Posts tagged ‘memoir’
SCRAPPING HISTORY
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, all that was left was a hint of what was once the ocean’s promise.
Located at the water’s edge is Port Newark, an area that we had always referred to as “The Dumps”. The area surrounding the dock was the home of tank farms, sewage treatment plants, junkyards and a few 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, get a change of scenery for what it was worth and hour or two away from the house.
We would park along one of the perimeter roads and look at the freighters and container ships, some from countries we could only dream of visiting – distant lands holding even more distant dreams. On one of the roads where we usually parked, if you turned 180 degrees you could see the runways of Newark Airport. This was before the age of jet airliners – props and turboprops ruled the skies. If you watched enough airplane fly overhead, I always looked up at the sound of their engines, you would sometimes see a four-engine plane flying with one propeller lazily turning, a sure sign of engine trouble. Sometimes, when we were really extravagant, we would stop for a pizza before taking our ride.
There was this elderly Italian man – he must have been at least fifty – who 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.
So, on hot summer nights, perhaps armed with a pizza, we would go ‘Down the Dumps’, to see the ships and watch the airplanes land. We could escape our tiny house and dream of a world that we might never see as we gazed at the ships and planes coming from and bound for far-off lands and distant cities.
On weekdays after supper was done, and on weekends, the roads of the port were mostly deserted. With its many roads and parking lots, this area was 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 seatbelts 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.
At the northern end of Newark Bay there were a series of bridges leading to Jersey City and on to New York. It was from the first of these bridges that you could look down on a complex devoted to scrapping ships for their iron and other metals of value. It was during the 70’s that I remember this area looking like a floating World War II naval museum. There would be row upon a row of Liberty Ships awaiting the scrappers’ torch. There would be a destroyer and the occasional heavy cruiser. Ships bathed in history waiting for oblivion. I know they could not all be saved, but it saddened me to see history reduced to a dollar value. It had been some thirty years since the war had ended; time enough for the whole-scale destruction of military equipment that routinely occurs after the conclusion of a war. Yet there before my eyes floated a living history soon to be no more, it would be gone forever.
I witnessed the destruction of one ship, which touched me deeply. This ship was perhaps the most famous American ship of World War II and for years the Japanese sought its destruction. If ever a ship was worth preserving, to serve as a floating monument to the struggles of the United States Navy during World War II, this was the ship.
During my youth, I devoured books about airplanes; I read everything I could about aviation during World War I and World War II. I rarely read books about ships, but my love for aviation led me to read one book that I have longed to read again. To this day, when I get circulars in the mail advertising military books I always look for that title that impressed me in my youth. The title of the book was THE BIG E, the story of the U.S.S. Enterprise, and that was the ship I saw doomed to the scrappers torch.
Having known its history, I could not believe that I was witnessing its destruction. I would think back to the drama, the life and death struggles that occurred on that ship, but soon it would be no more. More than once the Enterprise was reported sunk by the Japanese navy, but having been severely damaged in battle this great ship lived on to fight another day. I know there were many ships during World War II, whose stories echoed with bravery and glory, but I knew the story of the Enterprise and this to me gave it a closeness I could not feel for the other ships torn apart. There were many ships scrapped at this yard, but the only one I saw mentioned by name in the newspaper was Enterprise. I was sorry to witness the loss to history of this great ship, but I was glad I had the opportunity to see such an important piece of our naval and aviation heritage.
October 29, 2025 at 5:53 pm
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.
October 14, 2025 at 6:25 am
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.
October 8, 2025 at 2:46 pm
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.
October 2, 2025 at 1:25 pm
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.
September 29, 2025 at 11:37 am
There are quite a few more chapters of my memoir I want to share. Along with those posts I will occasionally post opinions, websites and the occasional story to provide some variety. I hope you will find this mixture interesting and worthy of your attention.
ESCAPE FROM THE CITY
As a youngster I was a member of scouts for years, going from Cub Scout to Boy Scout and on to Explorer. Along the way I earned an Eagle Award and 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 was a Boy Scout campground near Booton, New Jersey. 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, and cooking was done on a wood-burning stove. One winter, the weather was so cold that the pipes to the old hand pump burst, and we had to melt ice for water. It seemed the harsher the conditions; the more we enjoyed the outing. City boys were facing nature head on.
