Cream Sam Summers

(A summer reprise from 2011. Wow, I've been doing this blog for quite a while now. By the way, my e-novel, Cream Sam Summer, based in part on real characters from a very real and exceedingly colorful snapshot in time, the 1970s, is free along with its short-story prequel, The DeTestables.)

As a Bronx kid growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, I’d say that, generally speaking, parents were less concerned about their kids talking with strangers—and strange people as well—than are contemporary moms and dads. They didn’t automatically presume that every area oddball was a potential predator or axe murderer. So, we youngsters sometimes kibitzed with a few folks that were—in retrospect—not quite right in the head.

A family lived up the street from me that had been there for decades. Their home had considerably deteriorated with the passage of time. In fact, its ramshackle state was the nearest thing we had to a haunted house in the neighborhood. And the residents’ sorry backstory added to the allure, beginning with an alcoholic mother and father who physically and psychologically abused their two sons. While in a booze-induced stupor, the family patriarch got run over by a subway train, and the matriarch became a recluse, venturing out thereafter only under the cloak of darkness for a daily beer run.

It was the youngest son whom the local kids got to know when he was a man in his early- to mid-thirties, I’d guess. His given name was Mike, but most people called him “Red,” homage to his hair color and heavily freckled body. He also had a peculiar sub-nickname that endured for a spell, particularly among the younger set: “Cream Sam.” Red himself had coined the term, along with another, “Furter Sam,” which he claimed were real things. Rather innocently, we imagined them as variations of ice cream sandwiches and frankfurters, but—looking back with an adult pair of wary eyes—Red likely had something else in mind.

Red, a.k.a. Cream Sam, was regarded as “simple,” but largely harmless by older neighbors familiar with his tragic family history. During the Cream Sam Summers of my youth, we would often ride our bicycles past his place and, if he was outside, stop by for a chat, knowing all the while that this mysterious, rarely seen spooky lady lurked in the nearby recesses. I spotted her once out on the front porch. She was dressed in all black and was ghostly pale with a long shock of white hair styled like Grandmama Addams. I couldn’t have been more than ten years old at the time and, I must admit, the visual unnerved me. By then, Red's mom was a complete shut-in.

One warm summer's eve, Red summoned a bunch of us into his garage, which he had fixed up as a personal bedroom of sorts, while the living quarters above it fell into increasing disrepair along with his aging mother. Red said he had something really big to show us that night. It turned out to be a one hundred dollar bill, which was worth something back then, and not a piece of currency we laid eyes on very often. How he came to have this bill in his possession is in the unsolved mystery file alongside the true meanings of "Cream Sam" and "Furter Sam."

Sitting on the seat of his gold-colored, three-speed stingray bicycle with a speedometer, my friend Frank snatched the bill from Red’s hand—an uncharacteristic act for him—and rode off into the night. With the bill raised high in the air, Frank pedaled furiously down the block and let out a few whoops and hollers for good measure. He returned it to Red after this brief exhibition, but the ordinarily genial Red was not amused and let us all know in no uncertain terms. Perhaps entering Cream Sam’s garage under the cover of night was unwise after all. Today’s more discerning parents might really be on to something.

With the help of a sympathetic neighbor, Red's dilapidated domicile was sold and he and his mother moved into an apartment not too far away. Upon the sale, considerable pieces of the roof were missing and the place had no working plumbing, and hadn't for some time. For sure, it was a hardscrabble life for Red. An older kid on the block once suggested that we never again refer to Red as Red, but other colors instead like Blue, Yellow, and Green when we encountered him on the street. If memory serves, I said, “Hi, Purple” to him on one occasion. Still, Red will always be Cream Sam to me, regardless of what game the man was playing all those years ago.