Page 142 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
And Anawana obviously taught me what a palindrome was. (I would be remiss, however, if I did not point out what might be obvious to some of the readers, namely that palindromes were not entirely new to me, as my first two home addresses were, you will recall, 414 Hampton Avenue and 1771 Ocean Avenue. Little did I then know that I would spend a significant portion of my professional life at 575 Madison Avenue, where my partner Marvin Lange taught me the most famous of Welsh palin- dromes, “Llewop notyalc, madam; I’m Adam Clayton Powell,” and that, in 1986, I would move from Rosenman at 575 Madison to Coronet Properties at 505 Park.)
I also learned how to fold my clothes, to sweep the porch, to clean a sink, to make hospital corners on my cot, to tread water, to float, to swim for distance, to dive from a raft, to stay under water for maybe a minute, to steer a canoe, to row a boat, to swamp a canoe and then to right it atop another canoe, to skim rocks, to hang a wet bathing suit inside out out- side of the bunk, to participate in a buddy count after a whistle would be blown (“triple on five”), and to choose my buddies well. I learned what an interlocutor at a minstrel show does; how wonderful was a campfire, how wonderful was the taste of marshmallows toasted on a stick over a campfire, how much even better was the taste of bread toasted over a campfire; how to do a layup and how to take an underhand foul shot at an eight-foot basket; how to play kickball, soccer, and Newcomb ball; how to play Capture the Flag and Ringolevio; how to use a bow and arrow; how my parents not only refused to permit me to go to Mount Beacon but didn’t permit me to learn how to ride horses; how to par- ticipate in a scavenger hunt or a treasure hunt; how to pick blueberries and to eat blueberry pie when my Watermelon League softball team (Williki’s Wallopers) got a steak dinner for winning the championship; how to belch on command; how to identify and respond to the bugle calls that ordered the day (reveille, first call, assembly call, activity call, recall, flag raising, retreat, tattoo, and taps); how to make a lanyard or an ashtray; how a monarch butterfly looks when it is pinned under glass; how to do morning calisthenics, freezing in my pajamas on the bunk porch with the rest of the camp right after reveille; how to applaud and
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