Chapter 2

I arrived in Franklin a little after five o’clock, but I didn’t head straight to Trip’s. Instead, I turned into the neighborhood with our Colonial Revival. A roll-away dumpster sat in the side yard. The house’s exterior was virtually untouched, but the interior was stripped to the walls. The plumbing, wiring, and ductwork were intact, but none of the fixtures remained. Trip’s uncle, a contractor, had supervised the work while we were still at UT.

The Craftsman bungalows were about a mile away, so I drove past them as well. They had been completely gutted, down to the bare studs and original floors. The dumpster in the yard between them was full of debris, including the remains of the bushes from the front beds.

I wondered what Trip would think about his unexpected need for new landscaping. I started to chuckle, but quickly sobered. His money was my money, and we didn’t have new landscaping in the budget. With a grimace, I realized that some of our profit had been uprooted and unceremoniously dumped. It was too late to do anything about it, but it still bothered me.

Trip’s schedule called for us to start with the bungalows. They had the most potential for trouble, and he wanted the flexibility to deal with any problems before our end-of-summer deadline. According to him, something always went wrong with a renovation. He had plenty of experience, so I didn’t doubt him. I just hoped it wouldn’t be my fault.

I went over the plans in my head. I couldn’t see where I’d left anything out. I couldn’t see any potential for disaster, either. But then I chuckled to myself—they’re called unexpected problems for a reason. When I realized that, I stopped worrying. I had to trust my own abilities and Trip’s experience.

In the meantime I tried to remember how to get to his house. His family lived in one of the wealthier parts of town, so the houses grew steadily larger as I drove toward their neighborhood. Finally, I turned into the Whitmans’ driveway and parked next to Trip’s apartment. I got out and stretched, and spotted him coming down from the main house.

“Welcome to Franklin,” he said. We shook hands and then he pulled me into a back-slapping hug. “I know it’s only been a week,” he said, “but it’s good to see you.”

“It’s good to be here.”

“How was your trip?”

“Long. Boring. I wish I could’ve flown the whole way.”

He chuckled. Then he nodded toward the main house. “Dinner in about an hour?”

I nodded.

“In the meantime,” he said, “can I help you unload your stuff?”

We carried my things up the stairs to his apartment. It was small but cozy. His bedroom was in the back, with the only bathroom. I’d be sleeping on the pull-out sofa in the living room, next to the kitchenette.

“It’s not much,” he said when he finished the tour, “but it’s home.”

I nodded my thanks.

“Darlene”—his stepmother—”bought you a wardrobe for your clothes,” he added, gesturing. “She also bought us new towels and linens.”

“That was nice of her.”

“She fixed a big welcome dinner, too.”

“She didn’t have to do that,” I said, although I’d skipped lunch, which my stomach reminded me.

“Nah, she likes doing it. She takes pretty good care of me. Now you, too.” He grinned. “You’re gonna like it here.” He paused and then gestured around us. “So, d’you need to go to the bathroom? Get washed up? Have a beer? Relax for a while?”

I chuckled at his enthusiasm. “Thanks, I’m cool,” I said.

“You ready to come up to the house? Dale and Josh are dying to see you. They’ve been excited all day.” Without waiting for an answer, he grinned again and clapped me on the shoulder. “God, it’s good to have you here!”

Darlene was a good cook, and I ate too much, including dessert. Afterward, we sat in the den and talked as Dale and Josh vied for our attention. They finally lured me into playing Atari with them. I paid attention when it was my turn, but talked to the adults while the boys were taking their turns. The evening was an odd combination of childish enthusiasm and grown-up conversation.

Trip and I eventually said goodnight and headed down the driveway to his apartment. The boys wanted to come with us, but Darlene said it was already past their bedtime.

At the apartment, Trip opened two beers. Tennessee wasn’t quite as hot as South Carolina, but it was close enough. The apartment had a window-unit air conditioner in Trip’s bedroom, but it labored to cool the entire space. I didn’t even taste the first half of my beer—it was simply cold and wet.

“So, tell me about this nudist colony of yours,” Trip said without preamble.

“Camp,” I said when I recovered my composure. “We call it a nudist camp.”

“Oh yeah, that’s right. So tell me about it.”

I looked at him askance. “Why do you want to know?” I hid a grin. “You’re not turning gay, are you?”

