TRICK OR TREAT?

  

  The kitchen calendar flipped to October 1, 1952, and I started to think of Halloween and my annual monumental decision - What would I be this year?  But that day, fate stepped in when I saw a full-face rubber mask of Frankenstein in the window of W.T. Grants.  It was $7.50 - yikes, a fortune in kid money, but I was sure I could talk my grandfather into a "loan".  My most excellent costume of all time was in the works.

    My grandmother was a great seamstress, and she turned an old black remnant into a monster's jacket. Next, a feat of genius, she fit the jacket perfectly, and it went over a large cardboard box, which gave me giant shoulders. My pop gave up his favorite pair of black work pants, and he nailed a couple of slabs of pine to the soles of a pair of worn-out work boots. I clomped around the house all week. Boris Karloff would have been proud.

    The wait slowed the clock as usual. The days ticked off. Now in South Millville, treating or Treating took more than one day to ensure we got to everyone.   We went out in a gang two nights before and then the big one, Halloween, filling a pillow case each night - with no worries about straight pins in our Baby Ruth bars.  As a warm-up, we also appeared at the Bacon School PTA Halloween party, marched around the gym, and ate hard gingerbread cookies from the cafeteria with a cider chaser.

    Back to mischief night - we tossed toilet paper over Aunt Kathleen's trees and ran.  We threw a couple of eggs at each other and would have turned over an outhouse if we could find one, but they had disappeared when we got city water.   We did not think of burning a neighbor's car, stealing a TV from a department store window, or destroying anything - we just had fun and always hoped we would meet the Jersey Devil at the second street hollow - just once.  But we never saw him/her/it.

    Each night, I donned the mask and stumbled out into the dark.  Actually seeing in the mask was not an option.  All around us were the hoots and shrieks of ghouls and a couple of gals dressed as Princess Summer Fall Winter Spring – a popular character on The Howdy Doody show and one of the best-selling store-bought costumes at our Woolworth's 5 & 10 @ $2.89.  I made the rounds from third to second and back with my friends.  Warren was choking in the skeleton costume he had outgrown about two years ago.  Danny was the Lone Ranger with a mask and a cap gun ready.  He fired off a few cap rounds at every door as a greeting.  And Sylvia was a "something" – none of us could figure just what.  But it was a raggedy, mismatched outfit held together with safety pins that decades later a famed pop star would wear the same on TV and change the world of fashion for teenage girls.  

    Inside my prized rubber mask, I was drenched as my breath condensed in the cool fall air into a moist and steamy mixture that got into my eyes.  This was a small price for what I was sure would be the biggest candy haul ever.  I thought that nobody would ever guess who this giant monster was.  I had practiced my monster voice all week, trying to sound like Mr. Boris K., but I was immediately recognized at each door.  "Great, get up there, Calvin," my uncle Harold said.   My bag of treats grew heavy, and I  dragged it behind me.  And then it was over, as all holidays must - too soon..

I staggered home and immediately got out of my wet mask to dump my haul on the living room floor and counted my stash.  32 candy bars, 7 homemade chocolate chip cookies, 46 cents in change, a rusty token from the NYC subway, and a pencil which said, Prince's Lumber Company.  I had bagged enough sugar to make a dentist drool.  Of all the treats, I preferred the regular-size Reese's Cups over the others.  They had a special flavor on the candy connoisseur's palate for at least two bites. On the other hand, I never ate the Mary Janes, those hard chomping waxy morsels that my mom tossed after they hung around for a few months.

    I put my dripping mask away, and it would stay on that shelf in my room until a yard sale 10 years hence.   But it remains the best mask I ever had for Halloween.

Memories of Growing Up

My Millville Memories? 

