In between our summers, we would send each other postcards with notations for our latest moves in a series of simultaneous chess games.
Each August I would go to the post office to purchase a stack of unstamped, plain white postcards. I addressed each of them for the partners who I was playing long, remote games with: a boy in Pittsburgh who played the saxophone, a friend of his who was soon graduating from high school, a girl who lived in a town as small as mine, but as far east of Pittsburgh and I was north. These were my summer friends. Except for two weeks in July, I never saw them. We connected with postcards, mailed once every week or so. On the back of each was chess notation that symbolized our moves like the notes on a score animates a violinist when playing a sonata.
"White P-K4" was a typical opening. A week later I would be excited to receive a postcard back that read, "White P-K4, Black P-K4." It would usually take me a few days to respond with: "P-K4, PK4," and my new move, "N-KB3."
This would go on week after week, month after month until one of us forgot, or the game was won. The slowness of our play together kept us connected in a time-zone different from real time. We extended our camp tournaments, stretched them into our own time and space, always waiting for the next summer to arrive.