Much to my surprise, he laughed, long and genuine. “No. But if I were, I definitely would’ve said something last week.”

Our last night at UT—a week before, although it seemed like longer—we’d had a nudist party with Kendall and Abby at their apartment. Trip and I hadn’t gawked at each other, but it was impossible to sit in the tiny living room and not notice the other guy’s dick.

“Seriously,” he said, drawing me back to the present, “what’s it like there?”

I shrugged and took a seat on the couch.

“That’s all I’ve been able to think about since last week,” he said.

I looked a question at him, and it was his turn to shrug.

“Sorry, I guess I’m curious,” he said. “I mean, actually curious, too. Not perverted or anything like that.”

I waved away his explanation. “I didn’t think you were being a pervert.” I fell silent for a moment as I searched for words. “It’s just ... I mean ... not many people know that I’m a nudist in the first place. And the ones who do are usually nudist themselves.” I shrugged. “A few people from high school, obviously, but not many. And they were close friends.”

“What am I?” he said. “Chopped liver?” He was teasing, but not entirely.

I shook my head. “It’s not that ... It’s just...” I took another swig of beer, and used the time to gather my thoughts. “What do you want to know?”

“What’s it like? What do you do there? What are the people like? Are they everyday folks? Playboy models? Fat and dumpy? What?”

“All of the above.”

He frowned at my non-answer.

“Most of them are everyday folks. I mean, like Susan.”

“The Susan I met last year?”

“Mmm hmm. She owns the place.”

His eyes widened. “She does? She’s not everyday folks.”

I shook my head.

“She’s sexy as hell, even if she is old enough to be my mother.”

I couldn’t agree more.

“No offense,” he added quickly.

“Oh, I’m sure she wouldn’t be offended,” I said with a wry grin.

“A nudist, huh?” he said absently. “Yeah, she seems like the type. I mean, she’s an adult,” he explained, “but she doesn’t seem like it. Maybe it’s ‘cause she’s so... cool. You know?”

I laughed. “Yeah, she’s cool all right.”

“That’s what I mean. She’s cool enough to own a nudist camp, but she’s not a hippie or anything.”

“Far from it. Her husband was in the Navy with my dad. They flew in Vietnam.”

“What happened to him?”

“He was shot down.”

“That’s too bad.”

I had mixed emotions about Jack’s death. I wanted to be like him, but I barely remembered him—just fragments and flashes of memory from when I was four or five. I hadn’t even connected those memories with Jack himself until Susan told me that she knew our family when we lived in California.

If Jack hadn’t been shot down, Susan and I never would’ve had a relationship, and my life would’ve been very, very different. So I didn’t know how to feel. I hated that I might be happy at a man’s death, but how else could I describe my feelings?

Susan said that I reminded her of Jack. She didn’t talk about him very often, so most of what I knew came from my father. Unfortunately, I wasn’t anything like the man he described. I wasn’t pure and good. I certainly wasn’t confident or self-assured. And I definitely wasn’t brave or heroic.

Instead, I resented people like Professor Joska, who was only trying to help me. I worried that I wouldn’t succeed as a man, much less an architect. And I’d been too much of a coward to face my problems with Gina and fix them before they ruined the best relationship I’d ever had.

No, I wasn’t anything like Jack MacLean. I was just a horny teenager who happened to step in front of the wrong tree limb at the wrong time.

“Are you okay?” Trip said quietly.

“Huh?”

“Are you okay? You got quiet all of a sudden.”

“I’m fine,” I lied.

He nodded slowly.

“So, what can I tell you about camp?” I asked. I didn’t want to sink into brooding, and comparing myself to a dead paragon was a sure way to do that. Trip understood—he saw it in my eyes.

“What are the people like?” he asked.

“They’re just people.”

“Are the women sexy? Are the guys well-hung? Is it one orgy after another?”

I chuckled, which did a lot to banish my self-doubt.

“Okay, it was probably a ridiculous question,” Trip said, “but still...”

“Most of the women are pretty average. They’re wives and mothers. They come in all shapes and sizes. Skinny and plump. Short and tall. Big tits and small.” I paused as we shared a grin. “Blonde, brunette, and even a few redheads. But they’re all sexy, if you think about it.”

He tilted his head with a question.

“I don’t know about you,” I said, “but I think it’s sexy when a woman is nude in public. I mean, it’s not really public, but you know what I mean.”