    They come, they go.  They appear from a word.  A song on the radio or watching an old movie. I often forget what I had for dinner but I can remember a moment, a face (not necessarily a name) from 50 years ago. I produce this “semi-fictionalized-memoir” to save these memories before they blow away.  I must admit that some are partly fiction because I made a few memories turn out the way I wished they had. My hope - perhaps others who read them will relive their wonderful, bright, dark, sad, and happy days of growing up.  These memories remind me of how blessed I was to lived part of my journey in the time and place where I grew up.  A small town. They are an unchronological compilation of yesterday's moments that made me who I am today.  I sincerely believe that my life has been a wonderful life filled with great times and some harrowing events - I seem to be “incident prone” !

    As for my profile of my early life:  I hated submarine sandwiches, too soggy.  I loved baseball.  Played football but thought it was stupid. Broke my leg when I was three and it still hurts when it rains.  I wore cordovan penny loafers with shinny new pennies in them with Lincoln's face up.  Sometimes I went to church.  I  smoked my granddad’s pipe when I was ten and didn’t get sick.  I hated Latin class.  I hated diagramming sentences more than I hated Latin.  Now that you know me a bit I invite you to keep reading my Blog as I journey through Millville Memories - I will post as one comes to me.

THE FALL

Reading a Facebook post a friend remarked about how they loved the fall...
and I thought for some, but not for all...

Fall 

I always hated fall

But I loved the leaves

Then I remembered they call  

For the death of summer.

I always hated fall

The first day of school

Excited, sweaty fear for all

And then you see friends

And it’s the same -- OK.

I always hated fall

It reminds me of good times gone --

The end for all

The end of living in the sun

And the north wind comes.

Yesterday, a tree of fire red

Today, bony fingers are pointing

To a sky grey that's dead

I hate the fall

It always marked the end for me

But spring will come again

And I will hopefully see another?

LONG SUMMER DAYS

Summer...after waiting all year those long summer days were finally here...

Those wonderful days so long ago,

When kid’s games passed the hours

Lazy days in the sun.

Shagging flies in brown grass fields.

Playing catch, after steamy showers

.

Those were the long days…

On the porch out of midday sun

A hot debate;

“Ashburn’s the best in the game.

Never, Mays is, he’s the one!”

They were sweet days…

Water from the hose quenched all 

Mom’s ham and cheese with yellow mustard

Wrapped with tender care

Would be a feast that soothed the soul.

Those were my days

Days that seemed to never end

We played hard from morn to night

Until the streets light bade time to go

And fire flies led us home again.

What full days they were

When I was young

And then to sleep with a cricket's song

And gentle breezes through the pines

Accompanied dreams of homers and cheering throng.

I wish again for those boyhood days

Days I thought would never end

 But they did!

The school bell rang; winter came.

And we yearned for the sun to come again

We dreamed summer dreams

Dreams of games in the summer sun.

This year we’d bat 400…

This year we’d win ‘em all

When only rain could spoil our fun

And we waited for the long days to come again.

THE SOUNDS OF SUMMER

A TV weather person reported that this was going to be a really big year for Cicadas that have been “sleeping” for 17 years or so and that we would hear their “songs” which is the unique sound they make calling other Cicadas for a date...And then I thought about crickets and the music of my summer nights…

…I hear nothing, not even rain now going to bed in my air conditioned, soundproof apartment high above the street that was once a grove of hundreds of orange trees.  In the summers when I was a kid all the bedroom windows in our cottage were open but the breezes did little to cool me.  However, they did carry the chirp of countless crickets in the pines surrounding our house.  I can still hear their rhythmic love songs in my imagination as I would lie awake trying to figure if there was a pattern to their calls but I never found one.  It would take several years later in high school biology class to learn their purpose in nature.  My home was about 2 miles from our town and half a mile from the state highway.  We had only a few neighbors but plenty of crickets “in the woods” as grandmother Ethel would call our backyard.

