Posts filed under ‘BIO’
COLLEGE AND LEARNING TO FLY, CONTINUED
But after trials and tribulation and hour of flight training, I had learned how to fly.
A few days after graduation and being commissioned as a second lieutenant I went to Selm, Alabama and Air Force flight training. That was an interesting experience, while it lasted.
But an incident occurred before I entered the air force which was one of the first fork-in-the-road which could have changed my life. But fortunately, for me, the decision for my future had already been made. What follows is the possible detour which came into play.
It was at the end of my sophomore year at Oklahoma State University that I was seeking a summer job with a scientific connection. I wrote letters and one letter I wrote was to Presbyterian Hospital looking for a job in their lab. Much to my surprise, I got a job. Later I found out that the only reason I got the job was because a doctor’s son got it first but backed out.
When I arrived at work the first day I found the floor where the lab was located was a series of labs each on devoted to a different area of testing. I was assigned to the urinalysis lab where I was given the task of dropping a plastic strip with a variety of colored squares measuring a different characteristic of urine. Protein content, pH, conditions like that. The squares would change color indicating the value of the characteristic involved. That was it. That was all I was taught to do.
A few days after I began work I was told to go to a children’s hospital a block away associated with Presbyterian. A few workers told me how unlucky I was to be told to work there. My future seemed less than promising.
Turns out, it was the best thing that could have happened to me.
Instead of a series of labs the lab consisted of one room, and not a large room at that. There was another summer student working there. He was assigned to run the tests for microbiology. I was assigned to run tests for everything else.
I was in charge of urinalysis. The complete test which involved the same plastic strips but also the macroscopic portion of the test. I was taught to recognize the various crystals and other characteristics found in urine.
I also learned to do chemistries on blood serum. This was in the mid 1960’s, long before safety was a concern. No gloves in use and the serum was pipetted by mouth.
Blood counts were also part of my load. But here, I was not doing the microscopic part of the test. I also determined the sodium/potassium values for the blood.
I was busy and felt that I was making a contribution. I also kept in mind that I was not licensed or formally trained to do any of this work. But it was summer, and they were short-staffed and the only one who seemed to have these concerns was me.
The director of this small lab was a pathologist, so as a bonus, I got to witness autopsies.
I worked in the lab for the summers before my junior year and senior year in college. When I was at work the summer before my senior year I was told that the director of all the labs wanted to see me. I could not imagine what this was about.
Now remember, I was in Air Force ROTC. If you continued in ROTC beyond your sophomore year, at the beginning of your junior year you raised your hand and were sworn into the air force. So, when I went to see the lab director I was already committed to entering the air force upon graduation.
Well, when I met with the director I realized the work I had been doing had been recognized and appreciated. The reason he wanted to see me was to ask me if he could write a letter of recommendation for me to medical school. Usually, it was the other way around. I told him that I was committed to enter the air force after graduation and there was no turning back from that obligation. Also, I was going to be entering pilot training.
That was the first possible detour in my future. It was also a good thing for medicine for I am not a people person.
Next, pilot training.
WALT TRIZNA: COLLEGE AND LEARNING TO FLY
Recently I’ve been posting chapters of my memoir started 25 years ago remembering my childhood in Newark, New Jersey. Now I’m going to share some memories of when I was much older.
COLLEGE AND LEARNING TO FLY
Previously, I listed my two dream professions, science and writing, and along the way you will see how things worked out.
One benefit I see in old slowly becomes apparent as the years progress. oh, there are all the aches and pains. Not being able to do the things you once did or want to do. But now you have time to think and reflect on your life. Looking at what you accomplished and failed to accomplish.
Let me say now that there is nothing I wanted to do in life that I did not do. My disappointment is not achieving the level in my accomplishments that I had hoped for.
One dream, which I mentioned earlier was learning how to fly.
Upon entering Oklahoma State University I enrolled in Air Force ROTC. One of the enlisted men working in the unit said those initials stood for ‘rapers of tiny children’ demonstrating a certain lack of his respect for future officers and probably what most enlisted men thought of second lieutenants. After taking a written test and having a physical, I found that I had qualified for pilot training. When you qualify the government pays for 36 and ½ hours of flight training during your senior year.
I was going to learn how to fly.
Now, Oklahoma can be rather windy at times. I flew twice a week. Once in the early morning and once in the afternoon. In the morning the air was like silk. The afternoons were another story. At times I felt as if I were one with the little two-seat Cessna 150 I was flying during those morning flights.
