Excerpt from Part One: A Box of Letters – Page 7

Love, Bill: Finding My Father through Letters from World War II by Jan Krulick-Belin

Excerpt from Part One: A Box of Letters – Page 7:

Queens, New York
Summer 1960

Nothing seemed normal that summer. Each day was filled with
whispered conversations, secrets, and my parents’ unexplained
absences. Had it been a normal summer, my girlfriends and I would
have been playing with our Barbie and Ken dolls outside on our small
front lawn, turning a simple kerchief and two twigs into their miniature
campground. Or I might have been “swimming” out there in our
yellow and green inflatable wading pool. Maybe I would have been
lurking around the bushes with some of the neighborhood boys trying
to catch honeybees in an empty dill pickle jar by trapping them
with its perforated lid. It was always tricky letting the bees go. You’d
shake up the jar, loosen the lid, toss it onto the ground, and run away
in time to avoid getting stung. I might have been playing an
impromptu game of tag, hide-and-seek, or red light-green light with
any number of my playmates who lived just doors away. And each
afternoon, all our activities would have been interrupted by the sound
of the bells on the Good Humor truck. It was always hard to decide
between the vanilla Dixie Cup and Chocolate Eclair bar.