Laugh Lines: Volume 1

By Barbara Klaus

The information about the book is not available as of this time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9781669862604

Book preview

Foreword

The story goes something like this: My mom was building a following as a regular humor columnist at the New York Times when Roseanne (yes, that Roseanne) read her work and asked her to join the writing staff of her hit ABC sitcom in Los Angeles. After Roseanne, Newsday offered my mom a weekly column to be featured every Wednesday on page two of the popular Part 2 section.

For the next seven years, Newsday readers were invited in to my mom’s world of family and friends and the lives they lived. Her growing popularity led to several sell-out public speaking engagements which enthralled her readers and gave my mom the joy of hearing, in real time, how her work resonated with them. Everyone went home happy.

These columns of my mom’s Newsday years are the pinnacle of an award-winning career that started decades earlier in the basement of our Rockville Centre home. And, she paid her dues. My mom lined the walls of her home office with more than a hundred rejection letters she saved from article proposals over the years. But my mom laughed it off and kept on typing; the clattering of her Smith Corona typewriter was an ever-present soundtrack of her fierce determination.

When most of her peers started to slow down, my mom hit her stride. The freelance assignments came more frequently: The NY Times, Newsday’s magazine, and New York Magazine, to name a few. But none matched the impact of her award-winning years at Newsday, which included, towards the end of her run, the introduction of my son, Jacob, and my mom reveling in the opportunity to share her earliest stories of being a grandma.

When my mom settled in to a well-deserved retirement and embraced a childhood dream of riding horses, she continued to live life on her own terms, seeing the humor in everyday experiences and reveling in the laughter she heard when she shared her stories. While none of what she told over the last quarter-century appears in print, if you ever had a chance to meet my mom, either in person or on the pages of this collection, you have a pretty good idea how she responded to life and the people she met.

No one was more influential to my mom than my dad, who carries the torch for her to this day. His unwavering devotion to her memory and her legacy is what makes this collection possible. It’s an enduring love story and it’s his gift to her and to all of us.

For me, I miss my mom dearly. While I’m proud of her talent and achievements, it’s our deeply personal connection that I hold closest. She taught me to laugh and inspired my creativity.

And, my mom always had my back.

Barry Klaus

January 2023

NEWSDAY: MAY 8, 1991

Timeout For Gray-Matter Gridlock

Barbara Klaus is a free-lance writer from Rockville Centre who, until recently, wrote a column for the Long Island section of The New York Times. Laugh Lines will appear weekly in Part II.

THE LONGER MY husband and I are married, the more fascinating our conversations get. Forget about world affairs, forget politics; we concentrate on the big issues.

Just yesterday he came into the den and, a look of intense concentration and concern on his face, he looked at me and said, Did you see my glasses?

Don’t bother me with your glasses, I said as I crawled on the floor. I had a piece of paper on this table . . .

"Are you sure you didn’t see my glasses?"

"I could have sworn that paper was right here five minutes . . ."

We are suffering from gridlock of the gray matter, premature senility. Everyone we know is suffering from premature senility. And everyone we know is in his or her 40s or 50s. But it’s not our fault.

The human brain has a shelf life of, tops, 45 years. After that it is meant to absorb images of the Atlantic Ocean from a terrace in Miami and photos of grandchildren. That’s it: no faxes, no computers, no programing automatic telephone dialing systems.

Years ago the brain had a chance. Things were turned on with a key or a button and there were two choices for operating technological gadgets: on or off.

Today brains are suing for time-and-a-half. They must store your area and zip codes, the secret code numbers for your bank’s cash machine, your burglar alarm and answering machine, your garage door opener, your office computer, even your fax and car telephone numbers –– not to mention the phone numbers and addresses of your out-of-town children, who move every six weeks.

You must program your stove, VCR and sprinkler system and master a microwave oven that flashes EEEEE every time you turn it on. Confused? Count on it: Your mother wished it on you the day you laughed at her for not knowing how to work a 45-rpm phonograph.

It takes two days to program six stations for what your children call dentist music on your car radio buttons. Then you bring in the car for a tune-up and, one hour later, you find that every station is tuned to Motley Crue. (To reset it, you merely find your stations by using the scan or band buttons, which no one over the age of 17 can do.)

Today televisions and VCR’s come with a remote switch, which is a wonderful invention except for one thing: No one can find it. On any given night, half of Long Island is not watching television; they are groping under their beds for the channel switcher.

