SPRING CLEANING?

   

Over the years I had many ways to describe my Mom and Grandmother - one word fit both of them - they were very "clean".  And each year this time we took a weekend off of playing baseball with the South Millville Boys to help them.  For many this would have been a dreaded chore, but for me it was really fun because Mom and Nanny made fun.

    I think about them and a memory flow in my mind...and then I'm 7 and back in Millville and it spring once again.

    I must make this perfectly clear or as Dickens says - nothing good (or funny) will come from this tale.  Both Nanny and Mom were obsessed with cleaning (housework my grandmother labeled it) and she work at everyday - and Mom on her weekends off from the glass factory. I think I'm that way too!  I still clean my small apartment on Saturdays even though I am "off" every day.  One could have brain surgery on our bathroom floor.  And honestly unlike my bathroom, I never saw an overflowing waste basket!  Okay so where's the fun part I know you are thinking so here's one of them.

    Each spring my grandmother to every rug big and small and hung them over our trusty universal clothes line that I'm sure was made of steel fibers inside the white plastic strand.  Rug beating was always the first. 

    Nanny had this iron thing which was about three feet from it's well worn wooden handle.  She told me it was handed down from her grandmother to her mother (Nellie) to her.  Like many things we grew up with it's gone with the wind.  But I bet I could get a couple hundred for it on E   eBay today.  (My grandmother tossed out a full service of Carnival Glass because she said it was "old fashion"

    But I digress - after wacked the living room rug for about 10 minutes as I waited patiently she finally handed me the rug weapon and it was my turn.  Nanny was exhausted but I was ready to go.  My job was to beat the day lights out of the smaller "throw-rugs" were by the way never dusty because Nanny shook them out the back door once a week!  But I took out my kid frustrations on them anyway until I ready to drop.  Nanny would always say, "Calvin, you get better at this each year!"  I never thought I did but I guess I was getting better at everything. 

    My next helper task was window washing.  My Mother attack this like a hunter spotting a bear.  You may wonder what could be fun about this endeavor?  Well, Mom made it a game.  Our house was a low to the ground cottage and I could reach every window except two over the counter in our kitchen.  Mom was the inside person and I was the outside washer.  Manned with my bunch of newspaper, (try it they are as good if not better for getting the streaks off) a real sponge from the deep of the gulf and a spray bottle of Windex - the miracle cleaner and the only cleaner outside of Lifebuoy soap and water.  The soap that actually playing grime and a layer of my skin after each day of play.

    The game consisted of the following - Mom would put her sponge somewhere on the window.  I would place mine over it on the glass then I had to follow her every move and she had many uncanny variations.  I got a point if I followed her precisely however, I never did learn how to turn in my points for something?  We did 15 windows in record time this year as my mother made a note of our timing.

    My memories fades because I forced to remember that I haven't clean a window in years.  But rain does a fairly good job and I can see out as much as want to.

Moral: Think of work as play and it will make your day (shorter).

 

SPRING FEVER

   

     When sap starts running and the trees begin to bud, Spring is in the air - and a young man's fancy turns to what a young girl has been thinking about all winter!  Then I remember a special spring of long ago...

      And it's Saturday night in the basement at the Holly City YMCA.  I see myself in my new plaid sport coat with zoot suit shoulder pads.  All of my guys are standing in a row across from the stairs. The girls in "poodle skirts" sit up right at attention on wooden benches a mile across the room, quietly chatting and waiting…and waiting ... some dance with each other.  I say to my pal Jim, “Next slow one I'm gonna definitely dance with V.” He says, “get out, she's going say no thank you.”  Yikes, I start to sweat and hope my dad's Old Spice is going to work.   The next record plays – Poison Ivy – too fast.  Then, Look In My Eyes – I don’t like this one - it’s meant for steadies. Angel Baby – Not a favorite either.  As the songs play down my chance to dance dwindles.   i hear “My”  song finally play and I start to walk over just as  the DJ says,  "Ladies Choice" - oh no, I immediately turn away hoping someone I don't know won't come over.   As usual no one does. 

