Nothing is Impossible

About ten of us stood in a line on a small parking lot behind the recreation hall. It was summer and it was hot. This was new experience for most of us and we were a little nervous but of course none of us were going to admit it. We were all residents of a school for delinquent youth just outside New York City. It was 1964 and I had been sent here by the New York City Juvenile Services after appearing in court with my parents to answer for a number of offenses ranging from truancy, to theft and vandalism. The original plan for me was a year in a juvenile detention facility upstate New York but due to the effort of my parents, mostly my stepmother, I was sent to this place.