On any given day, we face about 14,000 choices. Go into any supermarket. Do you want a detergent with bleach or without? With or without fabric softener? Concentrated or diluted? Smelling like lemons or oranges? It takes me longer to choose a detergent than it took my grandmother to do the laundry for a family of eight on a washboard with a cake of soap.

LAST WEEK I stood in front of one supermarket case. Let’s see, I thought. I need three blue, four yellow and two pink. But we don’t really use the blue that much so maybe I should get two blue and one pink. On the other hand, if we have company . . .

Then I realized something: I had spent 15 minutes contemplating toilet paper. (Lest someone became completely disoriented from seeing yellow paper in the blue bathroom.)

Years ago at a White Sale, linens came in a variety of two colors: white and soiled. Today I blend stripes with florals, plaids with hunting scenes, nautical insignias with family crests. These days I have no time to shop for clothes –– but my beds are perfectly coordinated.

In a pharmacy, you need a medical degree to figure out which kind of cough medicine you need. Is your cough dry or wet? Do you need an expectorant? A suppressant? Both? You stand there reading the labels with 14 other people, all of you coughing enough germs to level Pakistan.

In the feminine hygiene department, there are supplies for light days, medium days, extra-heavy days –– days when you think you might need them, when you are about to need them and when you might be finished needing them but you’re not sure. For a 28-day menstrual cycle, there are 27 kinds of sanitary napkins. (On the 28th day there are panty liners.)

Got any gray matter left? Now think about your children. Long ago, parents knew where they were. John was married, David was in college, Sue was of absence? Is David transferring or just changing his major? Is Sue going back to Harvard Law or waitressing in Malibu? Are they seeing someone or just living together?

And, in this state of constant angst, our brains go into gridlock. But I have the solution. I have overcome all the aggravations of modern life. All I do is . . . All I do . . . All I . . . I knew it five minutes ago. I marked it down. Now, if I can only find that piece of paper . . .

NEWSDAY: MAY 15, 1991

Engaging Tales of Woe For Mothers of the Gloom

THIS SPRING’S weddings began with last year’s engagements. Engagements: Romance turned into commitment, you say? Wrong. Engagements are the boot camp of love.

Take my friend Phyllis, who called me last year. Guess what? she said excitedly. Brian is seeing someone!

You mean . . . ? I said.

"Yes — we actually like her! Lisa is a won-derful girl. She comes from a maar-velous family. Her mother is such a fine person. Jerry is thrilled, and Betsy says if Brian marries Lisa, she’ll be getting a friend; not just a sister-in-law. Lisa calls me every other day, just to talk, Phyllis sighed. We love her!"

Then Brian and Lisa got engaged. Three weeks later my phone rang. She’s giving me an ulcer! Phyllis wailed. (From the moment Brian had slipped the ring on Lisa’s finger, her name changed — to She. And Lisa’s mother became known as that woman.)

Why? They’re not including me in the wedding decisions, Phyllis — and 98 percent of all grooms’ mothers — will say. (Read: They have no input into the color scheme, menu or flowers.) This is no accident. The bride’s parents pay for everything, for one reason: to prevent any input from the groom’s mother.

(Which is the only reason rehearsal dinners — hosted by the groom’s parents — came into vogue: to prevent any input from the bride’s mother.)

There was more. That woman is shopping with her daughter for bridesmaids’ dresses, Phyllis said. And they haven’t decided yet if Betsy is in the bridal party!

So? I said, thinking that this didn’t exactly rank with serial killings.

"So? The groom’s sister may not be included? Phyllis said, quaffing a bottle of Gelusil. After I entertained her family, she continued, beginning the first of 170 soliloquies about Her / She. I bought her little gifts, I treated her like a daughter . . ."

She saved the best for last: And that woman had the nerve to give me a guest quota of twenty-six.

Well, Phyllis, I said, twenty-six couples is really . . .

That’s twenty-six people. They’re getting two hundred — and that woman won’t even let us pay for more!

Her voice broke. "Lisa used to call me before. She disturbed me at work, but did I say anything? Now I don’t get one phone call."

To make peace, Phyllis called Brian’s apartment to talk to Lisa, who was always on the way out. (During a 12-month engagement, many brides-to-be spend a total of 17 minutes on the phone with their finances’ mothers. But only because the groom-to-be says, Ma? Lisa wants to talk to you — as Lisa shakes her head violently, a you’re a dead man look on her face.)

