Posts filed under ‘memoir’
MEMOIR: PRESERVING YOUR PERSONAL HISTORY
While thinking about and writing my memoir, I have come to the realization it is to share our history with our families, to put down the words of our lives. Our lives, to varying degrees, help form the world around us be that world distant or immediate.
As a youth of perhaps ten, I recall sitting in our backyard one summer day when our neighbor came out. The couple living next door was an elderly Polish couple. The husband rarely left the flat, so seeing him outside was a rarity. While he stood there, much to my surprise, he began talking about World War I, how he recalled airplanes flying overhead. With my love for aircraft, I was immediately enthralled. If I had been thinking, I should have sought every memory he had of the war. I never knew if he served during the conflict, and if he did, on which side he fought. I asked no questions, but 50 years later I still can recall that conversation. That fact is testament to my lost opportunity.
The same is true with my parents. My dad was in the army in 1941, with his service almost completed. He told me that when Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese, he cried, for he knew then he would probably be in for the duration and he was right.
While my wife and I were living in Los Angeles, he came for a visit. Long Beach, CA was the home of the Queen Mary and we took him to tour the vessel. I wanted to make the pilgrimage for I knew he traveled from the U.S. to England on that ship. I’m sure he never expected to walk its decks again. During World War II he served in a supply unit and travel through Africa and then Italy. He did not see action and was strafed once while on a train by a P-51, one of our fighters – oops.
He didn’t talk about the war much and I didn’t ask; my loss.
The greatest regret I have about missing a personal glimpse into the past was talking to my mom about her life when she was young. She lived through the Great Depression and observed conditions on the home front during World War II and I never asked was life was like during those times.
For those of you who read this blog, do not make the mistake I did. Ask your senior citizens about their past. They have a more vivid experience with history than a book can provide.
MEMOIR: LIFE ON A SHOESTRING
Once, while listening to NPR, I heard a report on credit cards. The report stated that the average person has thirteen credit cards and carries about eight thousand dollars in debt. This was some time ago; I hope the numbers have improved. I must admit, that there are times when I have trouble getting my wallet in my back pocket because of all the potential debt lingering in there, but try to keep it under control. On hearing this broadcast, my mind wandered back to my youth, a time when people had the mindset that it was not so much that you lived without but you lived with what they could afford. It was a time less of envy and more of survival.
For most of my youth, credit cards did not exist. They started flourishing in the 60’s, so when I was young, they were not even an option. For paying bills, my parents didn’t have a checking account. When there was a bill that needed to be paid I was sent to the drugstore to buy a money order. It was the only way my family sent money through the mail.
In my neighborhood, credit was not as much a way of life as it is today. People lived on what they could afford. With the exception of houses and cars, you bought what you could pay for then and there. I must admit just writing about life without credit seems so foreign and unreal. Buying just what you can afford at the time of purchase seems like such and odd concept, yet that is the way it once was.
The way a person received their pay was also different in my youth. Friday afternoons, my dad was home from working at the tannery for hours, but he had to return Friday afternoons to get his pay. I would sometimes take a ride with him. You could smell his place of employment long before you could see it – Ocean Leather – gaining this name due to the fact that it was the only tannery at that time that could tan shark skins. We would drive around to the loading dock where drums of chemicals stood, the soil, stained shades of purple and green, was soil of an OSHA nightmare. Into the building we would go, past large rooms where various stages of tanning was taking place, and into the office. Here my dad was handed a brown envelope with bills and change and that was his pay. That’s the way people were paid back then, you actually held your pay in your hand. It was not electronically sent to your bank from which you electronically paid your bills. You were able to hold what you earned, actually see it.
Friday was also allowance day for me. For completing my choirs, I received fifty cents a week, and when I could really control my spending – not wanting another airplane model or book – I turned those quarters into a dollar bill, real folding money, which I would immediately take to the cellar and hide – I don’t know why. To this day I can still recall the feeling that, with a quarter, I had money. With a quarter in my pocket, I’m okay. How things have changed, and how I remain the same. It doesn’t take much to make me happy.