He nodded.

“So yeah, the women are all sexy, in their own way.” I grinned. “Some of them are Playboy sexy, though.” Like Kendall, I thought. And Gina. “Especially the younger women,” I added. “Some of the ones in their twenties or early thirties are total babes.” Then I thought about Susan, or Elizabeth Coulter, or my own mother. “Heck, some of the women in their forties are babes too.”

He grinned at my enthusiasm. “Like Kendall’s mom?”

“Oh yeah.”

“What’s that like? Seeing your girlfriend’s mother naked?”

“It’s hard.” We laughed at the double entendre. “Seriously, though,” I continued, “it’s not a big deal. Yeah, Kendall’s mom is sexy, but I don’t think of her that way.”

He looked skeptical. “Now I know you’re lying. Back when I was still dating Lori, I’d’ve given anything to see her mom naked. I actually did once ... sort of.” He paused and savored the memory.

“I used to go over to their house to swim,” he explained, “and I’d hide behind my sunglasses so I could watch her while she sunbathed. She had this string bikini, and she used to untie it so she wouldn’t have tan lines. She forgot to re-tie it once, and I still have fantasies about that.” He shook his head in wonder. “Man, she was hot.”

I grinned.

“So don’t tell me that you don’t think of Kendall’s mom that way.”

“All right,” I said. “You got me. I’ve had a fantasy or two.”

“Or three. Or four.”

I felt my cheeks heating.

He turned serious again. “What’s it like when other guys look at Kendall? Does it bother you?”

I shook my head. “In some ways, it’s pretty cool. I mean, think about it ... Other guys are looking at her, but she’s with me.”

“Are there any other women who are ... shaved? You know ... down there?”

“No, that’s pretty rare.” Then I decided to bait him. “There’s only one other woman at camp who shaves.”

He tried to look nonchalant, but his eyes practically glowed. “Oh?”

“Mmm hmm. You know her, too.”

He didn’t make the connection.

“Susan.”

His jaw dropped.

“Yep. She’s completely smooth down there. She usually wears a pair of bikini bottoms, though.”

“Then how do you—?”

Uh-oh! I cleared my throat. “What else would you like to know?”

Trip might not know about nudist camps, but he wasn’t stupid. “Hold on a second,” he said. “If she wears bikini bottoms, then how do you know she’s shaved ... unless...?” His eyes widened as the light dawned. “Don’t tell me that you and Susan...?”

I didn’t want to lie, but I couldn’t tell the truth, so I kept my mouth shut. Unfortunately, that was practically an admission.

“Really?”

“No comment.”

He didn’t believe me. “You’re kidding.”

“I said, no comment.”

“You can’t lie to me, Paul. I see right through you. Besides, you’re not very good at it.”

“I—”

“You and Susan?” he wondered aloud. “Really?”

“I don’t kiss and tell,” I said stiffly.

“You don’t have to tell,” he said. “I can see it written all over your face.” He paused and shook his head in wonder. “Wow. That’s really cool.” His expression turned eager. “Was it a one-time thing? Or more like Mrs. Robinson?”

“I said, I don’t kiss and—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don’t kiss and tell.” He suddenly stood up. “You want another beer?” He returned with two fresh bottles.

Was he trying to get me drunk? On two beers?

“It was a Mrs. Robinson thing,” he said, “wasn’t it?”

“Why does it matter?”

He thought about that for a moment. “It doesn’t, I guess. I’m just curious. I mean, you’re the guy with two girlfriends—”

“I was the guy with two girlfriends.”

“Still,” he said, “you’ve had as many girlfriends at one time as I’ve had, period. And now you tell me that you and Susan had a thing.”

If I breathe one ... measly ... word about my mother, I thought, I’ll never forgive myself. Trip was entirely too perceptive, especially with things I didn’t want to talk about. So I decided to keep him focused on what he already knew.

“It wasn’t a ‘thing,’” I said. “It was—is—a relationship.”

“It’s still going on?”

“Not like that,” I said hastily. “We don’t have sex anymore. But we’re still friends. Good friends. Next to you and Gina, she may be my best friend in the world.”

His eyebrows quirked with a question.

“What?”

“You said Gina. Not Kendall?”

I thought back through the conversation and felt my face flush. “I meant Kendall,” I said, although it sounded like an excuse.

“How are things with her?”