Years ago, things were different. Brides were afraid of the prospective mother-in-law. After all, she was the mother of your future husband, and, if provoked, she could make life miserable. Today, Mom is afraid of her future daughter-in-law! (And why not? So is her own mother.) After all, if provoked, she could make Mom’s life miserable.

And you want to know the worst part? asked Phyllis.

Maybe it’s none of my . . .

"She controls him. She’s leading him around by the nose. Phyllis said Brian, who failed Accounting 101 — twice — is talking about investments. The person who thinks long-term employment is a month and a half is thinking about buying a house. And they deliberately pick sea-foam green for the wedding color scheme? It makes Betsy look embalmed, Phyllis said, adding, These aren’t his ideas."

And it was true. Given a choice, Brian would have selected orange and black, the colors of his alma mater.

Enter Jerry. He could tell something was, as they say, amiss. He could tell because his wife, who hadn’t smoked in 19 years, took it up again. Because every time Phyllis drank coffee and put the cup down, it shattered into 48 pieces. And because Phyllis, who initially lost 17 pounds toward getting into the size 2 dress she was planning for the wedding, instead grew into the size she was just before giving birth to the prospective groom.

Finally, Phyllis exploded to Jerry. "Twenty-six people! After we included her in the family, even though, God knows, he could have done a lot better. And now, when his own mother makes a tiny little suggestion — Brian sides with her!"

JERRY LISTENED patiently to talk of houses, of investments, of sea-foam green. Then, he turned to Phyllis and said, What do you want from me? It’s their lives.

Finally (13 more broken coffee cups later), Jerry called Brian. Using the tact and diplomacy that 55-year-old men participating in wedding arrangements are noted for, he said, I heard your sister’s not a bridesmaid. Ask her.

And so, the march to the June weddings continues — with two families becoming about as close as the Capulets and the Montagues. But there is hope. After the wedding, two sets of parents will embrace, joined in a common effort: nagging the couple to have a baby.

5/22/91

It’s That Time of Year for Dieting

WHAT? IT’S MAY 22 and you haven’t started your wedding / graduation diet yet?

I certainly haven’t. I am, after all, a size 5 –– a size 5 shoe, that is. I was a size 5 dress in 1964 — for about an hour and a half. Even so, I am uniquely qualified to share fantastic dieting tips with you. After all, I have friends like Fran. If she were scheduled to die in the electric chair, her last meal would be an individual can of tuna and a side order of bean sprouts.

First tip: In the realistic goal theory of weight loss, decide that you are absolutely, positively going to lose 3 pounds –– by July 1. If you do so, everything else you lose becomes, pardon the expression, icing on the cake.

(Don’t want to diet? Consider this: It’s a fact that a $95 size 8 dress has a waistband of 24 inches; a $500 size 8 waistband is 46 inches. Solution: Don’t diet. Buy more expensive clothing.)

Next, do not tell one living soul that you are on a diet. When you tell people, it’s Sabotage City. For example, the day I announce I’m on a diet is invariably the day my husband, Morty, decides to take advantage of a special on 17 quarts of Haagen-Dazs cookies-and-cream. (A psychological phenomenon that has built entire communities of marriage counselors’ homes in the Hamptons.)

That’s OK. That vanilla ice cream with those 127 pieces of chocolate cookie per tablespoon can just sit in that freezer. It’s only because I am a stickler for neatness and order that I level off the tops of the ice cream in those containers after Morty falls asleep.

I trim a little off the left side, a spoonful off the right. I even off the sloppy center crater by removing the surrounding cream. Only then can I resume my dieting.

Everyone you know is on a diet. (You don’t believe it? Your size 4, 115-pound friend? Weight Watcher’s. The 6-foot, 165-pound, size 30 waist? Diet Center.) The trick is not to admit it.

How? When you are out to dinner and the menu is presented, do what my naturally slim friends who just happen to have congenitally fast metabolisms do: Lie. My friend Karen, a 102-pound 5-foot-8, says, I can’t eat chocolate mousse pie. I’m allergic to sweets. Karen is also allergic to wine, ice cream, even cottage cheese — and anything else that contains more than 12 calories.

Marilyn says, I’m stuffed. I had dinner with the kids. (Which used to be very effective. What Marilyn forgets is that her children are now in graduate school, and she hasn’t eaten with them since Christmas vacation.)

I tried this technique once. I had a late lunch, I said. I’m really not hungry — and everyone at the table wiped the tears of laughter from their cheeks.