The camping trips were formal outings organized by troops. 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 mountain. 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’s walk up the mountain to the Boy Scout area. Sitting amongst commuters going to work or out to do some shopping, we were ladened with packs and canteens and any other camping paraphernalia we thought we might need. We rode through the Newark downtown area, then north through some of the blighted areas of the city, and finally 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 on a dirt road branching from the main highway. The area was large and open, set aside where scouts could build fires and cook their meals. Across a stream bordering the area and up into the trees, stood a few cabins for weekend trips. The day hike area was also supplied with a generous amount of wood provided by work crews trimming trees. For a bunch of boys who thought starting a charcoal fire by themselves was an adventure – this was nirvana.
Everyone’s lunch usually consisted of hot dogs and foil-wrapped potatoes and onions. The fire built to prepare these meager meals was immense to say the least. 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 our hot dogs.
Late afternoon we found us journeying down the mountain to catch the bus home. People on the bus would stare at us because we smelled of smoke on our ride home to Newark.
September 23, 2025 at 3:41 pm
DOWNNECK
I began my life on August 1947 in Newark, New Jersey, the Down Neck section, and lived in that city, in the same house, the same cold water flat for nearly twenty years. This section of Newark is still known by this name for a few years ago, on a train to New York with my wife and two daughters, we passed a sign for a pizza place that stated, ‘ A DOWN NECK TRADITION’. My hometown is along the eastern edge of the city, not far from Newark Bay and the bridges leading into Jersey City. It is also referred to, as the Ironbound Section, gaining its name from the railroad tracks that ring the area and known for the light and heavy industry. Small factories existed amongst the two and four family homes and tenements that predominated the area. The mingling of homes and factories was a mixture ready for disaster. Even the Passaic River, flowing through the area was known to catch fire.
One Good Friday afternoon, during my teenage years, while getting ready for church I noticed the sky turning black. At first I thought a storm was approaching but soon realized that somewhere a huge fire was burning. I went outside to see what was going up in flames. Immediately, I was being joined by scores of people seeking the same exciting rush of a fire. Walking up Ferry Street, one of the major streets of the area, I could see that the coke trestle was on fire. As I approached to within a couple of blocks of the source of all the smoke, fifty-five-gallon drums full of God knows what began to explode. The situation went from the usual spectacle of a fire to people running for their lives as the drums shot flames into the air and rained debris – smoking pieces of trestle – down around the scattering people who had moments before been spectators. Needless to say, everyone got out of there fast. Some had to go home and wet down their roofs because some of the debris and embers were falling and starting other houses on fire. This made for a memorable afternoon; ten to fifteen houses along with the trestle were lost.
Our house was lucky, because we stood literally in the shadows of Balentine Brewery. Across the street from our house was a four-story building, which was part office building, part garage and truck wash located on the lower level. This structure, along with many others on the surrounding city blocks, owned by Balentine, created Newark’s life’s blood, Balentine beer and ale. This building stood between the fire and us, so it bore the brunt of the embers and debris raining down on the houses on my block.
The reason I mention this event is to lend a flavor to what life was like back then, and what life was like in Newark. Life happened and the consequences accepted – right or wrong – that’s how it was and when life went less than perfectly, you just moved on. Life did not always treat people well, but they endured, didn’t whine about their state in life. They took responsibility for their actions. They all didn’t prosper, yet people didn’t step on one another to get ahead.
Things were not always politically correct either. In fact, I cannot recall anything about my time as a youth in Newark that was politically correct. For example, I once had a math teacher toward the end of my high school career with a bit of a temper. One day during class, there were a few guys talking in the rear of the classroom. My teacher blew up. He yelled at the class, “Do you know what is wrong with you guys? Not enough of you drop out of school. If you don’t want to learn, you’re wasting everyone’s time by staying in school. You’re just holding people who want to learn back.” I do not think there exists the honesty today to say that before a class of unruly students.
People were once able to observe the world, analyze their surroundings, draw on their common sense and speak their mind. That age is long gone, but it still echoes Down Neck’s past. The talking heads of today say we all have the same potential if only given the right circumstances or drug therapy. Nonsense! Twelve years or more of education are given free to each member of our society. Granted, the conditions under which the education is applied varies along a wide spectrum. And when there is a breakdown in the educational goals meant to be accomplished, as happens all to often, it is always the fault of the system and never the individual. The usual solution is to throw more money at the problem, but until the real problem is addressed, this will never help. The individual student along with their parents carries the burden of responsibility and the older the student the more directly responsible for their education. These seem to be times of a total lack of responsibility of the individual. Whenever someone makes a really boneheaded move, there is always something that happened to him either done by his family or society that was the cause of that action. We live in a time of not guilty because of whatever reason other than my own actions. Of course, in some cases a person’s life gets completely out of control, but the excuses people create these days for their actions is sometimes unbelievable.