After about six hours of instructions, I was flying with my instructor shooting touch-and -goes when he had me stop on the runway got out of the plane and I was on my own flying the traffic pattern. Now, my instructor was not a big guy, but as soon as I took off I notice how different the little plane handled.
Now, about flying in the afternoon, conditions were quite different than my morning flying. In the afternoon thermals were beginning to develop. You would be flying over land and then over a lake and you and your plane got quite a jolt because of the thermals developed over both types of surfaces.
And the wind!
One windy day I came in for a landing. Tried as I might, I could not keep the plane over the runway. It was that windy. Finally, I had to go around, enter the traffic pattern, and try again. I might mention that on the runway where I was trying to land I had seen a Boeing 707 land.
There was another incident worth mentioning. I have no sense of direction. My family kids me about that. I was flying solo cross-country. Just a short flight of maybe a hundred miles or so. Shortly after taking off, I felt my instrument I was using for direction was wrong and decided to depend on my instincts. Big mistake. I had my map on my knee and soon there were lakes on the ground which weren’t on the map. Something told me those lakes were not formed since the map was published. I was lost. I saw a small town with a water tower. These towers usually have the name of the town on them. Not this tower. Finally, I saw a small airport. Looking at my map and the configuration of the runways I was able to identify the airport and now knew my location. I also noticed that railroad tracks ran from the tow to the route I was supposed to be on. So flying over the tracks I was back in business.
WALT TRIZNA: THE DAY KENNEDY DIED
THE DAY KENNEDY DIED
November is the month of thanksgiving, when the weather no longer bounces between summer and winter, when the chill of fall sets in with a vengeance preparing us for the hard cold of winter. It is also the month Kennedy died.
During November 1963 I was a junior at East Side High School. I already had a deep interest in science and forfeited my study hall to work in the school biology lab. I designed an experiment to study Mendelian heredity. The experiment required two black and two white mice, which I purchased, and began mating the mice in all the various combinations possible, trying to predict the color of the littermates. I soon ran out of space in the cellar where I was keeping my mouse colony and asked permission to move my many mice to school. During the experiment, I took meticulous notes, recording much more than I really needed to. One quirk of the mice, which totally threw off my experimental results, was the fact that they sometimes eat their young. When nervous or upset, they would chew off the chord and wouldn’t know when to stop, leaving only the head and a small piece of protruding backbone. I pressed on, until I began seeing litters of mice with brown siblings, something I had not anticipated. This brought an end to my experiment and an introduction to the unpredictability of science.
It was while I was working in the school lab one November Friday afternoon that someone came in and said that the president had been shot. I recall reacting to the news with horror and disbelief. The emotions of that moment will always stay with me, the sense of experiencing a moment that defied all logic, the vitality of our president in jeopardy. I had the sense that the world had changed; this quiet November afternoon would become a milestone in history. All I knew was that the president had been shot; there was still hope of survival as I headed home from school that day. But as I walked the mile and a half home from school, I saw something I shall never forget, something that dimmed my hope. On my way I saw clusters of people standing on corners and most were crying. The residents of Newark are not known for their emotional displays, so this sight was disturbing. It was the first signal I had that the worst had occurred, that the country, the world had changed forever.
When I reached home, my father was already there, not unusual for he began work early in the morning and was home before me most of the time. I would find him sitting in the kitchen with his beer and paper, but today he was in the parlor watching the TV and he was crying too, something I recalled seeing only once before. The last time I saw my father cry was when my mother lost a baby girl shortly after birth. Ironically, my sister died almost the same time the Kennedy’s lost their child and also for the same reason, underdeveloped lungs. As my father sat weeping before the TV, he told me that the president had died.
The days that followed seemed unreal. Long before the age of cable and satellite dishes, there were just three major networks and a few independent New York stations broadcasting to Newark. All normal broadcasting ceased; TV carried nothing but news and insight into the assassination. On the radio, all normal programming ceased. The radio played nothing but somber music and news of the assassination. Everyone watched the news all weekend, watching history unfold before our eyes. Shortly after Kennedy died, Oswald was captured. The nation viewed live, the instrument of their sorrow. We watched Oswald’s murder at the hands of Jack Ruby, adding confusion on top of the misery. Everyone’s thoughts were in turmoil as these historic events concluded with JFK Jr. saluting his father’s casket.
The day Kennedy died, I learned something of the unpredictability of life.
WALT TRIZNA: GARDENING IN NEWARK
GARDENING
Have you ever stopped for a red light while driving, and gazed over at the concrete median and there, against all odds, growing through a tiny flaw in the concrete is a plant. I am amazed to see how life persists even under the most adverse conditions. As a child in Newark, I simulated those exact conditions, although I called it gardening.
