McGraw©Hill/Focus/Antaeus p.518////R7N30 ***** This was during the wartime, when lots of people were coming

North for jobs in factories and war industries, when people moved

around a lot more than they do now and sometimes kids were thrown

into new groups and new lives that were completely different from

anything they had ever known before. I remember this one kid, T.

J. his name was, from somewhere down South, whose family moved

into our building during that time. They'd come North with

everything they owned piled into the back seat of an old©model

sedan that you wouldn't expect could make the trip, with T. J.

and his three younger sisters riding shakily on top of the load

of junk. Our building was just like all the others there, with

families crowded into a few rooms, and I guess there were twentyªfive or thirty kids about my age in that one building. Of

course, there were a few of us who formed a gang and ran together

all the time after school, and I was the one who brought T. J.

in and started the whole thing. The building right next door to us was a factory where they

made walking dolls. It was a low building with a flat, tarred

roof that had a parapet all around it about head high and we'd

found out a long time before that no one, not even the watchman,

paid any attention to the roof because it was higher than any of

the other buildings around. So my gang used the roof as a

headquarters.