  An hour later, Jim barks, “I thought you were going to go dance sometime tonight"?   I replied, "The next one for sure”.   (Little did we boys realize then that the gals across the no man's land were also wishing someone would just come over and ask them to dance and that they had just as much angst about this trial as we did.  Understanding this age old rite of passage takes time and tears. But I didn’t learn that until long after and much too late).   I took a deep breath of courage.  Now or never...Here I go!  Each Saturday night I feel something akin to a Kamikaze pilot on his first and last flight.  I start walking and feel at least a hundred eyes are watching.  My feet are like lead shovels.   I make brief but fleeting eye contact.  She sort of smiles...But Oh NO...the DJ announces "This is the last dance of the evening, pick someone special and see ya next week."   I’m star crossed as Shakespeare says... and I keep walking right past her and up the stairs to the lobby; out the front door and make a promise to darkness - next week I am going to ask her.  Next week I am going to dance with HER… next week for sure.

Another Saturday night comes to an end and I walk home instead of  calling my dad for a ride.

BE MINE

What is it with college kids and beer?  The need to feel like free grown ups.  Or just plain fun on a Friday night?  On many campuses the joy-juice runs freely but at  “teachers college” there is a need for the future teachers to be examples of clean minds and clean living.  So we had our parties a few miles away!

On a fateful Valentine’s weekend I learned a valuable lesson about the evils of beer.  A few miles from our institution of high ideals was an entrepreneurial farmer who made a good living for years  renting his barn during the winter season.  Admission was $10 bucks and the several kegs of watery beer was “free” - thus avoiding any complications with the local constabulary.  I had never been to this shindig because I usually went across the river to my best friend's Bub dorm party at the U of P.  But this weekend Bub had invited a new coed prospect to a Valentine’s dinner.  And so I gave it a try - and it became an  evening I would not live down with my dorm friends for months to come.

I am and never was a big “drinker” unlike many of my buddies who were “Olympic Boozers”.  That night it was unseasonably warm in the barn.  And the beer was so darn cold.  I am also not a great dancer but I am told a few hours into our bacchanal I picked out a freshman girl who was delighted to dance with an upperclassman.  I celebrated the holiday for love and danced the night away until the farmer flashed the lights and the party was over.  I don’t remember being driven back to campus by my roommate who only drank rootbeer.  

Sunday morning I awoke with my first hangover.  My roomie suggested that I get some breakfast right away.  I dragged myself over to the cafeteria and waiting at the door was a young lady that looked vaguely familiar.  She ran up to me and gave me a big hug.  I weakly said, “Do I know you?”  “Know me,” she blurted. “You gave me your college ring last night.  We’re going steady!”  I checked my hand and my new ring was gone.  My roommate and several others from my floor were listening to this encounter with smiles on their faces a mile wide.  I apologized  to the girl whose name I hadn’t gotten yet.  And she laughed. Took off my ring from the chain around her neck and tossed it at me.  My buddies hooted as they shook hands with the young lady who said, “How’s I do?”  “Great" was the reply in unison.  She sauntered off and we never crossed paths again.  I glared at my “pals” and then tried to eat - but the smell of searing bacon made me quite nauseous and I retired to my dorm room.  If I had a tail it would have been between my legs.

That night I learned some important lessons that would come in handy for most of my later life.  Know your capacity.  Always count your drinks.  And avoid hot barns on a Saturday night.

WINTER WHITE

Freezing weather in the north today amuses me as I sit on my porch in shorts and flip-flops on another beautiful sunny "Winter" day in Florida.  I don’t miss the cold but I do remember how much fun it was when I was very young. (When you are young many things were fun that aren’t fun at my age)  I’m home with my grandmother, waiting not so patiently for next year when I would finally go to kindergarten.  (My birthday is in mid-November and so I missed the deadline to go to school at 5 and had to wait until I was almost six)  

Why did I like the freezing weather?  Because when the big thermometer outside our kitchen window fell below the freezing mark I had lots of fun things to do.  For instance, my grandmother would bring in our milk delivery from our back door step. I would love to see (and taste) the frozen cream that pushed the paper cap up out of the bottle and I would have a breakfast popsicle or as she called it my “moo-sicle”!  And there was much more - this was just the start of my winter day.