The yard we had on Christie Street was quite large. Large enough to have kickball and baseball games, but then again, we were quite small. Once I was older, we would have barbecues on our charcoal grill, summer nights spent sitting on beach chairs on the hard-packed soil, enjoying burgers and hot dogs and listening to the sound of the city as night closed the day.
Next to our house was the landlord’s house, which was a small two story one family dwelling with and alley running between the two houses. Behind the landlord’s house was a garden, fenced in. On the opposite side of this small house was a driveway, which was actually quite long, and when I was old enough to shovel snow, it seemed to become longer still. Behind the two houses was our yard, large enough to hold a couple of cars, with some scraggly patches of grass growing defiantly close to the fences where the cars could not maneuver. To the rear of our yard was a three-car garage, one of which my father rented, and this was the reason I was given the opportunity to shovel the driveway. Next to the garages, and beyond the area of the yard where we were permitted to play, was another fenced area, which was also part of the yard, but an area where the kids were not allowed. There was an old glider swing back there but nothing much more. This fenced area was quite large, making up one third of the playable area of the yard. At the edge of this restricted area was another small, fenced space, about six feet by six feet, and this was fence sheltered a small garden belonging to the old woman across the hall. She had mostly zinnias and marigolds, and it was a great place to catch whatever butterflies found their way into our yard. I admired her garden. She was always out there tending her flowers, pulling weeds, tying up plants with wooden stake and old stockings, which was the traditional way of supporting tall plants back then.
Then one day the fence bordering the back of the yard came down and the restricted area of the yard was no longer restricted. I’m not sure why the fence came down, but it seems that the glider swing came down about the same time. Now a whole new area of the yard was available, an area where cars would not park or drive, an area perfect for a garden. So with our landlady’s permission, my sisters and I started small gardens.
The ground was as hard as concrete; there was a total lack of anything that resembled topsoil. So off we went in the old Chevy for some rich topsoil. We traveled a short distance to where my grandparents lived in Hillside. There was a little-used park along a stream not far from where they lived, and that is where we headed for some our soil. We parked as close as we could and, armed with a shovel and several large containers, started digging up the bank of the stream.
Once our topsoil was obtained, my sisters and I framed out small areas, one next to the other, in the newly freed-up back area of our yard. We each had an area about twenty to twenty-five square feet backing up to the fence separating our yard from the neighbor’s yard. We made a feeble attempt to turn the soil before adding the topsoil, but the product of our digging was only reddish soil and rock, so we dumped our topsoil on top of our little garden areas and started planting.
I was rather ambitious when I planted my garden. I bought tomato and pepper plants, planted carrot, beet and parsley seeds all in neat little rows. These poor plants and seeds did less than thrive in my garden for I seemed to grow everything in miniature. My beefsteak tomatoes were more like their cherry cousins, the plants barely needing any support at all. My peppers were the size of plums. And my carrots – I grew those tiny carrots that they feature in seed catalogs, ones as big as your pinky, but I in fact was going for the full-sized edition. Why I attempted to grow root crops in my concrete soil is a mystery to me now. But I was proud of my little garden, and as my sisters lost interest, the size of my garden grew. I watered and weeded the few limp weeds that dare take up residence amongst my crops and generally enjoyed the little area of green I had created out back.
Then one summer it happened, a true sign that I had truly established a growing zone in Newark, I was infested with insects. The leaves on my plants were full of holes. This phenomenon amazes me to this day. How you can grow a plant that is unknown to the area where it is being grown, an area that may have never seen that plant before, yet an insect that specifically attacks that plant will find and destroy it. And so it went for my little plot in Newark. I purchased a powder that I thought might remedy the situation, and after a heavy dusting that left my plants white under the strong midafternoon sun I read the directions. This pesticide was to be applied lightly and only during the cool of the evening, always avoiding exposing the plants to this killer during the heat of the afternoon. By nightfall, my whole garden was withered and dead. I eliminated my insect infestation and in the process eliminated my garden.
The next year I planted again with a new knowledge of pesticide use. I branched out to flowers, planting some morning glories in a corner of my yard near my garden, another small square of the yard taken over for horticulture. I have my own yard now, much larger than the yard of my youth. I enjoy my vegetable garden, and the flowers planted around the property, but there are days when I think back to my little plot in Newark where I teased life from the concrete soil.
WALT TRIZNA: COMIC BOOKS
COMIC BOOKS
When perhaps the age of nine or ten, I recall making trips with my father to used bookstores to buy comic books.
