It was the spring of 1961. I was thirteen, feeling self-important. The world vibrated, the taut string of my being resonated in sympathy. Dad took me on a Saturday shopping trip to Chester PA to visit men's clothing stores. The downtown was still viable. Shops lined the main streets—Market Street and Edgmont Avenue. It seemed busy—urban, a little dangerous.
We parked in a lot adjacent to the meandering Chester Creek and walked a wobbly pedestrian bridge to the downtown businesses. The few times I’d walked the bridge before, I’d been afraid of tumbling into the river.
We were walking on the shaded side of Market Street. Sun shone on the other side, bouncing off store windows. The light was thin, but bright, The air was chilled but warm where the sun shone. Down the sunny side of the street a throaty convertible, the top down, drove slowly, deliberately. A driver with slick, long black hair had one arm on the seat, the other on the steering wheel. He claimed a progressing slice of the world. The car radio blared a song of the day:
"Hey, hey hey baby!/I want to know if you'll be my girl/Hey, hey hey baby!/I want to know if you'll be my girl."
He words echoed, in my mind, if not off the buildings.
Crossing the foot bridge back to the car, I’d forgotten old fears.
God, I felt alive, that spring day when I was thirteen.
It was the spring of 1961. I was thirteen, feeling self-important. The world vibrated, the taut string of my being resonated in sympathy. 
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