Nanny’s weekly chores rarely changed.  Monday was wash day and I joined her in our chilly shed and watched her fill the big “wringer washing machine” with buckets of hot water and also a big wash tub with cool water.  And almost every time, she would tell me how when she was a girl  “hot water didn’t come out of a faucet like it does today".  She would start the big Sears washer and the rhythmic pulsing sound it made scrubbing began. It was hypnotic.  And when she figured it was enough washing she transferred the clothes to the rinse tub and then fed each piece through the wringer (which scared me...she had warned many times to never get my hand “caught in a darn ringer!”   I never did.  But I did like to dip my hands in the rinse water and always pull them out quickly. Nanny would scold, “Now Calvin, you know it’s cold...why do you always do that?  We both always laughed.  However, the end of this long  process was the most fun.  Nanny would fill a big laundry basket and  put on a bandana. We  “bundled up” for our trek to the Arctic - our backyard.  As she hung the sheets on the line, they would many times instantly freeze.  “Hard as a board already...must really be cold...maybe you should go inside Calvin?”  But I never did.  I had too much fun walking between the stiff white sheets billowing sails.  I would punch them as they banged against me and they made a cracking sound.  What a simple joy it was to run up and down the rows of flying sheets  as Nanny, with a clothes pin in her mouth, would wrestle them onto the clothes lines. She would then push them high off the ground with a long clothes prop my grandpa made for her.  I would alway hide behind a white wall and she would pretend not to know where I had gone and shout my name... her words would get blown away in a March wind.  I imagined we were in a gale at sea, our sails full as we flew over the waves.

And then we would go inside to warm up.  Nanny would rub my hands and pull my feet out of my grandfather’s giant golasches.  She would tell me to go stand by the oil burning heater which warmed our whole house from our living room.  While the next load was churning in the machine she would make me some hot Ovaltine and it would remind me to save the label and ask mom to send it in (with 11 more!) for a Space Cadet decoder ring like one of my TV heroes - Buzz Corey used each week.  This routine would go on most of the day but my “help” would not.  I turned to a coloring book because Nanny said I had enough “air”.  This didn’t last long and I wished that my friends weren't having fun in school.  Nanny would continue her wash.  She never failed to remind me “to not get into anything... she would be right back”, as she ventured out again and again into our Stratton Avenue tundra.

My memory fades now like melting snow as I look out at a palm tree in front of my condo softly moving with the breeze.  I think how lucky I am to be living in Florida and away from the cold winds of January and I say quietly to my grandmother long gone, “Thanks Nanny for my frosty adventures...thanks for working so hard week after week and never complaining...my dear you would be amazed at what kids take for granted today.  

And for a moment I feel a bit sorry that my grandchildren will never get the chance to run between sheets on a white winter’s day.  

THE FIRST SNOW

"...I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.

A Child's Christmas in Wales - Dylan Thomas

 

It’s 80 today in my new state, Florida as I track the bitter cold and snow falling on my old town of Millville friends and then…I think of when I was ten or was it eleven?

     It always seemed to me that the sky became very “white” when a big snow was coming… a white stillness.  My grandmother used to say, “It was cold enough to snow.” And today was one of those days I thought walking home from school.  And just as the thought of snow occurred, I thought I saw a flake.  This excited me as it did all my friends…immediately thinking no school tomorrow…sleeping late…building a fort…snowballing everything and anything that passed by our hiding places – wishful thinking of course.  Fact was cars or kids rarely came down my street.  I literally lived at the end of the road.

I went out to play after changing my school-clothes.  But the temperature was dropping fast.  I decided not to roam and find a playmate. I shot some baskets at the net hanging on our garage and then the wind came and rattled the bony fingers of the bare trees in our backyard.  I could hear the pines make brushing sounds like brooms.  I stared at the white darkening sky.  Was that a flake? It was hard to tell. Then another floated down.  I tried to catch it with my tongue. Then another.  Then too many to count or catch – it was snowing!  I raced inside with this important news – “It’s snowing!”  My grandmother was not as excited.  “Hum,” was all she said. (I imagined that at her age if you've seen one snow you have seen them all – plus she didn’t get a day off, no matter what the weather.

After dinner I went on snow-sentinel duty until bedtime looking out the window every two minutes as my folks watched “their shows” on our new, and first Admiral 10 inch TV.  If I looked below the street lamp at the corner, I could see the snow slanting across it’s yellow beam – it was snowing sideways.  That was a very good sign.  This wasn’t going to be just snow – it was going to be a big long snow.  

I fell asleep hoping for a blizzard and I got my wish.  To most adult's dismay the forecast for “considerable accumulations” was not appreciated.   But for me, the next morning it was great news.  I got out of bed without being called twice and the TV was showing cars and buses stuck in drifts – this was going to be a great snow day.  My grandmother tuned to the local radio station and it was warning that it was bad and going to get worse as the day progressed and then it was official - in a long list I heard the Beacon School was closed for the day! 