The stores are now long gone, torn down and replaced by skyscrapers, but once there was a series of used bookstores, the only ones in the area, huddled together on Market Street, located where the uptown section of Newark began, just beyond Penn Station, the train station and accompanying railroad that bisected Newark. Once you left my area of Newark and made your way to Penn Station and under the elevated railroad you were uptown, walking toward Broad and Market, the heart of Newark, but more on that intersection later.
Off I would go with my Dad to buy comic books. The stores were old musty-smelling rooms filled with piles upon piles of books from creaky hardwood floor to the grimy ceiling. I love bookstores to this day, both old and new, and the smells of the used bookstores take me back to Market Street. The bookstores of Market Street had huge front windows crammed with books, and the store overflowed with books. And somewhere in this maze of books were bags and bags of used comic books. The comics had their covers removed (which might have indicated something illegal) and sold for a nickel each or six for a quarter and we would buy them by the stack.
There would be romance comics for my mother, science fiction and action heroes for me and for the younger kids there would be Nancy, Donald Duck, Archie and more. We would bring home a bundle of comics, along with the musty smell of the store, sit around the kitchen table and divide them up.
Taking part of my stack of comics and hiding some in the bathroom for nature’s calls did not endear me to my family. There was a water pipe running from floor to ceiling on the outer wall and I would hide my comics rolled up and wedged between the pipe and the wall near the ceiling. Of course, they were in plain sight. I just assumed no one would ever look up.
At the age of nine or ten comics were my entertainment; they were my entry to the world of reading and imagination. To this day I lose patience with computer games, get bored with TV and other electronic means of filling your day. But given a good book, I get lost for hours always needing to know what the next page holds.
WALT TRIZNA: THE NEWARK DRIVE IN
THE NEWARK DRIVE IN
On the far eastern edge of Newark, tucked between the Jersey City and New York City bound bridges, stood the Newark Drive In. The drive in was directly under the flight path of nearby Newark Airport, which tended to make listening to the movie something of a challenge. When approaching the drive in, you were greeted by the swampy, musty smell of Newark Bay. A resident of ‘The Dumps’ (what the locals called the area surrounding the theater) added to the odors of its refineries and sewage treatment plants to the ambiance of the area.
The drive in was surrounded by a tall wooden fence marking its boundaries with a total lack of landscaping of any kind, being true to the Newark life style – bare essentials is all that you get.
On warm summer nights my family would pack into the old Chevy with food and pillows and head to the drive in. The smaller kids would already be in their pajamas in anticipation of not making it to the second movie of the double feature. Being the oldest, I was given the opportunity to sit up front and in those days of front seats being bench seats, providing plenty of room.
Arriving at the drive in just before dusk, my dad paid and was given the PIC and off we would go. PIC was an insect repellent product. It was a flat spiral affair. You lit the end and it would give off a pungent aroma daring mosquitoes to venture near. I really don’t know if it worked because we would also douse ourselves with insect repellent to ward off the visitors from the nearby swamps.
During this period, mosquito-borne encephalitis (sleeping sickness) was a constant threat. On summer nights in Newark, trucks would go through the city streets emitting clouds of insect repellent.
On these same summer nights in our flat, ineffective screens would keep all but the largest and dumbest insects out of our house. When all were in bed, my mother would walk the length of our flat spraying insect repellent while telling all of us to close our eyes. As we lay in bed, you could feel the particles of spray falling on your body.
Once in the theater, we’d find our spot and park the car at just the right angle on the mound that ran the length of the theater to get a perfect view of the screen for everyone. The smaller kids, in their pajamas, would head for the playground and run around till they couldn’t see what they were doing which also indicated that it was time for the movie to begin.
One movie I recall seeing was entitled Macabre. The movie was supposed to be so scary that you were issued a life insurance policy when you entered the drive in. It was good for the length of the movie and if you should be unlucky enough to die of a fright-induced heart attack during the movie you collected, or you next of kin anyway. The movie was a real bomb; the cartoon was scarier. I wondered though what would have happened if someone would have dropped dead of your usual run-of-the-mill heart attacks.
There was always an intermission between movies, time to advertise the goodies available at the snack bar. The screen would be full of dancing hot dogs and talking cups of soda all counting down the fifteen minutes till the next show. The audience was your typical Newark crowd, the women in their smocks and the dads in their handlebar tee shirts. They thrived on meat and potatoes, with hot dogs and sodas would be your typical snack. But one snack that was advertised every time I went to the drive in was Flavo Shrimp Rolls. The only place you could buy a Flavo Shrimp Roll was at the drive in, they did not exist outside their gates. I’m sure you could get other shrimp rolls someplace else in Newark, maybe in the small China Town on Mulberry Street, but I don’t think your typical Newark crowd ate many shrimp rolls. But up there on the screen, after the hot dogs had danced off you could see the cartoon characters lining up for their Flavo Shrimp Rolls. I think we actually bought one once, only once. It was a deep-fried affair running in grease. I would wonder who looked at the crowd coming into the drive in and said to himself, “These people will buy up Flavo Shrimp Rolls like there’s no tomorrow.”