While I’m eating eggs Benedict, my slim friends are picking at egg-white omelets. While I’m smearing three tablespoons of cream cheese on a bagel, they’re scooping out the insides. (Entire Third World countries could exist on the bagel intestines left on bread plates all over Long Island.) These people are, of course, not on diets. They simply have an insatiable craving for a bagel with the consistency of an egg shell. And so should you.

When dining out, you should also wear your tightest belt. You know the kind: The one you have to stand up in the car to keep buckled. Then order Perrier or Evian. Quarts of Evian. Now, promise you won’t repeat this: Evian is water. (Which was discovered by the small boy who, centuries ago during a parade, pointed out that the emperor wore no clothes. The boy marketed the water — at $2.89 for a six-pack of 12-ounce bottles — to the crowds applauding the attire of a man who should have been arrested for indecent exposure.)

DRINK AS MUCH water as desired (or until your belt buckle hits an orbiting satellite). Guaranteed, you will consume a total of 17 calories during the meal. I know. I’ve done it. The success at dinner gives me an exhilaration unsurpassed since the last door-to-door salesman asked me if my mother was at home.

Until I take off my belt. Then I have room for the mousse pie, the pan it was baked in and an entire quart of Haagen-Dazs cookies-and-cream. An unopened quart.

I can always tell when it is time to begin my spring / summer diet. I walk into a store, see a dress on the rack and turn to the salesperson and say, Have you got this in a 6? And, heading toward the stockroom, she takes out her handkerchief and wipes the tears streaming down her face.

5/29/91

Out of the Closets with a Few Confessions

THIS WEEK, THE temperature will definitely dip below 50 and we will probably have a six-inch snowfall. How do I know? Simple: I just put my winter clothes away. And, in an annual ritual that has something to do with woman’s primeval urge to aggravate herself, I cleaned out my closets.

It all began when Eve turned to Adam and said, It’s Memorial Day, for God’s sake. Will you get your winter leaf out of this tree already?

Back when we had seasons, women like my mother cleaned their closets and drawers on April 1: It was a law. The streets were deserted, the stores were empty as an entire generation of women pondered the question: Can I get another season out of this Persian lamb coat-turned-jacket / jacket lining / collar and cuffs / muff?

My mother took all the clothes out of the closets and scrubbed the walls, baseboard, shelves and floors. Which was easy for her. In a four-room apartment, she had, maybe, three closets. (I have at least 48; many, I suspect, are crammed with clothing from total strangers.)

My mother sorted out the contents: the out-of-date clothes were given to charity, the rest divided between the winter and summer closets. Then she turned to the drawers — with the nonchalance befitting a person whose closets were used by the AMA as the standard for the cleaning of surgical suites.

Placing a clean white roll of shelving paper flush against one side of each drawer, she unrolled it up to the opposite side, folded the paper back and creased it. Using a sharp knife, she cut the paper and placed it in the drawer. Your dentist should achieve as airtight a fit with your porcelain crown as my mother did with that shelving paper.

I use a different system. Today, because the Earth is warming, I begin taking my lightweight clothing from the summer closet — in February. Only when the summer closet is empty and the in-use one is screaming in pain do I clean the closets.

I, too, remove everything, including the four pairs of jeans that I have every intention of wearing as soon as I become a size 3 again. The classic wool plaid skirts that will never go out of style. (Neither, on the other hand, are they ever really in style.) The Lucite shoes, feedbag pocketbooks, bell-bottom jeans and three Grecian gowns — in case the one-shoulder look comes back in my lifetime.

And it will come back. It always does –– but just updated enough to make the original version I have kept for 27 years completely out of date.

I removed them — and an entire collection of one-of-a-kind gowns that I wore to exclusive affairs — and so did the 12 other women who appeared in them. There is my husband’s Nehru jacket and tuxedo, which he tries on every time he loses five pounds and, the next day, I take to the tailor to stitch up the back.

There is the crinoline I wore to my Sweet Sixteen and my children’s Cub Scout and Little League uniforms that I am saving for my future grandchildren (provided I am not too senile to know who they are). And there, on the closet shelves, are an alligator pocketbook, a box that once held my fall, two pairs of spike-heeled shoes and three pairs of opera-length gloves from my Jackie Kennedy period.