I shrugged at the change of subject. “Good. I guess.” He shot me a shrewd look, so I told him about the scene at the airport.

“That’s too bad,” he said. “Doesn’t she know how much you love flying?”

“She doesn’t care. She’s afraid, so she thinks I should be afraid too. It’s stupid.”

“What does Gina think about flying?”

“She loved it.”

He nodded slowly. Then, completely out of the blue, he asked, “Do you ever think you broke up with the wrong girl?”

I blinked in surprise.

“I mean, Kendall’s fantastic. She’s smart and sexy, and she obviously loves you. But ... do you ever have second thoughts?”

“Well, Gina broke up with me, not the other way around.”

“I know how that feels,” he said ruefully. “But the question still stands. Do you ever wish you’d done things differently?”

“All the time,” I said. We shared a knowing look.

“Let’s get another beer,” he said at last.

We stopped at three beers apiece, but we talked long into the night. He was eager to hear about camp, but he had some wild ideas about how much sex people had. In reality, most of the camp’s visitors were regular people on vacation. Out of the sixty or seventy families who visited regularly, less than a dozen couples were swingers.

I didn’t tell him about the swinging, of course, but he knew about my relationship with Gina and Kendall, so he probably guessed some of it. He was polite enough not to ask, but I didn’t think he’d be shocked by the truth.

As I lay awake after he’d gone to bed, I realized that Trip had never been shocked by the things I told him. He accepted me for who I was, and he liked me in spite of my flaws. That alone was worth more than anything else. In many ways, he reminded me of Susan. No wonder I liked him.

I heard Trip’s alarm and I fumbled for my watch on the end table. I couldn’t focus on the dial, and it was too dark anyway. Trip stumbled out of his bedroom a moment later, wearing only a pair of white briefs.

“You awake?” he said.

“Yeah. What time is it?”

“Five o’clock.”

“Ugh.”

“You want some coffee?”

I sat up and rubbed my eyes. “When did you start drinking coffee?”

“When I started getting up at 5:00am.”

I threw back the sheet and swung my legs over the side of the bed. I was stiff from the thin mattress, not to mention the metal bar strategically placed in the small of my back.

Trip filled the coffeemaker and started it brewing. “I’m gonna take a shower,” he mumbled.

I stood as he returned to his room. The kinks in my back would ease with a little exercise, so I did a set of sit-ups and then a set of push-ups. I hadn’t brought my weights with me, but Trip had a set of dumbbells in the corner. I did a few quick sets of curls and presses.

When I heard the shower stop, I opened the wardrobe and unzipped my suit bag. I’d brought three suits, and I hoped they’d be enough. After all, I didn’t want to wear the same thing every time. I’d also brought a couple of pairs of slacks, so I could mix and match.

I wouldn’t have to dress up all the time, though. I’d be working on the houses themselves, doing construction work. When I did, I’d wear work clothes. But for the first day, I wanted to look like a professional—I wanted to look like an architect.

Trip emerged from his bedroom. He had a towel wrapped around his waist, and he looked more awake than when I’d first seen him. He poured a cup of coffee, added two spoonfuls of sugar, and took a cautious sip. It was too hot, so he blew on it.

I thought about asking his opinion on which suit I should wear. I was leaning toward the Brooks Brothers one Susan had given me, but before I could ask, Trip spoke up.

“It’s supposed to be pretty hot today.”

I nodded.

“I think I’m gonna wear shorts instead of jeans.”

Once again, I nodded, but I didn’t know where the conversation was going. Why did it matter what he wore?

“Are you gonna wear jeans?” he asked. “Or shorts?”

“I thought I’d...” The words died on my lips. He was trying to tell me something, and he was trying to be polite about it. A suit wasn’t the right outfit. Why? Wasn’t I supposed to look professional, if only for my first day? My spirits sank. “Probably shorts,” I said at last.

He nodded and took an experimental sip of coffee. Then he took a longer sip. “Good thing you brought a suit, though,” he said. “You’ll need it for the closings.”

“The closings?”

“When we sell the houses. People want to know they’re buying from professionals, not some good ol’ boy contractors who probably forgot to shingle the roof.”

“Oh.”

“I should’ve told you to bring one,” he said. “I’m glad you were thinking ahead. Good job.”