The Newark Drive In is gone now, long gone. Last I heard, a movie theater stands where the drive in once existed. And I’m sure with the demise of the drive in went the opportunity for anyone to buy a Flavo Shrimp Roll.
WALT TRIZNA: THE NEWARK DUMPS
THE NEWARK DUMPS
Located on the eastern boarder of Newark is Newark Bay, a body of water leading out to the Atlantic Ocean. I have always loved the smell of the ocean, the proximity of primal life. However, by the time the ocean’s water mixed with the additions contributed by the factories surrounding the port, all that was left was a hint of what was once the ocean’s promise.
Port Newark lacked that promise, referred to as “The Dumps”. The area surrounding the dock was the home to tank farms, sewage treatment plants, junkyards and the polluting factories. It did not take a great stretch of the imagination to determine how “The Dumps” got its name. On hot summer nights, the family would pile into the old Chevy and take a ride “down the dumps”. It was a chance to escape the heat of the city and sit by the water’s edge. We would park along one of the perimeter roads and look at the freighters and container ships, from countries we could only dream of visiting – distant lands holding even more distant dreams. On one road where we usually parked, you sat between the runways of Newark Airport and the moored vessels. This was before the age of jet airliners – props and turboprops ruled the skies. If you watched enough airplane fly overhead, you would eventfully see a four-engine plane flying with one propeller lazily turning indicating engine trouble.
Sometimes, before heading for ‘The Dumps’, we would stop for a pizza. There was this elderly Italian man – he must have been at least fifty decided to open a pizzeria. So what did he do? He rented a garage, bought a pizza oven, a couple of small tables, and he was in business. The garage was a freestanding cinderblock structure containing three one-car garages. He rented one of the end garages, cut a door through the garage door and this served as the entrance. Located on a narrow street, not more than an alley, it was a far cry from today’s chain-store pizza establishments. Each pizza had a bubbly hard crust and stood as an individual creation – nothing massed-produced here. Later, when the quality of his product became known, he rented the adjoining garage, knocked down part of the common wall and expanded. Could this happen today, with all the zoning laws and chain-store competition, I don’t think so. But back in the fifties he thrived and produced great pizzas.
On hot summer nights, armed with a pizza, we would go ‘Down the Dumps’, to see the ships and watch the airplanes land and dream of distant cities and lands far away.
On weekends the roads of the port were mostly deserted, an ideal place to learn to drive. It was along one of these deserted roads that I almost put my father through the windshield. While driving on one of these roads he instructed me to stop, not yet acquainted with the feel of the brakes, I performed this maneuver rather aggressively. My early driving lessons occurred long before seat belts were standard equipment; hence my aggressiveness resulted in my father flying unrestricted around the car. I finally learned to drive some years later on the back roads of Alabama, after I had already learned to fly an airplane, but that’s another story.
‘The Dumps’ also was the site of two excursions that occurred when I was young. Both were odysseys that have stayed with me, the details slightly blurred, but with time an impression remains.
Before I describe these adventures, there was another activity which we did for entertainment during the summer. We went to the dumps to go fishing. Now the fishing we did down the dumps was not your usual type of fishing. In involve neither a pole, fishing line or hooks. The fish we were after were kellies. I don’t know if this was the actual name of the fish, but kellies is the name we know them by. I do not know if they were saltwater fish for they inhabited tributaries near the ocean, perhaps they were freshwater for the flow of these bodies of water may have been going to the ocean, but kellies they were, and we caught them. They were no more than two to four inches long and gray in color with a light underbelly. No kaleidoscope of color for the fish surrounding the waters of Newark. We usually went fishing after dinner, trading the heat of summer for the breeze coming off the water giving some relief from the hot day. We would pile into the car, and my dad would head for ‘the Dumps’ trying to find a spot on the water near the bay or one of the various channels running through the dumps to the port.
