Knots in My Yo-Yo String Read Online Free PDF

of them than anyone else, I was declared spelling champion of Hartranft Elementary. That honor earned me the chance to compete in the Montgomery County spelling bee, the winner of which would go to Washington, D.C., for the national bee.
    As a sixth grader among contestants ranging up to eighth grade, I was one of the youngest on the stage at Norristown High School that night in April 1953. I don’t think it ever occurred to me to try to win. My goal was to survive until at least the fourth round, since I had been told that no one from Hartranft had ever gotten that far.
    Ninety-six school champions sat in long curved rows of folding chairs. Hanging on a string from everyone’s neck was a square of white cardboard with a large black number. Mine was thirteen. Before the competition began, the master of ceremonies announced to the auditorium that we were honored to have last year’s county champion with us—Nancy Ann Hammerschmidt of North Wales. He then turned from the audience to the stage and asked Nancy Ann to stand and take a bow, and who should stand up but number twelve, the pretty blond older girl sitting next to me.
    The competition got under way. The opening words were easy, and most of us made it through the first tworounds. Then we started dropping like flies. When somebody misspelled a word—
bong!
—the judge hammered a big brassy bell and the kid was gone. No arguing, no whining—wham, bam, next, please.
    Meanwhile back in the seats Nancy Ann Hammerschmidt and I were chatting away. Actually, Nancy Ann did most of the chatting. I mostly nodded and smiled in wonder that the famous, glamorous fourteen-year-old champion would be so familiar with the likes of me. When we returned to our seats after nailing our third-round words, Nancy Ann took out her wallet and showed me a picture of her boyfriend.
    When in the fourth round Nancy Ann spelled “ecstasy” with a second
c
instead of an
s
, I was sure no bong would dare banish her from the stage. But it did, and off she marched. And so did I a few seconds later, having spelled lacquer “l-a-c-q-u-o-r.” Considering how smitten I was with Nancy Ann, I’m surprised I even bothered to take my last turn at the mike before following her off the stage. She must have made a quick exit, though, for she was not among the growing crowd of misspellers behind the curtain, nor did I ever see her again. I guess neither Nancy Ann Hammerschmidt nor the spelling bee bonger cared that I was a Good Boy.

George
           Street
    Baseball is still baseball, and school is school, but George Street is no more. Oh, sure, if you travel to Norristown today and go west on Elm, you’ll come to a street sign that says GEORGE . Don’t believe it.
    A street sign does not make a street. A time makes a street, and a people of that time. The sign will tell you nothing, nor will the people who live there today. Go ahead, ask them. Ask them whose front steps they better not sit on. Challenge them to a game of chew-the-peg. (Flip penknife from shoulder. If it doesn’t stick in ground, pull out planted peg with teeth.) Or just stand there on the sidewalk outside 802 and close your eyes and listen for the avalanche of coal. Listen for days. You won’t hear it. George Street is as gone as 1950.
    I heard it. I heard it on coal day. Nearly every house on the block had a coal-burning furnace. In a front corner of the cellar, beneath the living room, was a plank-walled bin. It held a ton of coal. When the coal truck came, my job was to run to the cellar and open the window above the bin. The truck turned sideways in the street and backed up to the curb. From under the truck bed the coal man pulled the chute, which looked like asliding board, and fed it through the open cellar window and into our bin. He lifted the hatch and the coal started coming, avalanching down the chute with such a racket that I had to clamp my hands over my ears. I had to tie a hanky around my nose, too, because