. We had gotten the idea that we’d tie a rope to the back of Bob’s bike and take turns having one of us ride down the street while towing the other on a skateboard. It must have been a slow day in the Village, because the officers were having none of that. We didn’t get a ticket (or arrested), but we did have our fun ruined.

In an attempt to keep us out of trouble, Bill had chores for us, in addition to Bob’s paper route. We had to mow the lawn, take out the trash, and look after Bill’s enormous Newfoundland, Londo. Bill had named his dog for another Newfie that had rescued some kids from drowning in the river back in Boston when Bill was a young child. Years later, I changed the location of that story and put it in my novel Lost Dogs, but I kept in Londo the Newfoundland.

One day, Bill had Bob and I climb into the attic and lay rolls of fiberglass insulation. It was ferociously hot, and the insulation pricked our hands and got everywhere, like very sharp, pokey, pink fake hay. It was one of the worst jobs I’ve ever had to do, and though I’ve never done it since, I still remember how miserable it was.    

Summer time meant movies, and Bob and I rushed to see Prophecy (which billed itself as, “The Monster Movie”), a cheesy horror flick that nevertheless scared the pants off us.

That summer slowly rolled on, each day pretty much like the one before, but it wasn’t boring. Bob and I always had fun, and Elk Grove Village was where I first saw fireflies (they had none in Phoenix).

When Bill came home each evening, we would have dinner together—either Chickie would make it, or we would go out to a nice restaurant—and then Bill and Chickie would go ride their bikes around the neighborhood. After that, Bill would get into pajamas and settle in front of the TV with a glass of Scotch. The Hughes’ was a surrogate family, replacing the one I had lost.

And so it went, until….  

Oh, Canada!

One day, Bill announced that we were going on a grand vacation, to get back to his roots. We were going to drive from Chicago to Detroit, then cross over into Canada and go all the way east. And I mean, all the way east, to St. John’s, Newfoundland. Bill had been born near there, but his family had moved to America shortly thereafter. So, we entrusted Londo to the care of a kennel, loaded up Bill’s enormous Cadillac Eldorado, put a rack on top with his and Chickie’s bikes, and off we went.

I knew from previous experience that road trips with Bill were endurance tests. Bill would wake Bob and me early, usually by bellowing, “Let go of your cocks and grab your socks—it’s time to march!” which I’m certain he picked up from his time in the U.S. Army during WWII.

After breakfast, we’d drive without stopping until lunch, when we would get out and eat—Bill did not do fast food, let alone drive-throughs. Then we would keep driving until at least six o’clock, whereupon we’d stop for the night.

Each day was about 10 hours of driving, and there were no bathroom breaks, aside from stopping for lunch. Bob and I amused ourselves by “prattling like little girls,” as Bill said, in the spacious back seat, with its red leather upholstery.

We never had reservations at any of the motels along the way—remember, this was way before travel sites. Instead, Bill would drive up to one he liked the look of, stop and get out (leaving Chickie and us boys in the car), and go inside to talk to the front desk clerk. Usually, we’d stay at that motel; sometimes, Bill would get back in the car and we’d go somewhere else, with “This place sucks” as Bill’s only explanation.

By the way, sucks, for those of you in the Millennial- and Gen-Z cohorts, was not a word one used in polite conversation back then, but as a combat veteran, swearing came easily to Bill.

Once ensconced at a suitable motel, we’d go get dinner—often Italian, Bill’s favorite cuisine—and then Bob and I would either explore the area or go swimming (if there was a pool) while Bill and Chickie cycled. And the whole thing would start up again the next day.

In Nova Scotia, we stayed at a charming bed and breakfast run by a sweet old lady named Dolly O’Toole, and the next day, we rode a ferry to Newfoundland, which took several hours. We drove across the island, stopping at the house where Bill was born. We also visited the cemetery where Bill’s father was buried, but we couldn’t find his grave. Then we continued to St. John’s.

Wells Beach, ME

We drove back across Newfoundland, took the ferry to Nova Scotia, and drove south to Wells Beach, Maine. I don’t know what it’s like now, but back then, it was a sleepy little sea village of beach houses and not much else besides a general store.

The store kept its stack of newspapers outside, and readers just came by, took a copy, and left their quarter in payment on top of the stack; no one stole either the papers or the money. This astounded me, because in Phoenix, if you left your bicycle unlocked anywhere, even your front yard, for longer than an hour, it was sure to be gone the next time you looked for it. And I had lived in a nice part of the city.

We stayed at a large beach house, which Bill must have arranged to rent before we had left Illinois, for what seemed like a very long time. Bob and I went to the beach every day and swam and goofed off. Bill took us to a custom T-shirt shop where they used iron-on decals to make any design you want, so I got one with a great white shark, with “Wells Beach, Maine” over it.

Somewhere in our travels in Maine, Bill stopped at a leather goods store and bought Bob and I matching fringe suede jackets—very trendy at the time—which must have cost a small fortune. Why buy them? Because we liked them, and he was extremely generous. Bill never had any issue with dropping large amounts of cash on a whim: it’s not that he was foolish with his money, it’s just that he always knew that he would make more.

Off To A New Life

By this time, my mother had bought a condo in Greenbelt, Maryland, and had moved our stuff in. On a pre-determined date, Bill drove me to Logan Airport in Boston and put me on a plane to Baltimore-Washington International. Then he and Chickie and Bob drove west, back home.

The seemingly endless summer had finally come to an end. As a 12 year-old kid, I had little awareness of how much time had gone by, but as a 57-year old man, I’ve since developed a sense of it. In Phoenix back then, school ended the week before Memorial Day (May 28 that year), so around that time—probably before—I flew to Chicago.

Bob and I bopped around Elk Grove Village for about a month and a half, into July, and then we went on our adventure to Newfoundland and Maine. Google Maps says that it’s 2200+ miles from Chicago to St. John’s, but I have no clear recollection of how long it took us to get there. If it were anyone but Bill, I would have said that the whole trip was two weeks—one going through Canada, one bumming at the beach—but because Bill worked for himself, I want to say that it was more like three (plus at least two days to drive from Boston to EGV).

Summer 2024 is halfway over. Summer 1979 has gone on forever, lingering in my memories. Time is a funny thing.

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