Jerry Lewis singing on TV meant hemming ‘husky’ pants and the mournful end of summer

I hated the annual Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon.

I loved the worthy cause, of course, but hated the annual reality of its timeliness.

Summer’s over.

Back to school.

Hated it as much as wearing black, dress shoes with white tube socks to Sunday morning Mass while “Wrestling at the Chase “was on Channel 11.

Hated it as much as going to Prairie du Rocher on a sunny Sunday morning to visit old relatives, or watching the Lawrence Welk or Porter Waggoner TV show with my grandma. I loved Grandma, and especially her chicken and dumplings and peach cobbler, but hated those cowboy TV shows.

Hated it as much as a bite of fresh beets or a radish, or seeing Al Jackson, Larry Jaster or Nelson Briles pitch on a Sunday afternoon for the Cardinals when I hoped all week to see Bob Gibson or Steve Calton,

Hated it as much as opening a fresh pack of baseball cards and there was only but American League players and no Cardinals. I put the Harmon Killebrews, Boog Powells and Tony Olivas in my tire spokes.

That was back when summer was summer. It started on Memorial Day weekend and lasted until the Tuesday after Labor Day. Three, full, glorious months of fun and mischief, sunburns and mosquito bites, fireworks and stink bombs,

Literally. I believed the world was coming to an end when Jerry Lewis was singing on TV because I knew, starting Tuesday, I’d have to take a bath more than once a week and wear clean socks every day to school.

Jerry Lewis would sing on TV, and my chin would quiver along with his but for opposite reasons. Jerry would be crying for his kids. I was crying because I knew soon I’d be diagramming sentences and adding fractions and not collecting locust shells or trying to retrieve the baseball from the stormwater drain in the street.

It was never a surprise. I knew the end of summer was coming because we went shopping the previous weekend at Sears-Roebuck, Grant’s and Kinney’s Shoes. . Not even a new pair of P.F Flyers or Chuck Taylors were enough to brighten the start of a school year. I always hoped there were a few size “husky/short” pants on the rack so Mom didn’t have to hem my school pants again. She had to cut off more length than we kept. And the crotch was down to my knees. Husky was a kind word, though. It was cool because nothing rhymed with it.

Mom tried her best to put a positive spin on the annual return to school. Soon, I’d see my old friends. The city library’s bookmobile would return to school and I’d get to read more sports biography books. Chocolate milk every day for lunch. Ballgames at recess. It never worked. I wanted to stay home in the neighborhood forever.

I was never ready for the first day of school. Literally, we did not know our teacher or classroom until we arrived at school and read our name from the typed list taped to the classroom’s door. I wasn’t as concerned about my teacher or classroom as I was with getting desk that didn’t have sticky souvenirs under the top from the previous spring. Spitwads. Gumwads. Glueballs. We thought they were all boogers.

I would always choose a desk in the back, by the window. But a few days later, I’d be moved to one of the first two rows and in the front so I could not spend the day looking out the classroom’s windows.

I was blessed with eternal hope and an active imagination.

That was good and bad in school.

Good that I always believed that I could learn but bad because I could not help but stare out the window and daydream about summer. I’d tell myself, “Only a few more months until Christmas break…and a few more months until baseball season…and then a few more months until it was summer again.”

Summer was the season of Camp Ondessonk, Sundowner’s Swim Club, Ozark vacations, Hagen’s Dairy, locust shells and holding hands with that special girl you swore you’d marry by high school.

Then Jerry sang and ruined it all.

Decades later, not a Labor Day weekend passes when I don’t think of the annual Jerry Lewis telethon.

Jerry would sing, “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”

Mom would tear up.

Me, too.

Man, I hated that song.