Summer School! What Genius Thought That Up? by Henry Winkler

Author:Henry Winkler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US

CHAPTER 12

PAPA PETE CAME to pick me up after school. He was wearing a Mets baseball cap to keep the hot summer sun off his face, and holding a plastic bag of pickles for our snack.

I sprinted out of the main door as soon as I saw him. “Where are we going?” I asked.

“You’ll see, Hankie,” he said. “Have a pickle. They’re very refreshing.”

Papa Pete thinks many things are very refreshing. A dip in the ocean. A deep breath. A cool shower. Orange sherbet. Iced tea. A wash-cloth on the back of your neck. And I must say, I love everything that he thinks is refreshing.

I took a pickle from the bag and handed the other one to Papa Pete along with a paper napkin to wrap the bottom of the pickle in. My mouth was watering as I took the first bite. There’s nothing like a garlic dill to make you forget that you just spent the day in summer school. As it turned out, this one was extremely juicy, which I wasn’t expecting. Pickle juice squirted out of my mouth, shot up in the air, and landed with a big splat right in the center of my T-shirt.

“Oops,” I said. “Now I’m going to smell like pickle for the rest of the day.”

“Then you’re in the right company,” Papa Pete said, “because I happen to find pickle juice to be a very delicious scent.”

We headed over to Broadway and 79th Street and walked down a flight of stairs into the subway station. A man with a beard was playing “Jingle Bells” on the saxophone. We listened to him while we were waiting for the train.

“Isn’t he a little early for Christmas?” I whispered to Papa Pete.

“You’ve got to play what’s in your head,” Papa Pete whispered back to me as the train pulled up. He wished the man happy holidays and dropped a dollar into his saxophone case as we boarded the subway car.

It was really crowded inside, and since there wasn’t any place to sit, Papa Pete and I stood up and hung onto a metal pole as the train sped downtown. He’s really good at riding the subway standing up. I always try to keep my balance without holding on. It’s like surfing—only underground in the city. Most of the time, I do lose my balance and go crashing into the people standing around me. Maybe Papa Pete enjoys the smell of pickle juice, but I’m pretty sure everyone smushed up against me in the subway didn’t. I noticed that the space around me kept getting bigger and bigger as the other subway riders edged away.

We got off at 42nd Street and took the shuttle to Grand Central Station, which is right in the middle of midtown Manhattan. If you ever get to New York City, you really should go there. Papa Pete says the main terminal, where the ceiling looks like the sky, was at one time the biggest room in all of America. I believe him.

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