During my younger days I remember my dad saying, “Always keep two dollars in my wallet or else I could be arrested for vagrancy. If the police only knew how often I walk around with an empty wallet these days I could easily wind up behind bars, aha, but there is the MAC card and all my other credit cards with their lines of credit that keep me out of jail but could lead to the poorhouse.
MEMOIR: HIKING SOJOURN
In the scouts for years, I journeyed from Cub Scout to Boy Scout to Explorer earning the Eagle Scout award along the way, learned and explored many things a city boy would not normally encounter. One of the activities I enjoyed the most was the opportunity to go camping.
An hour’s drive northwest of Newark, New Jersey near Boonton was a Boy Scout campground. My troop would camp there several times a year, mostly in the winter. Cabins of various sizes dotted the campground. The only source of heat was a fireplace at one end of the cabin and cooking was done on a wood-burning stove. One winter, we had to melt ice for water. The weather had been so cold that the pipes to the old hand pump had burst. It seemed the harsher the conditions; the more we enjoyed the outing. City boys were facing nature head on.
On my first experience camping at the campground, we boys were going to cook a spaghetti dinner for Saturday night. The scout master wasn’t there, and none of us had ever cooked spaghetti before, but that didn’t stop us. We filled a large pot with water, put in the pasta and set it on the wood-burning stove to cook. A couple hours later we had one large noodle. That’s how I learned you needed boiling water to cook pasta.
The camping trips were formal outings organized by the troop. The less formal day hikes to the local Boy Scout area located in the South Orange Mountain Reservation, would be organized spontaneously, when a group of us were just hanging around with nothing to do. For a group of boys ranging from maybe eleven to thirteen, these trips were a real adventure. The beauty of these outings was that the city bus could take us to the base of the mountains. No adult input was required, once permission to go was obtained.
We usually caught the bus fairly early in the morning because once we arrived at the base of the mountain; it was at least an hour walk to the Boy Scout area. Sitting amongst commuters going to work or out to do some shopping, laden with packs and canteens and any other camping paraphernalia we thought we might need, we proudly displayed our badge of ruggedness. We rode through the Newark downtown area, then north through some of the blighted areas of the city, and then on to the more affluent suburbs. The bus would leave us in the shopping district of South Orange, where we would start to trudge up the hill to what us city boys considered wilderness. We hiked past stately homes with manicured lawns, a far cry from our homes in Newark. Finally, the houses were replaced with trees and the sidewalks with a dirt shoulder – we were almost there.
Our destination lay down a dirt road branching from the main highway. The area was large and open, set aside for day-tripping scouts to build fires and cook their meals. Across a stream bordering the area and up into the trees stood a few cabins for weekend outings. The cooking area was supplied with a generous amount of wood provided by work crews maintaining the reserve. For a bunch of boys who thought starting a charcoal fire was an adventure – this was nirvana.
Lunch was usually hot dogs and foil-wrapped potatoes and onions. The fire built to prepare these meager meals was immense to say the least. On hot summer days, we built fires large enough to heat the whole area during the dead of winter. Once everyone tired of throwing on wood, we had a fire too hot to approach to do any cooking. Either you waited for the flames to die down or had to find a very long stick to cook your hot dogs.
After our meals were consumed and the fire extinguished (I won’t go into how we boys would sometime extinguish fires), we set off on our hike. The mountain reservation was extensive with a variety of trails we could wander. Some were relatively flat, along a streambed, while others were more strenuous. One hike we often took was up a steep hill with the final climb to the summit a rock face. A spectacular view awaited, a view city boys could appreciate. When we later returned to the Boy Scout area, we usually built another fire whether on not we had anything to cook. With everyone rested, we began our trek down the hill to catch the bus home. Somehow the walk down always seemed longer than the walk up. By now we were all grungy and reeked with the smell of smoke, but we always enjoyed each other’s company and the time we had in the woods. After once again walking through affluence, we boarded the bus and made our way past the slums of Newark and finally to our homes. I treasured these outings with friends and took comfort in the fact that the solitude of a forest was only a bus ride away.