And there were other sounds that drifted into the darkness of my room.  Unlike the oaks in our backyard forest the pine trees made a “swishing” sound when a hot wind blew through them.  And when their whispers grew loud, I knew another thunderstorm was on its way.  Pine trees were great to listen to, but not at all good for climbing.  Another sound in my summer concert that I would listen to each night was the horn of a freight train that made a nightly run through our town.  The tracks were miles away, but some night if the wind was just right I  could only hear the clacking of the steel wheels and even the puffing of steam.  And each night as it sounded its melancholy alert I would wonder where it was coming from and going.  Trains always fascinated me.  Making sounds that rode the wind.  Sometimes when the night was very clear and still, I could hear the drone of the glass factory several miles away.  Their behemoth glass machines hummed another tune as they produced a never ending volcano of moltant glass. 

 We learned in school that the famed Carl Sandburg once visited Millville and later wrote about our little factory town...

 

"Down in southern New Jersey, they make glass. 

    By day and by night, the fires burn on in Millville

     and bid the sand let in the light." 

 

And then there were the storms.  I always listened for a far off rumble of thunder. I was afraid of storms.   I think because every time one came by my grandmother made me come in from playing just because the sky was turning purple and black.  I would protest and she always would say, “You don’t want to get struck by lightning, do you?  I knew a boy when I was young who was hit by a bolt because he didn’t come in when his grandmother called him.”  

As the booms became louder, flashes would light my bedroom and each time they got brighter and I got more scared until I put my head under the pillow.  Usually, my mom would quietly come into my room and lower the windows so the rain wouldn’t come in.  I always pretended I was asleep because she got mad when I was awake after my bedtime.  She worried about me got some reason not getting “enough” sleep.  I always wondered enough for what?  And then the rain would pound on our roof fast and hard and then slow.  The rumble got farther away until it was gone.  And soon my sounds of summer faded.  My Summer concert dissolved into the darkness, and I slept until a cawing blackbird woke me to a morning that smelled good…somehow my windows were open. 

As I came in the kitchen mother would always ask me, “Morning…did you get a good sleep?”  And I chirped, “Yes mom… I got a lot.   And she was satisfied once again.

 

 

BE MY VALENTINE?

Valentine’s Day is here again.  I think of what that day has meant to me over the years…and then I’m in Mrs. Russell’s third grade classroom once again at the R.M. Bacon School and it’s 1952.

The milestones in a kid’s year are made of holidays – the big one is Christmas followed by Easter and then there are the minor ones – but most still have residual benefits - usually involving candy.  Valentines’ Day for a third grader was a minor one for sure – but one of the few that also brought major worries.  Getting ready for this day devoted to puppy love (the only kind of love known in elementary school) started a few days before the 14th. 

The First Worry - Do I make my valentines and seem like a real cheapskate?  Or do I get some from the 5 &10 store?  I opt for a compromise: I would not use all of my allowance and just get the least expensive ones that came in a booklet.  I just had to cut them out.  Plus, I would ask for some of mom's envelopes to insure the confidentiality of this ritual.

The Second Worry - Who do I give them to?  My mom suggested that I give everyone a card but I rejected that immediately.  (I didn’t consider everyone a “friend”, especially Warren who called me “warthog”( I was a bit chubby but still offended by this).  And so I spent an hour looking at the various cards and thinking about which should go to which friend.  One could not send a mushy heart with an arrow through it to a guy; nor a baseball playing bear my secret crush.  These were heavy decisions for a third grader and a miscue could affect the rest of my school year and beyond.  After much thought I decided that Mary Jane would get a special one as She was the girl  I liked this week.  She was my imaginary "girlfriend” – but of course she didn’t know that she was!  Nor would any girl ever know because of my fear that they would laugh when I revealed my secret.  This changed several grades later.  Ah, Mary Jane…pigtails like thick ropes; thick glasses, probably from eye strain doing countless math problems and klutzy well worn saddle shoes -she was a compulsive recess rope jumper.   Yes, love at any age is blind.  And for me MJ was perfect plus she helped me do my homework.  I finished addressing each work of cartoon art and added what I believed was a very elegant touch – I taped a penny candy heart, with those faint hard to read messages, on each envelope.  Be Mine?...True Love…Yours Truly…Hugs & Kisses.  Not exactly my sentiment for everyone but nobody I knew ever “read” their candy, they just gobbled it.

