HOMETOWN

Summer moved slowly, like a bunted ball unsure if it was fair or foul, but once the dog days had come and gone, the pace quickened. Little League was over. The beach was a pile of Polaroids, a stray Skee-Ball ticket and a chipped conch shell that looked a lot bigger on the Strand.

By the time I rode shotgun with my two-pack-a-day father to a tobacco auction in Fairmont or Whiteville, the strong smell and strange sounds within the vast warehouse signaled that September — and a new school year — loomed. This reality tended to hit me on the drive home as I attempted an annoying imitation of the auctioneer’s rhythmic chant, which usually got Dad to buy me some crackers so I would shut up.

Even a boy who loved those lazy summer days knew there was such a thing as too much watermelon and horseshoes. After a couple of idle months, I looked forward to seeing a new Currier & Ives scene on our wall calendar (an annual freebie from Hobbs Insurance) and returning to the classroom.

Preparation for the first day of school felt like its own season, about which I had mixed feelings. Since I kept my hair closely cropped by getting a crew cut every few weeks, timing a visit to Billie Hill’s Broad Street barbershop certainly was no hardship. I loved the ritual: waiting for my turn, magazine in hand, listening to the adults’ conversation; settling into the chair, smock clipped on and paper band secured around the neck; calming whir of the clippers; a powdered brush when her work was done. After paying Mrs. Hill $1.75 for my haircut, I left ready to take on the world.

Being obsessed with school supplies, stocking up on them was far from a chore even though my mother kept a close eye on the bottom line. We read the “Back to School” ads in The Pilot closely. Valu-Mart might have Flair pens on sale for 39 cents apiece, but they could be three for 99 cents at Mann Drug. I had to be at my persuasive best to get Mom to spring for Ticonderoga pencils instead of a less expensive variety but had better luck with that than I did lobbying each August for a pair of Converse All Star sneakers instead of the brand’s slightly cheaper Coach model.

Mostly, back to school in the late 1960s and early ’70s meant going back to Collins, which had been situated on Main Street in Aberdeen, “the shopping center of the Sandhills,” since the 1930s. It was part of a regional chain of about 30 department stores founded by William Augustus Collins, who opened his first location, in Conway, South Carolina, in 1927. The Collins Co. boasted it was “A Good Place to Shop for Nice Things” while emphasizing its mid-priced mindset that suited folks on a budget. One of its early advertisements said, “Stars in the skies are like bargains at Collins, too thick to be counted.” Another said Collins was “where quality is never expensive.”

Deals on dungarees notwithstanding, my enthusiasm for clothes shopping didn’t come close to matching my gusto for pens, pencils and paper. Although I could play outside for hours in the heat sustained by a few gulps from the garden hose, I tired easily on those annual excursions to Collins, with little patience for changing room visits to see if I fit in regular or “husky” pants. Regardless of the size Mom paid for, it wouldn’t be too long until I’d worn a hole in a knee. She would have to apply an iron-on patch, making me resemble a repaired old tire on one of our well-used cars.

The Collins chain lasted another decade or so, until I had the survived the fashions of the 1970s and was about to graduate from college. Its dozen surviving stores were bought in 1981 by the Peebles Department Stores. William Collins died the following year. “He was a man that never quit dreaming,” Raymond Collins, one of his children, told the Charlotte Observer. “But he believed in backing up your dreams with elbow grease.”