REVISITING MY MEMOIR
Around the year 2000, I began writing my first prose in the form of a memoir. Sections of that effort have appeared in this blog and now I thought I’d post a few more. You may have to hunt if you want to read past entries. My blog needs better organization, but I guess I’m limited by the ability of the organizer.
The title of my memoir, if it ever sees the light of day as a published work, will be You Had Hot Water? This title is derived from the fact that the house where I lived until the later part of my undergraduate college education which I pursued far from Newark, New Jersey where the house was located, did not. Come to think of it, our kitchen sink was the only sink I can ever recall seeing which sported just one faucet.
Our family resided in the Ironbound section of Newark, given that name because of all the industry located in the neighborhood. It was also referred to as ‘Down Neck’ by the locals and is still to this day although I don’t know and I’m sure the vast majority of its residents don’t know the origin of that name.
I began writing my memoir after making observations of the world around me as an adult and seeing what people had and the lives they lived and how the conditions and attitudes were so different from those I experienced growing up. People live in conditions far better than I could ever imagine growing up in Newark, yet bemoan a life I would have given anything for while growing up in Newark during the 1950s and 60s. And I bet they all have hot water.
I realize that these are ‘blanket statements’ and there are many living lives in this country which are miserable existences, but there are more safety nets available now than there were back in the 50s and 60s. Back then, it was a time when you appreciated what you had rather than what the other person had. In reality, no one had a great deal, but we lived life as best we could.
With this introduction, I shall begin posting more memoir pieces offering a glimpse of live in Down Neck Newark when I was a boy.
UPDATE, HURRICANE SANDY
Hurricane Sandy has come and gone,
But its scars and memories still linger on.
We survived the storm with only a short power loss on Monday and internet and cable on Tuesday.
The winds howled and we had quite a bit of rain, but our community fared well with only some minor flooding and loss of power.
What I found interesting was our animals’ reaction to this historic event. We have two cats and a lab mix, Millie. As the storm intensified one of our cats, Sammy, who is slightly insane, climbed onto my lap and watched the trees sway with the wind. I could see fear in her eyes. Millie also watched the storm from her favorite chair and her eyes showed concern. My wife thinks I read too much in the animals’ behavior, but I’m a stay at home writer and spend a great deal of time with them. Perhaps I imagine more than is real, but that’s my job.
Our property is surrounded by mature trees, and I realize now that as long as they don’t fall on the house, they protect us from the wind.
What I have a hard time imagining is the destruction caused by this storm. So many coastal communities devastated. As I watch the coverage of the aftermath, I wonder how and where you begin to recover.
My heart goes out to the small seaside community of Union Beach, west of Sandy Hook, New Jersey. My sister, Judy, and her husband had a small house there. It is a blue-collar community. This isn’t a resort community of summer homes but a town where people settled to raise their families or spend their retirement years. My sister died three weeks ago at the age of 62. Yesterday I found out that their house was destroyed. How much sorrow can people endure? Take that sorrow and multiply if by thousands, tens of thousands. I cannot wrap my mind around the extent of the loss experienced by the coastal communities that have suffered through this storm. Even might New York City bowed to the storm’s might and its flood and fires.
I was raised in Newark and spent vacations ‘down the shore’. I remember the anticipation of leaving the confines of the city and going to Seaside Heights for a week or a few days, the thrill of the first taste of salt air. I would stare at the vastness of the ocean and its limitless freedom. Seaside Heights was all but destroyed. The boardwalk and piers with their amusements, gone. I have my memories but it may be generations until such memories can again be made.
NEIL ARMSTRONG
NEIL ARMSTRONG
I am tardy in acknowledging the passing of Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon.