The theory that we all have the same potential also totally negates that one thing that has, in my eyes, an influence equal to education in persons potential, the influence of personality. Those who succeed are those who realize they must seize the opportunity, the knowledge and go forward. It takes personal drive, ambition and purpose along with a strong education. This is the combination that makes a successful individual.
And what is success? This can mean so many different quantities, depending on an individual. Does success mean money, fame, family, a life free of conflict or a life full of conflict and challenge? The levels, the goals we attain, depend to a large extent on education. But what we do when we arrive at our goals and the life we mold around those accomplishments depends on personality.
I know I digress, but the purpose of this effort is to point out my view of the mindset of today and how my upbringing, my environment has formed my mindset. So we’ll return now to my past, to Newark’s past, and see this mindset take form.
Balentine brewery ruled the Down Neck section of Newark, with a major factory and office complex that stretched for blocks. Across from our house was the office and garage. Next to that building was a parking lot that stretched to the next parallel street, and taking up the last third of the block was the catholic school, which was part of Saint Aloysius parish. The brewery’s lot was a remarkable sight when a storm was approaching, with workers just standing there waiting, leaning on their snow shovels looking toward the sky. God help the first snowflake that fell and all its partners for they were gone in an instant. Our street was never clogged with snow; the beer trucks had to roll out of the parking lot unhampered. They did not move the snow they removed the snow, taking and dumping it in the Passaic River. At times, long after the parking lot was cleared of snow, the city streets were opened. The beer was delivered but the city government took a while to get going.
As I mentioned earlier, the building across from our house housed the truck wash for cleaning the beer trucks and the tractor trailer cabs, an endless procession of dark blue trucks sporting three golden rings. Our street was a narrow street with parking on both sides, and the locals knew not to park their cars directly across from the truck wash exit. Now the reason lies in the fact that they knew that instead of coffee breaks some of the drivers took beer breaks. Once the truck was washed, they would have to exit the building and make a sharp left, and sometimes the left was not quite sharp enough, as the unsuspecting person who found a good parking spot and could not figure out why it was vacant found out when they returned to their slightly bent automobiles.
Some of the trucks used for the brewery were themselves interesting. They were old trucks with hard rubber tires and driven by a chain drive connected to the rear axle. But somehow these trucks did not look out of place going down my street because for much of my early youth my street was paved with cobblestone. So, these trucks would rattle down my street carrying their loads of used grain from the brewery, stubbornly resisting progress.
Change seemed to come slowly to Newark in its vehicles and its people. We lived just four blocks from Hawkins Street School. Hawkins Street was a typical ‘Down Neck’ street with parking on both sides and just enough room for two-way traffic. It was the same elementary school my mother attended. In fact, her family once lived across the street from the school. While I was attending elementary school, two of her sisters and a brother, all of whom were unmarried, continued to live in the same two-family house rented by their parents.
While attending Hawkins Street School, I had the same first grade teacher my mother had and after that another two or three teachers that taught her. When we had an open house, and my mother would walk with me through the corridors of the school she once attended, she would point out changes in the school that had been made since she attended. The gym in use while I was there was new, however, the faded markings of the basketball court from the old gym were still on the floor of some of the nearby classrooms.
I have not returned to my grammar school since I graduated, with the exception of one of my sister’s graduations, but I have heard reports of the changes that have taken place from my nieces who also attended Hawking Street School. The changes were not for the best, gone is the library – classrooms, the cafeteria – is being used for classrooms. Changes happen to old cities and schools, and they are not always for the better. But people endure. People who want to learn, who want to succeed, seem to be able to do so in spite of the circumstances, in spite of what life has dealt with them. That is why, to this day, and it seems to increase with age, I have little sympathy for those who complain that everything is not going as it should for them to reach their full potential. I honestly feel that there is something inside us all – call it a spark – call it will or destiny – call it a road we start at birth and end at death, but we must be more than just a traveler, we must take control. Too many times, we look around and see what the world seems to offer and settle for the inevitable. Our future is in our hands if we only have the courage to grasp our potential and pursue our goals.