Once we had located the ideal spot with only a small drop down to the water, we started to fish. These were to days of delivering milk to the door. Early in the morning the milkman would leave quart bottles of milk outside our door and remove the empties; it was the empty milk bottles that we used to fish for Kellies. Torn-up slices of white bread were used for bait. We would put bread in the bottle, tie a rope around the bottle’s neck and we were set. Then sink the bottle in the water and patiently wait. The waiting was the hardest part for I believe none of us were over ten. We would wait for what a child thought was a reasonably length of time and then pull the bottle up, and if you were lucky, you had one or two Kellies swimming around in your milk bottle. Any fish we caught we took home but they were short-lived pets. Housed in a fishbowl, the next morning would find them all be floating belly-up, always. We did not go fishing for Kellies often, but it was an adventure for us but misery for the Kellies.
Now for my dumps’ odysseys, my adventures that took place there. They were journeys in more ways than one; one occurred when I was about ten and the other when I was about thirteen. I now live in the suburbs where the houses have large yards and manicured lawns. There is crime but it is usually minor and occurs at the malls which they never stop building. Yet in this environment whenever our girls leave the house we want to know where they are going and whom they will be with. When I was young I can’t recall being interrogated every time I left the house. We were just going out to play, and if there was a plan it was not usually related to our parents. If we were going far from home we would tell our mom where we were going, but all us kids just seemed to come and go.
The first journey to the dumps involved my sister Judy and I and two kittens. Everyone knows I do not care for cats even though we have two living with the family now. Our oldest cat is a pure white named Stimpy. We adopted him when the woman who found him, as a tiny kitten lying next to his mother who had been hit by a car, determined that she was allergic to cats. Stimpy has been with us for about ten years and has grown to be a big old cat. The other cat in our family is Sally. She was adopted by Lynn two years ago from the SPCA and is definitely Lynn’s cat. She follows Lynn like a shadow wherever Lynn goes and wants nothing to do with me. Sally will jump on my lap during the rare times when no one else is available.
I can tolerate cat, but they are not my favorite animals. When I was nine or ten I, and my sister Judy, who is three years younger, somehow obtained two kittens. They were mostly black with some white markings and were very young. Of course, we wanted to keep them, and I think we did for a day or two but it soon was discovered they were infested with fleas, for the whole family started to scratch. Our parents said they had to go. I now think of myself as an organized person. My career has been in science for years now. Every day I must deal with a vast amount of detail when I conduct my experiments and look for a successful outcome. Back at the tender age of nine or ten details were not something I bothered with much.
I told Judy I had a plan, a plan that would allow us to keep the kittens and no one would know anything about it. Unfortunately, my plan lacked any detail. I decided where we could safely keep them; we would take them down ‘the Dumps’. We would build a shelter for them, and they would be safe, and we could visit them whenever we wanted. And the place we would keep them was only two or so miles away – perfect. How would they be fed or watered, where would they go to the bathroom, what happened if some of the wild dogs that populated the dumps found their hideout? What happened if the weather turned bad? These were details that my young mind did not consider. Judy and I took some cat food and the kittens telling my parents that we were going to get rid of them but not telling them what my excellent plan was.
We set out down our street, Christie Street, towards ‘the Dumps’. Our little legs took us past part of the Ballantine brewery complex. We walked past the projects on Hawkin’s Street. We walked under a darkened bridge where people parted with couches and other items no longer deemed useful, and reached the boarder of the dumps, which also meant the end of the sidewalks. On we walked past a factory making headstones and other works from quarried stone. We passed more factories, getting closer and closer to our destination. Finally, we were in area of ‘the Dumps’ I decided it would be a perfect place to keep the kittens. The site of our kitten sanctuary was across the street from the future site of the Newark Drive In, but that was still a year or two in the future. We gathered pieces of wood and old crates and soon had shelter for our kittens. As safe and secure as a nine- and six-year-old could hope for. Once we were happy with our construction we put the kittens inside, left them some food but no water, we were unable to carry water, sealed up any exits and started our journey home. We knew we had done the right thing. We could keep the kittens and visit them whenever we wanted. We only had to walk two miles each way.
We arrived home after being gone what must have been hours, and no one asked us where we had been. I don’t know who broke first, but it was probably my sister. The beans were spilled, the plan revealed, the journey exposed. We all piled into the car to rescue the kittens from their secure abode. As we approached the shelter we could hear their cries, they were still there. We released them from their shelter and took them home but did not keep them; I do not remember what their final fate was only our attempt to save them down ‘the Dumps’, was a failure. What I took away from that experience was that a plan without the details worked out might not be a good plan or maybe not even a plan at all.