Most of us can recall where we were and what we were doing when truly historical events occurred. Unfortunately, most of the events that come under this category are tragic in nature. For example, those of us that are old enough remember the day Kennedy was assassinated. I’ve written about my own memories of that day (see memoir section). The day of the Challenger disaster carries for me another vivid memory. And of course 9/11 leaves a scar in all our memories.
The first time man walked on the moon, however, is a totally different type of memory. It is one of achievement and national pride. To see the first man set foot on the moon created a wonderful global moment.
My personal remembrance of this event is quite vivid. I was in pilot training stationed at Craig AFB in Selma, Alabama. The night of the first moonwalk I went to the base theater to see 2001, A Space Odyssey, one of my favorite movies. After the movie I went to the officers’ quarters and there on the television was Neil Armstrong taking the first steps on the lunar surface. It was a combination of fiction and reality that I will never forget.
A few months later I washed out of pilot training. The little jet we were fly was just too much for me to handle. I was then allowed to choose my next assignment and chose to be a Titan II crew member. It was while I was on a missile crew that I had a chance to see the Apollo program up close.
As a junior office I visited Cape Kennedy, as it was called at that time, and had an extensive tour of the complex. We went inside the vertical assembly building, the building where the Saturn rockets going to the moon were assembled. I found one of the facts about this enormous structure was that it was so large and tall that, if the temperature wasn’t carefully controlled, it could rain inside the building.
Sometime later I had another opportunity to visit the area. I was now a crew commander and my crew did well on an inspection so we, along with other crews, flown to Cape Kennedy to witness the Apollo 17 launch. The launch was scheduled to be at night. My crew arrived at a beach some miles distant from the launch pad. We kept the radio in the rental car on for updates. There were a series of short delays which gave the sand fleas a chance to have their feast. Finally Apollo 17 was launched into space.
The night was illuminated by the mighty rocket as it set off on its journey. We could easily see the rocket stage and followed its course until it was a speck in the night sky. This was to be the last of the Apollo launches and I felt privileged to have a chance to witness the event.
Next stop for the crew, Disney World.
MEMOIR
It’s been some time since I wrote this piece.
I came across a contest for ‘late bloomers’ asking for an article to be published in an anthology.
As most of you writers well know, you submit and never hear from the publisher, even after repeated queries about the status of your piece.
I now share this unpublished work with you, my consistent readers.
NEVER TOO LATE
By
Walt Trizna
I have been a late-bloomer all my life. The following article will prove that to be true. If you also fall into this category, or have yet to bloom, read my story and know there is always hope as long as you persevere.
Spending thirty-four years as a scientist, I never felt totally comfortable. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy the work; I did. I found it difficult to share the enthusiasm of those working around me. However, I do feel a great sense of accomplishment for what those years produced. Now that segment of my early life is over.
I was a late-bloomer in marriage. At the age of thirty-six, when I married, most of my contemporaries were well into their first or perhaps second marriage. Now twenty-eight years later I find the wait was worth it for I found the perfect woman to share my life.
The primary focus of this article, however, is my current career as a writer. Looking back, I had the stirrings early in my life to follow that dream. But my environment and need for security won out and the yearning diminished but never died.
My first attempt at writing was in high school. A poem of mine was published in an anthology of high school writers and I knew I was on the road to becoming the next Robert Frost, whose poetry I adored. I continued writing poetry for approximately twenty-five years while in college, in the military and pursing my career in science. The result of my efforts was more than twenty-five poems published in anthologies and newspapers. During this phase of my writing addiction I made one dollar, a token of gratitude from a woman who enjoyed one of my poems. I am not known as a big spender, but even I would have a struggle living on four cents a year.
Toward the end of my twenty-five year poetry endeavor, I married and had two daughters. Actually, I continue writing poetry to this day. Each of my daughters gets a poem on her birthday recapping that year in their life. That tradition began when they were two and will continue until my writing career comes to a close.