There was no time to lose.  After a quick bowl of oatmeal, I went outside but now to my dismay I could only stay a few minutes as the wind turned the snow into needles that stung my checks; the only uncovered part of me,  I had dressed for an Arctic exploration with my grandfather’s high rubber work boots and a coat over a two sweaters.  And as always my grandmother warned me not to get “frostbite” -  which I saw in a movie once and it was awful so   I wore a pair of stiff fur lined gloves which made snowball making difficult.  After all that preparation, I was back inside in five minutes, warming up at the kitchen table drinking Lipton tea.  Outside the window I checked the old thermometer.  The red stuff went down and down each time I looked as the morning turned into afternoon.  My much anticipated “day off” of fun had quickly turned into a boring day of inside play.  And playing a board game like Ropes & Ladders or checkers by yourself is the most boring of all activities; but you do always win!

Pop came home early from work.  “They let us go, Ethel!” he announced.  My grandmother replied, “Hum, that's nice,” and continued to stir a big pot of stew, one of my winter favorites. This was her usual snow day meal – a concoction of left-overs from Sunday's dinner that simmered for hours. Nanny had a knack for turning odds and ends into a delicacy.

The next day, to my surprise,  it continued to snow non-stop.  Around 4:PM in the afternoon of more boring day #2 there were three-foot drifts against our front door. Then a big surprise, with a “thunk” sound our electricity went out and everything stopped – even the Krazy Kat clock”s swishing pendulum tale.  And thus, started one of the greatest adventures in my young life – I was going to live through and  survive a real life semi-disaster.  The electricity was off for the next 3 days.  Days that I learned what it was like for my grandmother and Pop when they were my age!  NO TV!  Reading an old newspaper by the soft light of candles.  The harsh smell of a portable kerosene heater in the middle of our living room.  Sleeping under piles of blankets.  Jack Frost’s art frozen on our windows. 

I learned so much in those few dark days as we all talked from dinner to bedtime.  Tales of the biggest snow my folks remembered.  How they had to walk between 10-foot drifts.  “It snowed a lot more then,” my grandmother said. (Which she would say every time it snowed – she was a predictor of global warming long before it became trendy) For the first time in my life everyone was home during the daytime.  As the wind whipped around our house we played checkers, dominoes and rummy (and I still believe Pop let me win most of the time).  And then the wind stopped.  The frozen night was silent again, and a beautiful moon turned everything bright silver.  The lights came back on and all of our machines started to hum again.

And I knew I would have to go to school tomorrow!

THE DAY AFTER

Today, the day after Christmas…a day of rest and coming down from the frenetic pace of shopping and preparing for a day that always flies by so fast.  I think about this day and the many I had in my life ...And then it’s 1957 and the day after the big day for me again.

This day was not a day of rest for a kid.  It was the day of trying on stuff (which was torturous) and trying out stuff.  I explored my new toys (which was fun – the joy of getting can’t be beat).  And this year I got my dream bike that I wanted forever.

The Schiwinn Corvette a bike with smaller tires – it was “in-between” the very popular English racers with the skinny tires and the old, lumbering, one speed bikes with the big tires – which was my old Black Beauty, the next to best bike ever.  But like its namesake – this new bike was much faster, sleeker and  more fun to ride, like a Chevy Corvette!  It had a three-speed shifter on the handle bars, a first for me.

After trying on an endless array of new clothes under the watchful eye of Mom – who reviewed each garment and then uttered, “They are a little big, but you’ll grow into them” about each – it was time.  On a very windy and grey day I bundled up and announced, “I’m going to take my new bike for its first ride.”  It was in our laundry room because it took up far too much space by our Christmas tree.  “Bundle up,” mom ordered.  It was about 22 degrees out this post-Christmas morning so I wasn’t about to argue.  I put on heavy and hated corduroy pants and my new sweater under my bulky winter coat - one that an Eskimo would have found too hot.  And ventured out into the imagined tundra.  I loved seeing my breath in the winter air and took a few moments to “smoke” an imagined cigar trying to blow smoke rings like my uncle Ray – but found this wasn’t possible with just pure lung warmed air.  I walked my bike out to the street and hoped that some of my pals would be around so I could show off this great gift I got “from Santa” as the tag, still on the handlebars proclaimed.  (I knew this great prize was from Garton’s Sport Center - I was a 7th grader for goodness sake – but I didn’t let on I knew because my Mom still was clinging to a wish that I would remain her “baby boy” for life.)