“Thanks,” I said, but my heart wasn’t in it. More than anything in the world, I wanted to be an architect, and that meant looking the part. I had visions of arriving on the job site in a sharp three-piece suit. In my mind’s eye, the men were deferential. “Yes, Mr. Hughes. No, Mr. Hughes. How should we proceed, Mr. Hughes?”

“You’d better jump in the shower,” Trip said, interrupting my fantasy. “We need to leave by six o’clock. Breakfast at the diner, and then on the job by seven. Got it?”

Something about him was different, and it took me a moment to figure it out. Then it hit me—he wasn’t my friend from the night before. Now he was a businessman talking to his partner. He had a schedule to keep, which meant that I had a schedule as well.

With a sigh of regret, I zipped the suit bag and headed for the shower.

“Okay,” Trip said over the remnants of our breakfast. “A guy named Blackie Barnes runs the construction crew. I’ve worked with him for three years, and he’s a good guy. Solid and dependable. He’s the foreman, so he runs the job site. Got it?”

I nodded.

“He tells his crew bosses who’s doing what, and what to do when. I’m the contractor, so I make overall decisions, but we don’t have enough time for me to play God.” He leaned forward, arms on the table. “And I work, just like everyone else. Blackie knows what I can do, and he’s pretty good at keeping me busy. But if he needs decisions, he asks me. We work well together. The men on the crew all know I’m the owner, but they also know I pull my own weight.”

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

“Well, you’re in an odd situation.”

I nodded. I was both the architect (more or less) and the construction novice. I wasn’t a complete beginner, though. I’d worked on projects with my father, so I knew how to use hand tools, and I could run most power tools. At the same time, I had no idea how to renovate a house.

“Blackie will make sure you’re working with guys who’ll teach you what you need to know.” Trip leaned back and looked at me seriously. “But at the same time, you’re the guy who knows the designs better than anybody else.”

I nodded.

“Normally, the architect visits at least once a week. With you on site, we shouldn’t have any snags with the design. But you need to remember something.”

“What?”

“You and I may be the hotshot architecture students, but these guys are good at what they do. I’ve been doing this for years, and I don’t know a fraction of what Blackie does. So I listen to him when he says we need to do something a certain way.”

I nodded.

“And it’s important that you don’t get a big head,” Trip continued. “Yeah, you’re the guy with the design, but you’re also the guy who doesn’t know squat about construction. You can learn a lot from these guys, but not if you treat ‘em like underlings.”

“I’d never—”

“I didn’t think you would, but you need to be clear about this job. You’ll be one of the top guys on the site, but you’re also the bottom guy. If you act like the top guy, the men’ll treat you like ‘The Boss,’ and they won’t teach you anything. Instead, they’ll make fun of you behind your back when they realize you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“So you want me to act like the bottom guy?”

He hesitated. “You don’t have to act all ‘please, sir, show me what to do,’ but you need to have a healthy dose of humility. Like I said, these guys can teach you a lot, but only if they see that you’re eager to learn and willing to work. Hard.

“They’ll find out that you’re the architect sooner or later, but if they know you’re willing to work as hard as them, they’ll respect you for it. They won’t see you as ‘The Boss.’ Instead, you’ll already be one of the guys, who just happens to be the guy who did the drawings.”

I tried to hide my disappointment. “So you don’t want to tell them I’m the architect?”

He shook his head. “Not at first. Blackie knows, but the rest of the guys don’t. I don’t want them to treat you like the fancy hotshot who’s slumming with the construction crew for the summer.”

“Why not?”

“You don’t want to know what these guys think of architects.”

I felt my brow lower with a question.

“Architects are the guys who screw things up,” Trip explained, “and these are the guys who fix them. Architects are guys who sit in nice clean offices and dream up ways to screw up a simple house. Blackie’s guys are the men who get the job done. Most of them know more about houses than a dozen architects.”

“But they can’t design one,” I insisted.

“Yes they could. Most of ‘em, anyway. It might not be a Frank Lloyd Wright house, but it’d be a nice basement rancher with a two-car garage.” He paused to let that sink in. “You have the design skills and the formal training, but these guys know about real construction. If you can learn that, you’ll be a better architect for it. Trust me.”

“I know,” I said, although I wasn’t sure it was true.

He looked skeptical. “I mean it, Paul. Don’t bring a big attitude like you’re an architect and you know what you’re doing. You don’t. Trust me. You’re a first-year architecture student who’s never swung a hammer on a construction site.”

