Cream Sam Summers

(Originally re-published 8/9/25. My e-novel, Cream Sam Summer, based in part on real characters from a very real and exceedingly colorful snapshot in time, the 1970s, is free along with its short-story prequel, The DeTestables.)

As a Bronx kid growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, I would say that parents were less concerned about their kids talking with strangers—and strange people as well—than are contemporary moms and dads. They did not automatically presume that every area oddball was a potential predator or axe murderer. So, we youngsters sometimes kibitzed with a few folks who were—in retrospect—not quite right in the head.

A family lived up the street from me that had been there for decades. Their home had deteriorated with the passage of time. In fact, its ramshackle state was the nearest thing we had to a haunted house in the neighborhood. And the residents’ sorry backstory added to its allure, beginning with an alcoholic mother and father who physically and psychologically abused their two sons. While in a booze-induced stupor, the family patriarch got run over by a subway train. Thereafter, the matriarch became a recluse, venturing out only under the cloak of darkness for a daily beer run.

It was the youngest son whom the local kids got to know when he was a man in his early- to mid-thirties, I would guess. His given name was Mike, but most people called him “Red,” homage to his hair color and heavily freckled face. He also had a peculiar sub-nickname that endured for a spell, particularly among the younger set: “Cream Sam.” Red himself had coined the term along with another, “Furter Sam,” which he claimed were real things. Innocently, we imagined them as variations of ice cream sandwiches and frankfurters, but looking back with an adult pair of wary eyes, Red possibly had something else in mind.

Red, a.k.a. Cream Sam, was regarded as “simple,” but harmless by older neighbors familiar with his tragic family history. During the Cream Sam Summers of my youth, we would often ride our bicycles past his place and, if he were outside, stop by for a chat, knowing all the while that this mysterious, rarely seen spooky lady lurked in the nearby recesses. I spotted her standing on the front porch one morning. She was dressed in all black and was ghostly pale with a long shock of white hair styled like Grandmama Addams. I could not have been more than ten years old at the time and, I must admit, this singular visual unnerved me. By then, Red's mom was a complete shut-in.

On a sultry summer’s eve in 1975, Red summoned a bunch of us into his garage, which he had fixed up as a personal bedroom of sorts, while the living quarters above it fell into increasing disrepair along with his aging mother. Red said he had something earth-shattering to show us that night. It turned out to be a one-hundred-dollar bill, which was worth something back then, and not a piece of currency us kids laid eyes on very often. How he came to have this bill in his possession is in the unsolved mystery file alongside the true meanings of "Cream Sam" and "Furter Sam?"

Sitting on the seat of his gold-colored, three-speed stingray bicycle with a speedometer, my friend Frank snatched the bill from Red’s hand—an uncharacteristic act for him—and rode off into the night. With the bill raised high in the air, Frank furiously pedaled down the block and let loose a few whoops and hollers for good measure. He returned it to Red after this brief exhibition, but the ordinarily genial eccentric was not amused and let us all know in no uncertain terms. Perhaps entering Cream Sam’s garage under the cover of night was, after all, unwise. Today’s more discerning parents might really be on to something.

With the help of a sympathetic neighbor, Red's dilapidated domicile was sold and he and his mother moved into an apartment not too far away. Upon the sale, fragments of the roof were missing, and the place had no working plumbing and had not for some time. For sure, it was a hardscrabble life for Red. An older kid on the block once suggested that we never again refer to Red as Red, but other colors instead like Blue, Yellow, and Green when we encountered him on the street. If memory serves, I said, “Hi, Purple” to him. Still, Red will always be Cream Sam to me, regardless of what game the man was playing all those years ago.