Valentine's day dawned and I trudged to school with my valentine’s in a bag for safe keeping.  The day dragged by because we had to wait until the last few minutes of class to celebrate.  Mrs. Russell picked one of her “pets” to be the Mailgirl; Brenda always got the good jobs.  She made her way up and down the aisles delivering our tokens of friendship. And our party began.  We each got a pink cupcakes baked by Mrs. Russell.  Before we left for home we opened our "mail".  (Many years and a few loves later - I realize that even in third grade there was a  “pecking order” forming.)  We all looked and counted the number of cards each of us got.  Some got only a few and they would be forever relegated to the sidelines and be the watchers of others rivaling in the joys of life.  The “popular” kids had a pile of valentines on their desks.  They were the few who everyone wanted, no, needed as their friend.  To be those with more cards was what most of us would always yearn for as we grew up.

Valentine’s day in third grade, a taste of what love and life would bring to us all sooner or later  – for some a life of joy and belonging and for others, just lonely nights and some regrets. 

Thanksgiving Memories

In her first-grade class last year my granddaughter made a list of what she was thankful for - After some thought Violet Pearl wrote this...

1. My family  

2. Our Presidents

3. Jesus

 4. Cats

This sort of summed it up for me too.  And I thought of Thanksgiving many years ago...

...The days were shorter…my heater came on today.  I wondered if there would be frost tonight.  And I thought about Thanksgiving with my Aunt Mary and her son Louis.  I can see their long driveway that led to a little white house in Vineland…and Aunt Mary was little too – she was my grandfather’s younger sister and as round as she was tall.  She wasn’t more than 4 and a half feet tall.  And even though born in Brooklyn 65 years ago she still spoke with a strong Italian accent.  (Her father, Sebastian, had emigrated from Rome to Brooklyn and then moved to Vineland, to work on a truck farm. Work he did in the old country.  He joined many other immigrants who spoke his language and understood his ways.)

One of my family traditions was to spend most holidays with my mother’s side of the family, Aunt Mary and her bachelor son Louis.  And I suspected that the main reason was that she was a great cook.  “I make everything like in the old country,” she told me this many times.  But I am ahead of myself.  I had a tradition too.  The day before each feast I would take the bus 10 miles to “assist” Aunt Mary make her our special dinner.  And homemade raviolis were her speciality and on every menu.  I asked her once why we always made only one hundred and ten pieces, and she replied that she rolled out the dough to fit on her porcelain topped table - when cut it made that many pieces each time.  Her kitchen was small and always had a trace of garlic in the air.  The preparations for her dinner had started the day before I arrived.   Her incredible “gravy” had been quietly simmering on the stove for about 24 hours - the fresh plum tomatoes cooked down and marinating with pieces of sausage, pork and her “secret” spices.  Aunt Mary’s had cousins in Switzerland and Italy who mailed magic seasonings several times a year.   This wasn’t cooking, it was a family ritual handed down through many generations. I rolled up my sleeves and we began.  Aunt Mary dusted the table with flour and then kneaded a dough ball the size of a basketball with her hands in an ancient ceramic bowl.  She plopped it on the table with a loud thud – and the job I waited a long time for came next.  Using a large rolling pin, I spread the dough out to the corners of the table into a thin four-foot square.  I would take great pains  as Aunt Mary hovered behind me saying, “Calvin make it thin, make it all very thin.”  (Actually, she said, tin rather than thin - her English faltered sometimes).  When I finished my arms ached - but this was a welcomed price to pay.   Next, Aunt Mary spread the filling on half of the dough,  a combination of spinach, hand ground beef and pork mixed with the ragot cheese as she called it.  Next she carefully folded the dough over.  This took a very experienced hand.  My “second best” job was next.  I got to make the little pockets with a serrated wheel on a handle that turned the dough into ravioli.  This whole process took most of our afternoon.  After we finished, Aunt Mary made me a cup of tea and gave me some cookies before I caught the 5:05 for home.   I could not wait until tomorrow when I would brag about how “I made the pasta.”  All 110 pieces.  I did the math on the bus trip and figured that each of us got about 20 each – and we usually didn’t have any leftovers.   Plus, there would be the turkey turned to a golden brown in her ancient oven.  And my favorite dessert ever – “orange icebox cake”. This was a concoction that I have only had at Aunt Mary’s and never since.  I think she invented it.  Its basic ingredient was “ladyfinger cookies, store bought” as she would say.  Cookies with a tangy orange custard – no matter how full I was there was always room for two bowls of it.