Now as I approach my sixty-fourth year, I am a fulltime writer. Eleven years ago I began to write short stories of horror and science fiction. In this career I think of myself more as a bud than a bloom. I shall only bloom with the nourishment of the public.
I have published over twenty horror and science fiction short stories. When I write science fiction I try to use as much science fact as I can in order to make the story chilling with an air of possibility. I have also written three novels, one was published by Mélange Books when I was in my early sixties, one is now seeking a home and one still needs to grow some.
I have made little money, but at this stage of my career, that is of little importance. What warms my heart is when people read my words and find momentary escape from this confusion we call life.
Do I enjoy writing? That is a question I constantly ponder. I have a vivid imagination, ideas race through my mind. When it comes to sitting down before a blank tablet with pencil in hand, the enjoyment I experienced with imagery is tinged with a hint of anxiety in the effort of putting those images into words. Only when the piece is finished can I relax and savor a sense of accomplishment.
Now comes the effort to try and get the story published. Once again euphoria slams against the brick wall of reality. There are times when recognition comes quickly, but more often it takes years for a publisher to find value in my words. I have stories that have yet to see the light of publication, but I keep trying.
Have I reached to stage to refer to myself as a late-bloomer? I feel more like a ripening bud that will hopefully bloom before it shrinks and dies.
REPRISE OF ST. PATRICK’S DAY
I thought I’d revisit this memoir entry.
MEMOIR
As a kid growing up in Newark, the only significant occurrence associated with that holiday was the local parade.
Here is my remembrance.
DOWNNECK ST. PATRICK’S DAY PARADE
The section of Newark, New Jersey I called home was referred to as the ‘Downneck Section’, why, no one could ever explain. And on the Sunday afternoon, on or before St. Patrick’s Day, the residents of my street were treated to what had to have been the shortest St. Patrick’s Day parade in the country.
Our local Catholic Church sponsored the parade. I could see the church’s steeple from my parlor window. It was that close. The parade had to be held on Sunday for between my house and the church stood Balentine Brewery. Weekdays were filled with the rumble of trucks quenching 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, the first harbinger of a gala event. I never witnessed this lines creation, but every year it materialized. Around one-thirty the residents began to gather on the sidewalk. We all walked out our front doors with anxious anticipation. The brewery and Catholic school took up one side of the street, multiple family houses stood opposite. 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 add to their number.
I assumed the parade began at the church. I never did discover where it finished.
There was always a band, not a school band, but one made up of adult men most of whom had almost mastered the instruments 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 took thirty seconds to pass. The procession turned the corner on to Ferry Street and marched on, melting into the Downneck neighborhood.
VACATIONS
With the snow melted, and winter about to come to an end, thoughts turn to spring, summer and, of course, summer vacations. These are some of the memories of the summer vacations of my youth.
MEMOIR
VACATIONS
My wife, kids and I looked forward to our summer vacations. Every year, for the last several years, we have rented a house at Sunset Beach, North Carolina. It’s a short walk to a quiet expanse of beach, and during high tide, you can catch fish, crab and go boating in the estuary behind the house. We swim, take bike rides and we all read books, a lot of books. The house has a television, a recent ‘improvement’, but it is never tuned on during our stay. With the hectic lives all four of us lead throughout the year, this time to relax is vital. Now the girls are grown and have lives of their own, but we still go to Sunset Beach and welcome them to join us.
As a child, there were years when my family took no vacations, mainly due to the lack of money.
When I was a kid, summer vacation meant no school and months of totally unstructured time. There was the public pool for the really hot days; we would walk the mile or so to the pool in the late morning and stay until late afternoon, hanging out with friends from school. On cooler summer days, we would play games in the back yard. We also rode our bikes around the block on the sidewalk endless times; to ride on Newark’s narrow busy streets was a death sentence. And there were always books. Lazy summer mornings and afternoons sitting under the biggest tree in the yard lost in a book. Being able to read as long as I wanted, now that’s a vacation.