Now, with the clothing removed, I make a superficial pass at the dirt lounging inside my closets, the Riviera of the dust ball set. Then I look over the clothes: the ridiculous Lucite shoes and feedbag pocketbooks, the tacky plaid skirts and garish bell-bottom jeans. And, in a tradition of guilt dating back to the fact that my ancestors in Czarist Russia never owned so much as one pair of Lucite shoes –– I put everything back. With one exception: The Courreges-styles, triangle-shaped dresses from the Sixties. The hemlines ended between your lower intestines and your knees. The triangular shape was an equal-opportunity ego-destroyer, making everyone look exactly like a barrel on stilts. Last week I gave all the dresses and minis to charity.

THE BASEMENT closet is a veritable Smithsonian of treasures: My husband’s brown army boots and field jacket, in case the reserves from 1962 are called up again. His punchball sneakers from his two-sewer days in Boro Park that are custom-made (in the sense that the holes on the ends are exactly where his last toes are).

And there is my bowling ball. Alas, bowling, the only sport at which I excelled, was outlawed by the terminally chic in 1972 for one reason: You expect a person to risk leaving an entire set of acrylic nails inside a bowling ball?

Every year I clean it all and put it back. Except, of course, for the trapeze-look Sixties dresses that were, after all, fashion’s way of saying, Just kidding, folks and never were meant to . . .

What? The trapeze look, the triangle shape that I was too old for the first time around –– the wardrobe I gave away last week –– is back?

Am I worried? Not on your life. I haven’t cleaned my attic yet. Guaranteed, there are more up there –– complete with fishnet stockings and bubblegum-pink lipstick.

NEWSDAY: WEDNESDAY, JUNE 12, 1991

When Dad Gets Into Serious Parenting

FATHERHOOD HAS changed. What used to be a spectator sport now resembles the starting lineup in the Super Bowl of aggravation.

For example, in the last generation, a father’s idea of participating in childbirth was to pay the obstetrician. Men were barred from most delivery rooms — not for medical, hygienic or psychological reasons. It was because the few men who witnessed their wives bringing new life into the world either threw up or fainted. Their wives were given massive doses of anesthesia and forgot about the whole thing.

Later, doctors took away all that anesthesia. At the same time, fathers began pouring into delivery rooms. This was no coincidence. Their wives made them. It was the "if I’m going to suffer, he’s going to suffer" school of birthing.

It’s a chance to experience the birth process together, fathers were told. (Right: In the same way an executioner experiences the electrocution process together with the condemned.)

It was only the beginning. Today’s fathers try diapering, feeding, burping (skills once reserved only for those with estrogen) –– and all the other fun things mothers have been trying to get out of for generations. They get involved in everything from percentiles in the child’s height to scores on the SATs.

In between, for 18 years, fathers rush home from work and skip dinner so that they can attend 18 Back-to-School nights, cramming their 6-foot frames into desks designed for 3-year-olds. There are fathers who wouldn’t miss Back-to-School night for one reason: Their wives won’t let them. ("Now you’re asking why she didn’t get into Harvard? Maybe if you had gone to Back-to School night . . .")

Fatherhood is serious, no-kidding-around, grown-up business, which involves massive amounts of Decisions, Planning for the Future and Knowing things. (Which is the real reason many commuting fathers return home from work after the children are in bed. They’re afraid somebody will ask them for help with the computer homework.)

From birth, their wives know how to be mothers: Nagging, yelling about table manners and making everyone eat fish. Mothers, in other words, behave as though they are a generation older than their children. Most fathers have the Serious quotient of a 7-year-old, because down deep they don’t really believe they are old enough to be fathers.

So men only act like fathers, pretending that such things as who painted the dog’s toenails Passion Pink or who put Krazy Glue on the toilet seats are Important Issues (even though they did the same things themselves at age 9). They bark things like, What time are you coming home? to their 15-year-olds — even though they are not really worried at all. They just want to know at what time their wives will begin telling them to worry.

(Fathers only worry if there’s a reason. Which shows what they know. It’s a fact that, if you lie awake at night contemplating the 14 million potential disasters that could happen to your children — the very act of worrying scares off the demon in charge of Bad Things Happening.)

But, lest someone stumble onto Dad’s Seriousness gap, he develops The Scowl. The brow furrowed, the mouth turned down, They Scowl reads, So you’re telling me the car transmission is on which parkway?

