Drafted into washing dishes (child labor), plunging my hands into the warm soapy water. Picking up a sharp grotty knife deeply cutting my finger (my mother’s anger later). Blood and soap bubbles mixed together. Having the wound wrapped and being reassigned elsewhere for duty. (I remember then learning the distinction between handling the sharp and dull side of knives.)
Later, going outside and running across the busy wide, divided road back and forth, stopping cars, ‘going down to the edge’ over and over for the first time in my only-child life.
And a few glorious. magical times, riding with the jolly McGavin’s breadman (who looked like a congenial Jack Carson) in his delivery truck to Kirkfiield Park. Later running across Portage through steady traffic back to the luncheonette again later.