Once the bus had gone on its way (leaving behind a smell of half-cooked diesel to mix with the rotten-egg stench belching from the Worumbo’s stacks), I crossed the street, wondering briefly what would happen if I were hit by a car. Would I blink out of existence? Wake up lying on the floor of Al’s pantry? Probably neither. Probably I would just die here, in a past for which a lot of people probably felt nostalgic. Possibly because they had forgotten how bad the past smelled, or because they had never considered that aspect of the Nifty Fifties in the first place.

A kid was standing outside the Fruit Company with one black-booted foot cocked back against the wood siding. The collar of his shirt was turned up at the nape of his neck, and his hair was combed in a style I recognized (from old movies, mostly) as Early Elvis. Unlike the boys I was used to seeing in my classes, he sported no goatee, not even a flavor patch below the chin. I realized that in the world I was now visiting (I hoped I was only visiting), he’d be kicked out of LHS for showing up with even a single strand of facial hair. Instantly.

I nodded to him. James Dean nodded back and said, “Hi-ho, Daddy-O.”

I went inside. A bell jingled above the door. Instead of dust and gently decaying wood, I smelled oranges, apples, coffee, and fragrant tobacco. To my right was a rack of comic books with their covers torn off—Archie, Batman, Captain Marvel, Plastic Man, Tales from the Crypt. The hand-printed sign above this trove, which would have sent any eBay aficionado into paroxysms, read COMIX 5¢ EA THREE FOR 10¢ NINE FOR A QUARTER PLEASE DON’T HANDLE UNLESS YOU INTEND TO BUY.

On the left was a rack of newspapers. No New York Times, but there were copies of the Portland Press Herald and one leftover Boston Globe. The Globe’s headline trumpeted, DULLES HINTS CONCESSIONS IF RED CHINA RENOUNCES USE OF FORCE IN FORMOSA. The dates on both were Tuesday, September 9, 1958.