This is to scare everyone into thinking that Who-Knows-What might be forthcoming from the individual who is supposed to be Setting the Tone of the Discipline around here. They scares absolutely nobody –– except Dad himself, who stood upon it one day in the mirror and says, My God –– I look like my father. (Who, of course, is not one-millionth as ???ing, jovial and downright youthful as Dad is today.)

But once in a while, even jovial people get fed up with ???ing (which used to be called because I said so). The sc??? Mothers get on the phone with friends; fathers go to the room. Marie Antoinette didn’t spend as much time on Antoinette as Dad does in the bathroom all weekend.

What is he doing in there? He’s weighing himself or stay in front of the mirror holding in his stomach until I matches the forest green wallpaper or trying to conv??? peninsula of hair at the front of his head into a full-blow ???cal underbrush.

IT DOESN’T MATTER. He is away from his nearest dearest relatives, blissfully unaware of the deafening followed by the provocative statement, "Man, when sees that, you’re history!"

Or he watches sports on TV. Men are smart: This make a baseball game sound as though it ranks with a 1??? Security Council meeting. Example: A child comes in ar??? Where’s Dad? Tommy broke the window again.

He’s watching . . . The Game. As in, The doctor finishing the heart transplant now.

(As opposed to, Where’s Mom?

On the phone.

Maaaaa!)

Sunday is Father’s Day. What to give the Not-Quite-???for-Caregiving parent? How about a day pretending to be intimidated by The Scowl. There’s just one problem: You have to get him out of the bathroom first.

NEWSDAY: June 26, 1991

Precious Memories of Long Beach Summers

BY NOW, MANY LONG ISLAND children are in sleep-away or day camps with archery, baseball diamonds and lakes or pools. What do they know about fun: They never stayed in Long Beach.

In the early ’50s, from July 4 to Labor Day, my parents and two other families — aunts, uncles and cousins — paid $600 a family to rent a four-bedroom, one-bath house on Grand Boulevard.

During the week, when the house was comparatively empty, the bathroom was virtually deserted, meaning only three people used it simultaneously. (As opposed to weekends, when the three fathers and the entire extended family — with the population of Asia — joined us.)

And what did we do all week? We, um . . . we, ah . . . Actually, we did nothing. No Junior Lifesaving instruction, no basketball tournaments or team sports. No red warriors vs. blue spartans.

After a leisurely breakfast, we piled up an old baby stroller with enough supplies for Patton’s Third Army: blankets, sandwiches, milk, lotions, umbrellas, chairs, sweaters. Which was perfectly understandable: The house was at least two blocks from the beach.

We went down to the water’s edge and, for about six hours a day, we built . . . things. I concentrated on cakes, my cousins Robert on castles and Helen (who whined, tattled and destroyed cakes and castles) on sustaining serious bodily harm on an hourly basis.

The ideal building site was midway between the ocean and the hot, dry sand: The place where about 22,000 people chose to stand before entering the water. I packed my pail tightly, leveled off a spot on the beach and, in a swift motion I’ve seen on Julia Child’s show, I turned the pail over, lifted it and — voila! — the first of about 38 cakes appeared. Then, while I searched for icings, the tide — or Helen — swept the cakes away.

Meanwhile, Robert grabbed his kite and, after studying the wind’s direction, velocity and resistance, he started off on a run about five miles down the beach. The beach must have been at least 100 miles long. But somehow, the kite built up momentum and lifted only when Robert raced across our blanket — and onto 28 tuna fish sandwiches, cupcakes and fruit spread out for lunch.

After six more passes over the blanket — with three women in hot pursuit — the kite would finally soar into the sky. And, in about 4½ seconds, became an integral part of the Atlantic Ocean.

The kite was forgotten at the sight of a man dressed in white, with black shoes. On 110-degree days, he cheerily trudged up and down the beach, carrying a 17-ton box on a shoulder strap.

Shouting, Getcher Good Humor here. Getcher Good Humor . . ., he’d stop at our blanket. What a job: using a coin-changer, reaching into the freezer box and scooping out Creamsicles, toasted almond bars, sundaes! (I, too, would become a Good Humor person someday, I vowed, unaware that the ice cream men were, in reality, working their way through Harvard medical school.)

On weekends, the fathers taught us intricate beach sports such as running bases. Two fathers threw a pink Spaldeen back and forth while the kids ran from one father / base to another — until the bases quit for a more exciting activity: bicycling for two on the boardwalk.

There, two equally uncoordinated adults, who normally confined themselves to such strenuous activities as pinochle or crocheting, pedaled