Summer Story Chapter 3 Harold and the Big Ball of String
As a summer relief from the normal subjects of Buck Says I am telling the tale of an important summer of my childhood. There are links to Chapters 1 & 2 ar the bottom of this chapter if you are interest in catching up.
Chapter 3
By the time the 4th of July rolled around we were well into a summer routine of bay and beach activities. My father would announce at breakfast on the 4th that, “today’s the 4th of July and the summer is almost over”.
His announcement every year brought howls of disagreement from me and my younger brother. We pleaded that his statement couldn’t be true since we were just polishing off a tan and settling into our routine. On this, the year of my solo street crossing permission, I showed my new maturity by ignoring my Dad’s yearly, end of summer, agitation at breakfast on the 4th.
My brother howled his protest and I simply responded with a smile and thought about the races that I would be sailing from the yacht club later that day. Sailing was becoming a bigger part of my summer and a few of the older kids at the yacht club had sort of adopted me to teach some of the finer 
points of racing a small sailboat.
My Dad announced that he would be watching the races from the public dock and was never going to set foot in the club again after the way they treated Harold. Harold was the same Harold who made every donation of string to his collection a special event.
My mother hushed my father and said that it was not a subject for the children at breakfast.
Not only did my father watch the races from the public dock but he gathered a group of other club members to join him watching from the town dock rather than the observation deck of the yacht club.
In a small beach community this event became the talk of the town and the reasons for my father’s action filtered into the community of kids with my father receiving different descriptions of his action. Many were less than flattering.
It turned out that the admission committee of the club had turned down Harold’s application for membership. It was rumored that my father had stormed into a directors meeting and was less than kind in his comments to the committee as to their action concerning Harold. My Dad was not a mild type of of guy and apparently he had some effect since Harold’s son was permitted to join the club as a junior member and race his boat with the rest of us.
As a kid I didn’t completely understand the issues in play but knew they were a big deal with the adults. With hardly a bump my summer returned to a smooth series of enjoyable days with a few community members now absent from our company. The kids pretty much remained in the same routine oblivious to the adult problems.
The group watching the weekend races at the end of the public dock was pretty sizable. Harold was an honored member of my Dad’s ad hoc club. I won my first race in July as the youngest junior competing and the adults on the dock made a much bigger deal of that event than did my beach buddies.
Almost every day I found some string to contribute to Harold Steinberg’s big ball and always got a big thanks for my contribution. The summer moved along and the string was part of it but the use was not much of a concern. It was just a part of an event filled summer and not yet a big deal. I had no clue as to what I would learn from that big ball of string later in the summer.
Chapter 1
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