The spare dollars for vacations were few and far between; we did manage, however, to get a few days away from Newark. Most summers we just took an occasional day trip down the shore or to our favorite lake, at Cheesequake State Park.
Cheesequake was a small lake with a large sandy beach perfect for family outings. The lake was just a few miles from the ocean and I don’t know how the lake was fed, but it was a saltwater lake or at least a little brackish. It was a great kid’s lake, with a swimming area surrounded by floats, and not very deep. They did have a strange custom when someone reported a missing child on the beach. They had all the children get out of the lake and all the adults join hands, forming a line, and walk across the lake in the designated swimming area. If no one stepped on a body they assumed the child was not on the bottom of the lake and was probably at the playground or engaged in some other activity and still numbered among the living.
On those Sunday mornings when we were going to Cheesequake, we started early. The first mission was to get ice. Today we go to the local mega grocery store and buy a few bags of ice cubes. When I was a kid, things were quite different. Before we went on a picnic, the first stop was at the local icehouse. Once at the icehouse, we backed up to the loading dock for a block of ice to be brought out. Out would come a man grasping a block of ice with tongs. It was now time to get out the ice pick, back then everyone that went on a picnic owned an ice pick. It was dad’s job to carve up the ice fit the shards into our cooler.
Once that chore was accomplished, off we went, down route 22 to the New Jersey Parkway. Everyone knew that during the summer you did not go southbound on the New Jersey Parkway on a Friday night or Saturday morning. At that time, during the summer, the parkway was a huge very slow-moving parking lot. But on Sunday morning the road was empty. Of course coming home from the lake Sunday night might be a whole different story.
When we went to the lake we went for the day, the whole day, which meant all three meals. The gates opened at 8:00AM and we usually arrived there about twenty minutes before the park opened and joined the line of those with the like mindset waiting to get into the park. While we waited at the gate, breakfast was served, a hearty breakfast of donuts. Sometimes we would wait until the park opened and cook breakfast on the charcoal grill.
Once the gate opened, we raced to the parking lot at the head of the trail leading to the area where we liked to spend the day. The park was a beautiful place, with picnic tables under tall trees growing in the sandy South Jersey soil to keeping away the heat of summer. There were large fields around which the picnic tables were arranged for games and just running around. We would bring gloves and play catch and racquets for badminton.
After parking, we all began lugging our picnic gear to our table. The trip was usually an extended family effort with aunts, uncles and cousins sometimes coming along. This meant multiple cars and a vast amount of equipment that had to be carried to the table; after all, we were going to be there for the day. We were never unable to get a table, but the closer to the lake and the open fields, the better.
Usually a few of the kids were sent ahead to stake a claim on a table that had the perfect location. Then the adults came, and if they agreed on the spot, the initial wave of picnic equipment was deposited and everyone went back for another load. After some running around and exploring it would be approaching noon and time to start the charcoal fire. All the other tables had more or less the same schedule so soon the area was filled with smoke and the smells of cooking.
Once lunch was cooked, consumed and cleaned up, the kids ran around, dad read the papers and the women would talk. After a spell of playing and digesting, time enough to ensure that no one would sink to the bottom of the lake with cramps, it was time for a swim in the lake. This activity took up most of the afternoon and the hotter the afternoon, the more time spent swimming.
With swimming done and still time before dinner, we would hike around the lake or take a walk to harvest cattails. Then time for dinner, another fire was started, more food consumed, the area cleaned, and before long we were ready to go home. The process started in reverse but the loads were somewhat lighter and the stomachs were full. Once we made it to the parkway we were usually greeted by the endless lines of northbound traffic, the ride home lasting much longer than the ride to the lake.
We spent quite a few Sundays at Cheesequake State Park, weather permitting, and even at times when the weather didn’t permit. One Sunday morning, with the weather stormy with breaks in the rain, we decided to go for it. Once we set up our site it started to rain, but we were prepared and tied up a plastic drop cloth to a few of the surrounding trees for a makeshift canopy. Auntie Zushia came with us on this outing. She was my mother’s oldest sibling, had never married, and usually joined us on our Sunday morning adventures. Auntie Zushia found a spot right under the middle of the canopy and I sat off to one side and watched the water begin collect in the middle of our makeshift shelter. During one especially huge downpour enough water had collected to cause a huge tear right over her head. This was a story my family told over and over whenever we would go to the park,” Remember when ……….”