My next journey down the dumps came a few years later and was of a completely different nature. This excursion took place with two other guys, one of which was my good friend Billy. He told me he had explored an area on the edge of the dumps which contained a hobo camp, and that he was going again and did I want to come along. Of course I wanted to go, exploring a hobo camp on a Saturday afternoon seemed like a brilliant idea. The fact that we would be violating someone else’s home and property never entered our young minds. Also, the fact that the hobos might be home was never considered. We were on a mission, an exploration. After telling my mother I was going for a walk with my friends and would be back in a while, we set out on our adventure.
It was a good two or three mile walk to our destination. Our journey took us to the more industrial edge of the dumps. We walked past a series of large and small factories towards the far end of Wilson Avenue and our destination. The hobo camp was located behind the East Side High School football stadium, the high school I was soon to attend. The high school was located nowhere near the stadium, with land being at a premium, they located the stadium near the edge of the dumps. After I left East Side High School, in a stroke of genius, they decided to build a new stadium. The old stadium had plenty of parking. The new stadium, nestled among factories and an elevated railroad track, no closer to the school than the old stadium, had absolutely no parking at all, all the parking would have to be on the street. I’m sure the residents of the homes that bordered the area of the stadium really look forward to football games.
This was a journey of discovery for me, exploring the hobo camp and discovering more while we walked and talked. Somehow along the way, the conversation turned to sex with the introduction of the subject of how babies are born or more importantly conceived. My friends asked me if I knew the facts concerning conception. This was something I had thought about and felt I had it all figured out so I shared my knowledge with them.
You see I’m the oldest in my family and witnessed my mother’s other pregnancies. I guess it was when my mother was pregnant with my brother, the youngest and ten years my junior, that I really started noticing things and figuring out what was going on. I noticed that my mother started taking a strange pill when she was pregnant with my brother. It all made sense. To get pregnant you took pills, sold of course only to married women. When the baby was to be born, a flap of skin opened on the women’s belly, the baby was born, and the skin healed over. I shared this knowledge with my friends, and I thought they would wet their pants with laughter.
They now told me their idea of the matter of conception, and they were more on the mark than I was. Oh no, pills did not get you pregnant; a far different deed did the job. I was in shock. My parents would never do the things described to me, described in great detail I might add. And if somehow, someway even a little of what they told me was true; I surely would never perform what was needed to become a father. My pill theory made so much more sense, my world was turned completely upside-down. My young mind had a great deal to digest after this momentous walk.
This conversation caught my attention, and before I knew it, we were approaching the hobo jungle. Soon we had the football stadium in sight. I was familiar with the area long before the stadium was built for this was also the location of Rupert Stadium. Rupert Stadium was the home of the Newark Bears, a minor league baseball team. After the team folded, they transformed the stadium into a track for stock car races, which I attended with my father when I was quite young.
Behind the football stadium, off in a large area of small hills and high grass was a series of small sheds made from whatever materials were available. In this area there was a large mound of broken glass, which knows why, but my friends thought this added an important ambiance to the area. To get to the hobo camp we had to cross a fairly wide stream, but there was a large plank set across the stream, so crossing was not a problem. Did a flag go up in my young mind? Did a small voice say, “Do you realize, dummy, that this is the only way out?” No small voices that day so of course we continued. Once in the camp we just walked around observing the hobo lifestyle. The place was empty, or so we thought. Suddenly we started yelling at us from the area of the stream crossing. There was a hobo between the only exit and us. He indicated to us that we were trespassing, more truly intruding in his life. I don’t remember his exact words but I’m sure they weren’t friendly. He was right though. We were intruding on his life and when he stepped away we crossed the plank and beat a hasty retreat.
The adventure was over. Time to return home to a tired but somewhat wiser individual with new knowledge gained on my walk to the hobo camp.
A ST. PATRICK’S DAY MEMORY
Here is a memory I rekindle this time every year.
DOWN NECK ST. PATRICK’S DAY PARADE
A NEWARK EVENT
During my youth I lived in a section of Newark, New Jersey referred to as the ‘DownNeck’ Section of Newark. The area was also known as the Ironbound Section due to the many factories in the area. The title ‘DownNeck’ was acquired, which I once read, due to the shape of the Passaic River running past the area. And on the Sunday afternoon, nearest to St. Patrick’s Day, the residents of this area and my street, Christie Street, were treated to what had to have been one of the shortest St. Patrick’s Day parades in existence.
The local Catholic Church sponsored the parade, whose steeple I could see from my parlor window. Across the street from my house was the parking lot for the Balentine Brewery’s trucks. Weekdays were filled with the rumble of Balentine Brewery trucks set on the mission to quench the thirst of a parched city. Sunday was a day of rest for the trucks, making the parade possible.