“Okay, I get it!”

“I’m not saying this to piss you off,” he said evenly. “I’m trying to help.”

I looked at my watch. “It’s almost seven. Are you ready to go?”

I was sullen on the short drive to the bungalows. I had such high hopes of what the job would be like, and Trip had shattered them in fifteen minutes. When we pulled up to the house, he held up his hand to stop me from getting out of the car.

“Look,” he said evenly, “I’m sorry I was so blunt. But first impressions are pretty important, especially with these guys. You’re either ‘one of us,’ or ‘one of them.’ I want you to be one of us. I need you to be one of us. We don’t have the time or the money to hire more guys, and you’ll have to pull your weight. You’ll have to pull more than your weight, since we have so much riding on this. Okay?”

I nodded.

“Make an impression on these guys before they find out you’re an architect. Even a first-year student. Okay?”

“Yeah, okay,” I said at last. My dignity was bruised, but I wouldn’t screw things up simply because I was being petulant. “I understand.”

He gave me a hard look, as if judging my sincerity.

A truck pulled up behind us, followed by a white panel van.

“This is it,” Trip said. Then he glanced at me and his expression softened. “You’ll do fine. Just be yourself. I wouldn’t’ve asked you to be my partner if I didn’t trust you.” He held out his hand.

I shook it, awkward in the confines of the Cruiser’s front seats.

“This is the first day of the rest of our lives,” he said, much too solemn.

With just as much gravity, I looked him in the eye. “Oh, Trip,” I breathed, “I do.”

He cracked a smile. “Yeah, that was a bit too serious.”

“Just a bit.”

He nodded over his shoulder. “C’mon, let’s meet Blackie.” He spared me another smile. “God, it’s good to have you here!”

Blackie Barnes was a grizzled fifty-year-old with tanned and tattooed forearms. He knew I’d done the drawings, but he didn’t blink when Trip introduced me to the others as “my friend Paul from school.”

Blackie put me with three other men: Mike, Mike Junior, and Big Jim. We shook hands all around. Mike was Junior’s father, no surprise, as well as Jim’s uncle. Mike and his son were stocky and solid, and Big Jim lived up to his nickname. At 6’4”, he had beefy arms, a thick waist, and legs the size of tree trunks.

Mike cleared his throat. “Blackie said you know a little about construction.”

“Um ... yes, sir.”

“Tell me.”

“I know ‘measure twice, cut once,’” I said.

“That’s a good start. What else?”

“I can hammer, saw, drill, screw, you name it. I mean, I know the basics.”

“All right,” he said. “We’ll see how you do.”

Blackie assigned crew bosses to various tasks. Mike was our boss, as well as Blackie’s number two guy. The other crew bosses were Cyrus and Jim. When I heard their names, I understood why our Jim was Big Jim (aside from his size, that is).

Cyrus’s crew started stripping the roof from the first bungalow. Jim’s crew began work on the closets in the smaller bedrooms. Our crew headed for the master bedroom.

We worked hard through the morning. The house was hot, despite the huge oak trees shading it. It was loud, too, filled with the sounds of hammering, saws, and Country music. The music wasn’t my favorite—actually, I hated it—but most of the time I was too busy to notice.

Instead, I kept my mouth shut and did what Mike said. He didn’t seem impressed with what I already knew, but he wasn’t disappointed, either. I mostly held boards, or fetched them from the stacks outside. He occasionally let me measure for a cut, although he double-checked everything I did. I took my time and made sure I was right.

God is in the details, I said to myself with a half-chuckle.

Once, Mike even let me cut the board we’d just measured for. I wasn’t nearly as deft with the saw as Big Jim, but Mike was satisfied when he measured my cut.

Our crew didn’t speak much throughout the morning. Mike told me what to do, and sometimes talked to his son, but it was always about the job. Big Jim didn’t say a word—not that I heard, at least.

We broke for lunch at eleven o’clock. Most of the men had brought their own food in little Igloo coolers. Darlene had packed brown-bag lunches for Trip and me, although our “brown bags” were full-sized grocery bags.

Mine contained a Coke (warm, but gloriously wet), a foot-long hoagie sandwich, a big bag of potato chips, a baggie of pickle spears, and two Twinkies. I thought it was too much, but I was ravenous. I ate everything but the Twinkies, which I gave to Junior and Big Jim.