On another Sunday morning on a trip to Cheesequake, the result was something less than a picnic. We set out in our powder blue Ford station wagon. It had been sometime since we lost use of the old Chevy, my father having rolled it in a cemetery, but that is another story. We had the car packed to the brim with picnic essentials and Auntie Zushia in the back seat. With our ice pickup made, we began driving to the highway that would take us to Cheesequake and a day of fun when Auntie Zushia turned around and exclaimed, “They’re spraying for mosquitoes.” Now, they did spray for mosquitoes during the summer and when they did the trucks would put out great clouds of insect repellent, but they never sprayed on Sunday mornings. It did not take long to realize that Auntie Zushia was not seeing mosquito spray but huge clouds of blue smoke issuing from our tailpipe.
We drove immediately to the nearest gas station, one my dad frequented, not far from our house. Everyone in the car was hoping that it would be a quick fix and we’d be on our way. The attendant at the service station said that our modulator was gone and couldn’t be fixed that day. We were all in shock. Then to add insult to injury he added that we should leave the car doors open in case we should catch fire while trying to get home. The burgers cooked in the backyard just didn’t taste the same that day.
We did go on longer trips, not often, but on occasion we would pack up and go down the shore. Our usual shore destination was Seaside Heights, a small shore town towards the middle of the state. One summer, however, we got adventurous and went to Atlantic City. This was long before a reservation was required for every extended family outing. We just headed south and, when we were close to Atlantic City, began stopping at motels. My mother would go in and check out prices and conditions and soon our lodging for a few days was secured. We also discovered a nearby diner that served a great breakfast, eggs and French fries. Now is that a vacation breakfast or what. The highlight of that trip was a day spent on the Steel Pier. This was, in its time, a major tourist attraction. The exhibition hall contained displays that made a lasting impression on me. The time was the late fifties, early sixties, and the scourge of polio had just been conquered. I had an uncle who was crippled by polio; it was not an uncommon illness. There, in the hall, was an iron lung. I had seen pictures of them but had never seen one in real life. It resembled a cylindrical coffin and it breathed for those severely afflicted with the disease. At the time, this was a piece of recent history.
Another exhibit were two or three rusted hulks of old cars. Near the cars was a sign stating that these cars had been near a nuclear test blast. At this early age I knew nothing of radiation, half-lives and such, so I thought nothing of seeing these cars sitting there for public inspection. I often wonder what would have happened if someone had taken a Geiger counter to this attraction. Looking back, an iron lung and potentially radioactive cars were strange exhibits, but they held my attention.
But the attraction that made the Steel Pier famous was the diving horse. At the end of the pier was the diving tank. It looked like an above ground swimming pool and stood about eight feet tall and had a diameter of twenty or thirty feet. Into this pool, from a platform above, the horse jumped, ridden by a bathing suit-clad girl. This was the must see attraction for anyone who visited the Atlantic City Steel Pier.
* * *
I have mentioned before the characteristics of my father’s driving. He was not known as a lead foot so a trip to Atlantic City from Newark was quite an undertaking. But there once was a trip that we took that dwarfs our drive to Atlantic City. We took a trip, an epic journey, an odyssey to Tampa, Florida. We went there to visit my Uncle John, my father’s great uncle, my grandfather’s brother. Uncle John was managing a sixty-four acre orange grove down near Tampa and asked us to visit. So we all piled into the Chevy and off we went. I don’t think I had ever been beyond the boarders of New Jersey up till then. This was also well before the age of the interstate, so we got to see the states we traveled through up close and personal.