Magically, sometime before the parade, a green line appeared down the center of our street, harbinger of the gala event. I never witnessed this line’s creation, but every year it materialized. At approximately 1:30 in the afternoon the residents began to gather on the sidewalk. Since the brewery and Catholic Church’s school took up one side of the street, the number of residents was few. Of course, there were always the annoying boys riding their bikes down the center of the blocked off street before the parade began. I was proud to be one of their number.
The parade began around the far corner from my house, on Market Street. With a band, not a school band, but one made up of adult men most of which had almost mastered the instrument they were assigned. Before the band came a few ruddy-faced Irish men, decked out in their top hats, waving to the minuscule crowd. At the front of this procession were the parish priests. The parade was half a block long and took thirty seconds to pass. The procession turned the corner onto Ferry Street, melting into the Down neck neighborhood, ready to continue the tradition next year.
A CHRISTMAS TREE STORY
THIS IS A REPOST OF A STORY FROM LAST CHRISTMAS WHICH I THINK REFLECTS THE SPIRIT OF THE SEASON
A CHIRISTMAS TREE STORY
For many years my family practiced a Christmas tradition involved in obtaining a Christmas tree. This experience holds a special place in our hearts. Those of you buying a live tree this Christmas season, a tree with an enormous price, may shed a tear after reading this story.
Many years ago, a friend at work told me about a unique tree farm where trees cost seven dollars. I can assure you that the prices of trees on Christmas tree lots, at that time, were much more. I obtained directions to the farm, and one Sunday afternoon, piled the family into our car and off we went. After a few wrong turns I found the farm. And for years we went there for our Christmas tree and experienced the true meaning of Christmas.
The tree farm was south of Phenixville Pennsylvania. I learned from the owner that the property was once the site of a small airport having a hanger in which he could store his powder blue tail-dragger single engine high wing plane. After many years the hanger was falling apart, and much to his amazement, he was able to fire up the engine and taxi the plane out. But I doubt that the plane will ever fly again.
Now back to the trees.
The tree farm was made up of groves of jack-pine trees, and he spent the off season trimming the trees for sale for Christmas. He was in his late seventies or early eighties, and you could tell, for now, it was his life’s work.
Now a jack-pine is an evergreen with branches, far apart, along its trunk. They were scraggly looking trees, but you could load ornaments along the full length of the branches. As opposed to the usual ‘full’ Christmas trees where only the tips of the branches could be decorated. Once decorated, these jack-pine trees were beautiful.
For tree selection my two daughters brought along multiple scarves to drape on trees which showed promise. Once the ‘perfect tree’ was chosen I cut it down and carried it to the small trailer he kept on the property. He wrapped the tree with twine then went inside with my wife and daughters to sip hot chocolate. While I was left to tie the tree to the car roof coming close to suffering frostbite.
On the wall of the trailer were mounted news articles. Clippings about the farm and his generosity. He donated trees to churches and organizations. I’m he would give trees to those suffering hardship.
Once home, we decorated our scrawny ‘Charlie Brown tree’ and turned it into a thing of beauty.
After a few years of getting our trees at the farm the owner told me he thought he was charging too much so he lowered the price to five dollars. I began bringing him a loaf of homemade cinnamon raisin bread and he told me I could have a tree for free. I assured him that five dollars was what I would pay.
The man through all the years had a collie running free on the property. But the dog wandered somewhere causing someone to complain. A township official arrived and warned the man about his dog. The next time we went to buy a tree he told me that that’s it and he was selling the property. I hope he got a good price and I’m sure some developer filled the land with McMansions sitting cheek to jowl. Houses with no character, only volume.
I will never return to that property for it would spoil my memories of a wonderful Christmas tradition. That fellow was the epitome of the Christmas spirit with the kindness and generosity of the holiday season.
MY NEED TO FLY, FINAL PART
MY NEED TO FLY, FINAL PART
The thoughts behind the birth of this piece is that my love for aircraft still remains and I read extensively about the subject. My reading includes a great deal of reading about World War II. I had been reading articles about German pilots during that war and could not believe how they could fly for that monster, Hitler. How could they do that? Then I realized they were flying because of their love for flying, not for Hitler. I came to this conclusion upon studying my own experience with flying.
I was learning to fly during the Viet Nam War. And never once considered the merits of that war. A war which many, back then, thought to be unjust. And how history has proved them to be right. But I wanted to learn to fly, and that desire clouded my thoughts about the situation the country was involved in during that period. So, in reality, I came to realize that there is little difference between me and those German pilots. The desire to fly was primary.
Walttriznastories's Blog 