My mother’s fate was tied to Newark and so was that of some of her friends. I became friends with two boys who were the sons of friends my mother had in school. With one of these friends, I completed twelve years of school. I chanced to meet this friend after I had attended an out-of-state college and spent four years in the military, he had not left home. We no longer had anything in common. It was not the fact that I had left, and he had stayed, people just change.
The old neighborhood seemed to resist change. It was small, compact, and is to some extent to this day. You walked to church, you walked to school, and even downtown Newark was a short bus ride or a healthy walk away from my home. Nowadays, my kids have to be driven everywhere. They make no decision about whether or not to attend mass; I the driver have that power. When I was a kid, you looked out the parlor window and saw the church steeple two blocks away and heaven help you – literally – if you missed church. When you could walk, you were in control.
These are some of the memories, the feelings that remain with me of ‘Down Neck’ Newark, New Jersey. Time tends to erase the harsh memories; time and distance tend to smooth the rough edges. What I wanted to show here was that my hometown was not perfect, it was real. I know that there were better neighborhoods than mine, many not too far away, but I look at where I have come from and what I am and see the mark my youth has left. The past I carry within me, for better or worse, has made me the person that I am. And sometimes, in the situations that life presents, I am glad I carry within me a small part of ‘Down Neck’ Newark, and approach life not to grieve for what I don’t have but rejoicing for what I possess.
September 20, 2025 at 5:02 pm
GROWING UP IN NEWARK
My youth and early childhood were spent in Newark, New Jersey. Since then, I have traveled the country, lived in either coast or in the Midwest, yet never left Newark totally behind. There is always a hint of Newark in my attitude, my approach to life.
Life changes, but the experiences that mold us come early instilling values we carry within us. It is with these values that we set out on this great adventure called life. My values were born on the gritty streets of Newark, New Jersey during the fifties and sixties. Life has molded me since then, but in my memories, there is still that young boy wandering down Newark’s city streets wondering what the future will bring.
This is a remembrance of my life as a young boy growing into manhood and of my hometown from 1947, the year of my birth, until I was nearly twenty-one. The story is of a family of six living in a two-bedroom cold water flat and just getting by.
I grew up in the ‘Down Neck” section of Newark, although I have no idea how the area got its name, but it may have something to do with the shape of the Passaic River as it passes by my area of Newark. As in any city, there are associated with sections of the town names whose meaning or significance has been long lost. My mother was born in a section of Newark that was called ‘The Island” although there was no water nearby.
Newark never seemed like such a bad place to me. When you have experienced nothing else, you have no means of comparison. I have returned to the area of Newark I once called home and walked the gritty streets of my old neighborhood with its brick storefronts and multiple family dwellings and the feelings of despair, surrounding me, were blocked out. The feeling of home dispelled, from my eyes, the visage of a poor and troubled city. No matter how destitute Newark becomes, it is the place where my young hopes were many and my dreams unlimited. Shortly after we were married, I took my wife Joni on a walk through the ‘Down Neck’ area of my youth, showing her the house where I once lived, where the tree used to stand under which I read as a child on hot lazy summer afternoons. And all she could see was filth and decay. She could not imagine the little boy sitting on a stump, under a tree lost in the world of Treasure Island or Moby Dick, books that brought promise and adventure to a young ‘Down Neck’ boy, but his ghost was there for me.
I still think of that small boy there sitting beneath a tree. Because, for better or for worse, what and who I am today was, in part, formed by what I learned beneath that tree, in that house and that Newark neighborhood. Where we begin life is beyond our control. What we do with that start is up to us, using the lessons our surroundings provide to improve the life we have been given.
I hope to explore three levels with this writing. First, remember what Newark was physically like and the memories that go hand in hand with growing up in a city that has had a constant black eye, a city whose reputation is known and not envied. I will recall the streets, the people and the events that make memories of what they are. The second is the emotions, hopes and dreams that were fostered by my youth, by the conditions under which I lived. The third and most important reason for this text is what I see in the world that surrounds me today. I am a quiet person, an observer of the world around me. It is these observations of today with the memories of yesterday that will fill these pages. I hope they kindle some memories you may carry, memories neglected but not forgotten.
September 17, 2025 at 2:33 pm
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.
July 25, 2014 at 12:56 am
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.
March 17, 2010 at 6:26 pm
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