I kid my girls that I have no accent at all, but in reality I have a ‘slight’ hint of a New Jersey accent. On this trip I encountered accents different from my own. We stopped at one place in Alabama for lunch and a man came in and started talking to one of the employees and I didn’t understand one word he said. We were definitely not in New Jersey anymore.
I have also mentioned that I love catching things and putting them into jars so for me, Florida was nirvana. Our car’s radiator collected insects bigger than any I had seen before. There were also lizards running around at my uncle’s place. One day we went for a swim in a small nearby lake. I was on the shore and my mom was in the water and I said, “Mom there’s a snake in the water behind you!” She thought I was kidding until she turned around. She flew out of the water and I had to be restrained from flying into the water to capture the reptile.
This long journey was a rarity and created in me a lasting impression. Our usual shore vacation destination was north of Atlantic City, Seaside Heights. It wasn’t every summer or every other summer that we had a chance to go there, but a week spent at Seaside Heights on Sumner Avenue was greatly anticipated.
A few years ago I took my family to Seaside Heights for a weekend just before Easter. You know, Thomas Wolff said it best. We drove down Sumner Avenue and all the small shore bungalows had been torn down. The area was a sea of parking lots and bars. Once again I had the chance to tell my wife, Joni, how it once was, how great a week at Seaside Heights was as she stood there not hearing the waves but the music roaring from the bars. The boardwalk, though, hadn’t changed much, we still had fun in the arcade and our girls enjoyed the merry-go-round.
When I was young, a week at Seaside Heights, a week at the shore was sheer enjoyment. Spending the day on the beach and the night on the boardwalk, going on the rides and playing miniature golf was the way to spend a vacation. There were times that, because of money and time constrictions, we took a daytrip to Seaside Heights. Those days we spent maximum time on the beach soaking up the sun and paying for it on the ride home with a case of ‘the disease’. By the end of the day, we were bright red and, sitting in the car going home, shaking like a leaf. Of course these were the days before fancy sun blocks, long before the little girl with her butt hanging out adorned Coppertone© billboards. How we are not all dead from melanoma is a small miracle. For protection from the sun we used a few drops of iodine in baby oil. We would baste each other on the beach, leaving an oil slick when we went in the water. The cure my mother used for ‘the disease’ was vinegar – don’t ask me why. By the end of the day the closest thing we resembled was a bright red salad.
But a week at Seaside Heights was great with a more realistic and slower approach to the perfect tan. Getting to the beach early while there was still room for a blanket near the water was the first mission of the day. Once that was accomplished we could relax, spending the morning swimming in the usually frigid water, taking walks under the boardwalk looking for the small shell casings beneath the shooting gallery. Lunchtime it was back to the house and after an hour or two returning to the beach until dinner. Back in the late fifties and early sixties, Navy blimps were still patrolling the waters. You would be sitting on the beach and hear this distant drone, look up, and there would be this large gray blimp majestically sailing overhead, sometimes appearing mysteriously from the low clouds of a summer’s morning.
Even rainy days were fun. I would save my pennies all year and then hit the arcade. They had a baseball game on the order of a pinball machine I played for five cents. As my score increased I accumulated free games so I could easily spend a long time playing for maybe a quarter. Then there were the claw machines full of charms and toys small enough so that the claw could actually lift something almost every time. I would go home from our vacation with a box-full of miniature false teeth and other valuable plastic charms.
There were also games of chance on the boardwalk. For a nickel or, if I wanted to cover a portion of the board, a quarter I could take a chance to win various prizes depending on the stand. My family always seemed to gravitate to the stands offering candy bars or bath towels. We would go home with boxes and armloads of each.
A week spent at the shore was an extended family affair, with cousins, aunts and uncles staying for the entire week or a few days. It was a chance to catch up on each other’s lives and share the summer experience.
Summer vacations are great, a great escape, but in reality one cannot escape his life and the burdens he carries along. But eventually, we must all return to the daily routine of life. Summer vacations, however, make that return a little more bearable.
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