Now the moment I had been dreaming about was at hand.  Would my blue Corvette stack up to the many TV commercials with Clint Walker that I memorized and and could repeat word for word? -  “The Schwinn Corvette – the brand new 26” middleweight with forged, narrow design…front and rear caliper brakes, front luggage carrier, stainless steel fenders, whitewall tires…and the new two toned color coordinated saddle…the newest and greatest Schwinn bike with a boys and girls model…and just in time for Christmas.”  Thanks “Santa” I said to myself!  I mounted my new bike and it fit like a glove.  I pushed off and it peddled like a dream.  I immediately imagined I was racing at Le Mans.  This bike was more than fast, it seemed self-propelled.  I must have been doing at least ten miles an hour as I flew down Stratton Avenue.  I took the corner onto third street and didn’t need to  slow the pace – this bike held the road.  But then I made a terrible miscalculation that would haunt me for years.  In front of me was a giant patch of ice from a deep puddle that came with every rain storm.  I had to brake.  But which lever was the rear brake and which the front brake?  I knew from several rides on my cousin’s racer that you didn’t hit the front brake first.  But I only had a second to react.  I chose the left brake and squeezed it hard. Immediately the front wheel locked and the rear wheel, still free, left the payment as I flew over the handlebars – I was airborne and then the bike flew over me and we both hit the ice hard.  Face first I slid forward for at least 10 feet. I just laid there hoping no one had seen this embarrassing disaster.  I quickly took  stock of damage to myself first - nothing broken, no blood - but I was more worried about my new Corvette.  It laid a few yards ahead of me.  “Oh no!”  I saw the front fender was bent upward.  The handle bars were knocked off center and my brand new two-toned seat was now backwards.  I had just wrecked the greatest bike I would ever have.  I picked myself up and walked the bike back home in tears.  Later that day Pop inspected the carnage and made repairs.  My mom later that day would order a  new fender and brake lever from Sears and several weeks later the bike looked almost like new.  But it never felt the same for me again.  

For several years I rode this bike to school until I could drive a car.  I replayed that crash every time I hopped on it and the lesson that I would never forget.  A lesson, not just about a new bike, but also about the many cars I would own later down the road of life.  Never love your bike, or car too much – because if you do they will eventually break your heart.  Treat them like the machines they are – and whatever you do, never ever break too hard on ice...and also - never give them a human name like Betsy!

MARGARET'S SONG

     My Mother would have been 100 years old yesterday...she passed 16 years ago but I still remember her at least once a day.  Here's some of my Millville Memories of my Mom.

    I thought she was the prettiest person in the whole world.  She worked her from graduating high school in 1942 till she "retired" and had a few years of rest - many too much idelness?  When my stepfather Tom retire he actually quit everthing.  Sold his tools.  And devoted hours on his telegraph clicking his words around the world.  This was indeed amazing to me because he only went to school until the fourth grade.  And my mother sat and drummed her finges on the arm of her chair...thinking about what was, what would come...and what could have been.

    She was a basketball player and almost proudly displayed her deformed finger that she got playing against our arch-enemies the Vineland Poultry Clan (the worst team name every devised).  She told me about this at least 10,000 times over the years alway closing with "thank God it wasn't my ring finger!"  She, the Captain of the Millville Thunderbolts (there's another story about our team's name that is to come).  And she remembered the cheer she wrote that was still being yelled 20 years after.  With her orange and blue knitted hat and scarf she attend most of the games in her adult life - unless it rained.  And would cheer along with the "girls" throughout the games and each time her cheer was made she would tell "I made that cheer up".  "What askee botin notin, what askee fight...!" (The forties were known for lyrics that didn't make sense but sound like they did.  She was of the "Jitter-Bug" era).

    In here Junior year she fell in love with one of the prize guys in Millville, my Dad.  He was an "OlderMan" she said.  A post grad student who in those days could return to public school and take course they needed to be accepted in certain colleges.  He was going to preparing to go to a pharmacy training school and needed a year of chemistry which was one of the required electives that he didn't choose.   Calvin Sr. spent his time as a "soda jerk" in local parmacy which in those days many had a long marble bar with stools that spun and featured ice cream sodas (check one out in the film "It's a Wonderful Life".)  Those days are long gone - now CVS is a convenience store that also sell drugs.  He did go to school but his higher education was unexpectedly interrupted by a World War.  He joined the Navy as a Pharmacist's Mate and was in the hottest battles waged in the Pacific.

    He came home for a long weekend and Mom and he were married in Boston befor his ship set out for the other side of the world.  A whirlwind romance.  I was concieved their wedding night.