A TREAT OR A TRICK

     

Looking back, I have decided that my Mother was amazing!  She worked at a glass factory 8 hours a day and still came home to spend time with me before bedtime, read a story, and play Parcheesi (a game I insisted on playing).  But one Halloween, she outdid herself for sure.  I was 9 or 10, and Halloween was still a significant event in my kid year.  I looked forward to it almost as much as Easter, but not nearly as much as Christmas.  So, one night in early October at play time, Mom asked, “How would you like to have a Halloween party?”  “Why sure!” I replied, but I was not really sure what a Halloween party would be like, and I guess I looked puzzled because she added, “Just leave it to me…I will call the moms of your Cub Scout Den, and you invite your cousins, and don’t forget Bruce.”  I was surrounded by “cousins” one or twice removed.  My grandfather had built our small cottage between the homes of his two brothers, and they both had a bunch of kids. One cousin, Bruce, was my nemesis – the famous neighborhood bully. He was noted for his violent reprisals whenever anyone beat him at marbles, basketball foul shots, or even rummy on a rainy day.   I wondered why my Mother had decided that I had to invite Bruce.  Little did I realize she was up to producing a Halloween trick!  So, after throwing a marble game, I asked him the next day, and losing one of my favorite Tommy Trollers to avoid a black eye or worse.  To my surprise, he said he would come!   Yikes, he never went to parties; of course, he was never invited to any, primarily out of fear that he would do something bad to someone before the cake was served.  And so, a couple of nights before Halloween, ten boys all in costume, except Bruce, were assembled in our living room.  My Mother had been working on the event for days.  And it was a big secret as she worked in the laundry room.  It was off limits for me, and this was driving me crazy.  The festivities began with my grandmother turning out all the lights and turning on our record player – eerie organ music filled the darkness.  Mom entered carrying a candle – and she was dressed like a witch!  Tall, peaked hat, black cape (I later learned my grandmother made the costume), and she was riding an old broom.  We all shrieked, except Bruce, who was too cool to be impressed.  We sat mesmerized as this green-faced old witch cackled and conjured up the fun. First, she “read” our palms and told our fortunes – and she was hilarious.  I had no idea where she got the script for this.  (Later, she told me she had chatted with all the moms for some funny stuff to tell)  Next, Nanny served us cider and homemade cinnamon donuts.  We ate and played games for a couple of hours, pin the tail on the ghost, guess the monster charades, and then the big moment arrived.  Mom produced a long tube from a roll of paper towels that she had painted black and orange. – After showing it, she said in her best witch impersonation that it was a “magic spyglass” and if someone peered into it, they would see a real ghost.  But it only works once a night, so who would like to be brave enough to take a look?  Bruce immediately grabbed it and declared, “I’m the oldest, and the rest of you are too afraid.” This was the first sound he had said all night. Most of the time, he had been scowling, letting everyone know that he was much too cool to enjoy the kid games.  Mom explained that he had to look deep into the darkness of the device.  He put it to his eye and growled that he saw nothing.  Mom said maybe he should turn it a bit.  He did.  Not a thing! She suggested he try the other eye – again, NOTHING he yelled.  He took the tube away and snarled, “This lousy thing ain’t working”!  The room went wild with laughter!  The tube left big black circles around each eye.  Mom had added her mascara to the end of the tube.   For us ten-year-olds, this was the greatest practical joke ever, played on the one person that surely deserved it – we hooted for a long time, not caring that we might later feel the wrath of Bruce the next day after school.  For once, Bruce got the black eyes, not one of us.  Bruce had no idea what was going on until Mom gave him a mirror and he took a look.  He was mortified.  She gave him a wet paper towel to wash off his “black eyes”!  He didn’t say another word and just grabbed another donut.  And we all knew he knew he was undone by a mom no less, and not by a big kid’s punch.  The next day, I saw him on the school playground and anticipated a bad end to my mom’s practical joke, but he just looked at me with a smirky smile rather than his usual glare. 

    The best Halloween Ever was over for another year, and from that day forward, Bruce the Bully left all of us alone.  

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.