THE CHALLENGE

For the first time in literally years I indulged in a piece of chocolate cream pie at a new buffet restaurant and with the first bite of that smooth, silky desert I was back in the High School Cafeteria…

As seniors we had a choice by seniority – to eat the daily lunch prepared by the ever watchful Miss Miskelly, the matron of the school kitchen or we could cross the street to the smokey, jukebox rocking land of sodas and subs - the Orange and Blue Hub. 

I preferred the cafeteria and its warm, friendly, sweat sock ambiance.  A gymnasium converted from basketball court to dining room each day.  It was polished wood, dark and dank.  But much less crowded than the raucous Hub where one had to do battle to get fed before the bell rang the lunch period over.

The “great challenge” as it would come to be known, all started before school began that year.  Bub and I were “tooling around” in his dad’s 54 Buick chatting about our hopes and fears of what would soon be our last year at MHS (hopefully).  We passed the Hub which we knew was girding its staff for the onslaught that would come the next day.  

Bub said, “Ah the good ole Hub - I love their subs…why I could eat one of them every day this school year and still not be tired of them!”  

I replied immediatley – “Wanna Bet?” 

“Yah I betcha,” he yelled over the constant clank of the old Buick’s aging values.  “But what’s going to be your part of this bet?”  

And thus he threw down the gauntlet.  I pondered a brief moment and blurted – “I’ll eat 180 pieces of cafeteria chocolate cream pie!”  And that started a challenge that would last the school year.

The cafeteria nor the Hub's menus never changed.  

Each cafeteria meal each day was written in stone.  Get the brown heavy plastic tray.  Slid it.  Grab the grub.  Chicken  crockett's on Monday…ham slice on Tuesday…mystery meat on Wednesday…sloppy joe's Thursday and lastly Mrs. Paul’s fish sticks ended each week.  At the end of the line were the deserts.  The healthy stuff the closest – apples, pears and bananas.  And the real deserts – apple pie, peach pie and my daily “treat”  the chocolate cream pie with the saw-dust Gram Cracker crust were a bit of a reach over the counter.  

Miss M stood guard observing each student’s tray.  She many time pushed the apples…”Why not take a piece of fruit, remember an apple a day…”  I always responded “no thanks and grabbed the pie as she gave me a scowl that parents use when you don’t eat your broccoli.

And so the year rolled by  The seasons changed.  The games we played came indoors.  But my challenge remained unchanged.  

By Christmas vacation Bub had downed at least a ton of lunch meat covered in shredded lettuce laced in heavy oil and hot peppers.  And as for me – I don’t even want to go there - my cardiologist may be reading this – I am sure that chocolate cream pie must top the list as one his best friends.

And then in the last week of April the inevitable happened – as I moved down the line on that fateful Friday there was only one piece of chocolate cream left…this is not possible - my cloyingly sweet pie choice was not the favorite of most students – too sweet!  I inched closer to the prize and then a dopey freshman grabbed the last piece – OH NO!  I had had 143 pieces in a row – I couldn't let this kid beat me with the finish line so near.  

Bub would never have this problem for if the Hub ran out of subs at lunch he could just go after school and get one for a snack before dinner.  As for me there was no after school chance for the cafeteria food – unless it was in the big dumpster!

I paid for the certified nutritionally sound lunch and followed the kid to a table full of other freshman boys.  He sat and then noticed me.  He looked scared that he had somehow broken one of our high school pecking order caste rules and “offended” a Senior like me.

I said firmly, “I need your pie!”  He responded with the typical frosh response – “What?”  

“I need that piece of pie,”  I dug in my pocket for some change.  

He spoke again – “Why?”  “Because it’s the last piece and I … never mind.  I just have to have it…!  I'll give you 40 cents for it.”

Now many years later this same freshman would wind up as a day trader on Wall Street and he already showed promise for his future craft as he was known as a “math shark” in algebra I class.  A glint showed in his eyes…one that many would see years hence as he liquidated an asset…“Humm…very interesting,” was his only reply.  