Thanksgiving Day came and I watched the Macy’s famous parade in living black and white on our new and bigger 12” Admiral.  I had never been to a Macy’s store - but I imagined it had to be a great place if it could have a two-hour parade on TV.  I dressed in my “Sunday School outfit” (my mother insisted that I “dress up” on holidays).  And we made our pilgrimage to Vineland and our afternoon celebration.  We filled the small living room (dining room) with its big round table. Louis brought up folding chairs from the basement and insisted that he and Aunt Mary use them – “You are guests”, he always said.  Dinner was laid on the table immediately.  I then had to say the blessing (which I always hated to do but…)  After our moment of thanks, the passing of giant bowls and tasting began.  My mother would say, as she did each year, that the pasta was the “best” ever – “Aunt Mary, you outdid yourself this year.”   Aunt Mary always waved off this compliment and worried out loud “I hope the turkey not too dry”. There was very little chatter as we dug into the feast.  Louis never said anything unless asked a question.  He was a middle aged, lifelong bachelor who had spent his adult life, after returning from World War II, caring for his widowed mother – he was a good Italian son and a very quiet man.  In all my years, I had never heard him say more than 10 to 15 words per holiday.  Mostly “how are you and goodbye, happy Thanksgiving”.  He had a look of sadness – the look of a man who had resigned himself to his duty but wishing there had been more. But Aunt Mary depended on him.   I would smile when she would instruct him to “make the light once” or “Louis, I feel a draft” which was her cue for him to turn up the thermostat.  Aunt Mary lived into her late 80’s in that small cottage and was soon to stop asking things from Louis.  Our holidays with her stopped.  She spent the last five years of her life sitting quietly with her memories in a straight-backed chair with a knitted shawl on her shoulders.

After dinner, I was always so full I could hardly move.  As I did every visit, I asked cousin Louis if I could see some more of his Life Magazines. Louis had collected every issue of Life since it began publishing.  He had them in neat year by year stacks in the basement on shelves with curtains to keep out the dust.  Louis brought up a stack of magazines.  Somehow he seemed to remember which editions I had seen on my last visit.  I flipped page after page of this weekly history of life in pictures until it was time to go home, fascinated by their content.  As we started to say our goodbyes, Louis neatly gathered up the magazines as if they were first editions of great literary works and returned them to their resting place.  (When Aunt Mary passed away he moved to a rented room and deposited his entire collection in a dumpster – I was devastated.  When I scolded him about this great loss he just smiled and in his quiet way said, “Oh well…it was time…”)

Aunt Mary's ravioli – turkey - orange icebox cake – and the history of the world in pictures, that was my Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter for me for years.  And the menu never changed.  Many holidays have rolled by since going to Vineland.  Aunt Mary and Louis are gone now.  And I have spent many holidays in fine and famous eateries – and yet I still yearn for one more homemade ravioli dinner that I helped make… an old country holiday with those who gone now like the faces on the pages of treasured magazines.