Toys: Gas-Powered Control-Line Flying Model Airplane
I would fall ill on the day of the party. I’d ask Stretch to escort her. At the party, Veronica would fall in love with Stretch and drop me like a hot potato. I would be able to buy the model airplane.
Little Follies, “Take the Long Way Home”
“These two pages of advertisements form Sterling Models are from page 62 of the December 1954 issue of Air Trails Hobbies for Young Men magazine. Sterling Models is no longer in operation, unfortunately.” (from Airplanes and Rockets)
School: Cafeteria
I saw Veronica next in the cafeteria, where she was buying her lunch. She slid her tray along the shelf formed by stainless steel tubes and took a plate of a macaroni dish called American chop suey, a bowl of boiled green beans, and a bowl filled with cubes of green Jell-O.
Little Follies, “Take the Long Way Home”
This could be a snapshot taken in the Babbington elementary school that Peter, Veronica, and Stretch attended. It could be, but it is not. It was taken in another place, at another time. Still, it has the right look. At least I think so.
Food: American Chop Suey
American chop suey is an American pasta casserole made with ground beef, macaroni and a seasoned tomato sauce found in the cuisine of New England and other regions of the United States. … Despite its name, it has only a very distant relation to the chop suey of Chinese and American Chinese cuisine. [It] is known as “American chop suey” both because it is a sometimes-haphazard hodgepodge of meat, vegetables and Italian seasonings, and because it once used rice, a base ingredient in Chinese cuisine, instead of pasta. Standard American chop suey consists of elbow macaroni and bits of cooked ground beef with sautéed onions in a thick tomato-based sauce. … Sometimes grated Parmesan cheese is added after cooking, but historically the dish was seasoned only with salt and pepper and no cheese was added.
“Well,” I said, “It isn’t that I can’t roller-skate. It’s just that I’m—I’m a little rusty.” I risked looking her in the face. There were signs that she might smile, that all might be well, if I could just say the right thing now. “But it’s like riding a bicycle or doing multiplication,” I said. “It comes right back to you. I just need some practice. Of course, I won’t be as good as you are, but I’ll bet we’ll look pretty good together.” … I felt the sinking feeling that I have always felt when I know that I am getting myself in over my head, but I felt at the same time the other emotion that accompanies my diving into the dark waters of overreaching: an intoxicating self-confidence, all the more intoxicating because it is groundless. After all, since I had never roller-skated before, I had no reason to believe that I was not a roller-skating prodigy, awaiting only the sensations that would rush through me when the wheels of my skates first touched the floor to unlock the grace and power that lay within me.
The serialization of The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy is supported by its readers. I sometimes earn affiliate fees when you click through the affiliate links in a post. EK
The illustration in the banner that opens each episode is from an illustration by Stewart Rouse that first appeared on the cover of the August 1931 issue of Modern Mechanics and Inventions.