I upped the anter – “65 cents!” 

He just smiled the smile of one whose knows he has the upper hand and waited.  

“OK A BUCK – But that’s my last offer!” I whined.

“And if I would rather eat it myself…?”  he let that threat just hang there.  

I immediately snarled in his face – “If you don’t take the buck you will be eating it with a broke n arm!!!”  

This future financier already how to the art of the deal.  He pushed the pie toward me – “A dollar and a half!!!”   I dug deep and reluctantly gave him the dough for the desert. 

 And after 180 school straight days passed I had ingested 180 pieces of chocolate cream pie - a record that is still on the books of cafeteria lore. 

As for Bub – he got an upset stomach near the end, missed a day of school and lost our bet by a single foot-long.

QUID AGIS MANE!

    “Quid agis mane?”   (Loosely translated - "How ya doin.") our Latin teacher uttered every morning to start the class.  That phrase still makes me shutter...

     Latin, why in the world do we have to learn Latin? A “dead” language and especially deceased at 8:10 on Monday morning in that strange little MHS classroom with Dr. Ruth Munser.  A room so small there was no place to hide.  Latin 101, I had been at it for a week and at this point not sure if I could master it - even if I were to become a Roman Catholic! 

    
     She continued, (with that slight remnant of a German accent…I wondered why she didn’t teach that living language, instead of being stuck with a language nobody wanted to learn) – “Class please open to page 22 and…now this was a point of no return.  She was going to call on someone to stand and translate the first paragraph into our native tongue – Milvillian Anglo.  

Now Millvillian was a language that to the ear sounded like a South Carolinian twang mix with the drawn out diphthongs Philadelphia patois and it didn’t particularly lend itself to Latin.  But we tried.  And all of us feared having to translate in front of our peers of pain...trying not to think of the horrors of being called on first still makes me sweat and wishing to be invisible

     “Mr. Iszard”.  She always used our last names. “Will you translate the first paragraph”?  (How did she know I didn’t study over the weekend?  But she always knew who wasn’t prepared.)

 I blurted “I am sorry Dr. Munser, but I broke my glasses and won’t be able to read today.  Gads I don’t even wear glasses and I pulled a last resort excuse much too early in the year – this was a costly mistake I would learn later when it really counted.  “Oh, so sorry to hear that…Mr. Iszard.”  The she trumped my trump card.  But then let's do this - you won’t need your glasses to reiterate the point of the text - please conjugate the verb “cross - as in to cross the Rubicon" - for the class will you?  

     Nailed me again!

     And now I faced the consequences for not reading those few pages – a task in those days seemed akin to climbing Mt. Everest.  I stumbled through the task with just one whispered prompt on the last one from a gal pal next to me. 

     Dr. Ruth Munser, doctor of philosophy and tougher than any gladiator – never needed a sword to bring down the mighty and the pompous - just one cold stare.  “You may be seated" and I was dismissed as she called on Dave the Brain to read the paragraph.  (He would graduate Cum Laude and in later life write prescriptions for a living in Latin so his surgical patients would never know just what they were taking “once a day by mouth.") 

     Oh, how I wish that was all I had to worry about today wehn I can't sleep and conjugate the one verb I remember instead of sheep... when I whisper in my mind  - amō…amās… amat… amāmus… amatis… amant – and after repeating it several time the worry that woke me draft away into the darkness for now and I drift off ad sumnun.

THE CHEF

Sometimes when I am making a dinner (well putting a frozen entre' in the microwave) I think about dining when I was growing up…And then I am back on Stratton Avenue in our warm kitchen and Nanny is making dinner once again…

Nanny is working the stove like a masetro and it’s an hour before Pop  and Mom come home for supper.  How many meals did she make in her lifetime?  Thousands! And never, ever complained.  She was not only the cook but the bottle washer too most of the time as my mother worked a long day at the Armstrong Cork Glass factory and came home tired.  My grandmother always said,  “Rest Margaret, you worked hard today,” as they cleared the table. 

This was a modest working man's home – no dining room here.  We ate supper, played cards, did homework and most other things not involved with the TV at our kitchen table.  It was the center of my universe for many years.  

Nanny, Pop, Mom and me.

Nanny made the ordinary seem tastier for a growing boy – a major part of her culinary craft.   But there are several dishes I refuse to order or eat now because of my diet growing up!    

One of these is SOS as the former Navy guys in town called it. 

 Nanny called it “Dried Beef Gravy” … A more refined way of softening the reality that we were having another “inexpensive” single dish dinner.  Just the thought of that reddish dried beef swimming in that white stuff makes me sweat.  For one thing it always looked (and tasted) like the paste in those big jars we used in grade school.  Even today when I see others eat it I start to get a gnawing desire to make a construction paper collage.  

Another item I now refuse is "awful balls" - my name for Brussels Spouts and the only vegetable I was forced to eat many times to a  gag reflex.

A mainstay dish for us was “Meat Cakes” – one of my favorites.  

Now meat cakes were hamburgers without the bun.  But oh so much more delicious when served with fried potato paddys  - left over mashed potatoes from Sunday’s more elegant 3 PM dinner.

Bathed in ketchup, the ever ready seasoning of choice, which made everything taste better in my view. I put it on everything except cereal and chicken – my meat cakes were definitely a treat that were tops of Nanny’s daily faire.  I always asked for more and she would cut one of hers in half.  I never realized until much later how many times mom or she would have sacrificed some of their meal to make sure I was well fed.

And so it went -  Monday’s meat cakes.  Tuesday’s dried beef.  Wednesday’s hot dogs and baked beans.  Thursday’s spaghetti.  Friday’s fried in a pan salmon cakes – we always had fish on Friday, even though we were not Catholic – but Nanny said it couldn’t hurt.  

Saturday was “eat out night”!  We would have French fries and a beef barbecue sandwich or a giant oily sub from George and Mary’s a few blocks away – Indeed a treat! 

And of course Sunday’s was special for  “Sunday Dinner” not supper as the rest of the meals were labeled.  Turkey and ham was a delicacy saved for holidays – our Sunday staple was baked chicken, mashed taters and green beans.  

Nanny’s weekly menu never changed – she could shop for it at the A&P blindfolded.  And we never expected a new surprise dish either – it was just the way it was.  My grandmother was not one to try a Ladies Home Journal recipe experiment.

I have eaten in some of the finest restaurants in the world – The Palm in DC.  Daniels in New York and even the Franklinville Inn in South Jersey (all on the top 100 restaurants list in the USA) – but nothing ever compared to one of my grandmother’s sweet dinners.  
Always made with love and eaten with delight by us all. 

I know now that these meals were never, never taken for granted by the adults at the table.   They were children of the Great Depression.  Putting food on the table was a mission for them.  And they saw to it that I was never hungry once – as they went to bed hungry more than once when my age.  

I am blessed today because of them – in every way.

So, tonight I am making SOS with a side of awful balls – and will make a toast to Nanny the Gran Prix Master Chef of Stratton Avenue. 

THE MALL OF MALLS

Most of my memories that float to the surface are from my early childhood – but every once in a while a delicious one pops up – that happened today while ordering Christmas gifts on-line.  I’ll never forget my first visit to a mall…and it wasn't near home.  Millville would not see a “mall” for a decade to come; in 1965 the only Mall I knew was on the Pall Mall pack! 

This adventure started when I began dating a “North Jersey” girl in college from a foreign land called Teaneck NJ.  Now this could be a suburb of Paris for all I knew because it was indeed over the big bridge from South Jersey, as they say.

Nancy invited me to come north for the weekend and go Christmas shopping at the malls on Route 4.  Being game just to be with her I immediately packed a small bag.  (Now until this invite shopping for me meant helping my Mom carry groceries from the A&P.   I would soon learn the true meaning of the term “shopping.”

We arrive in Teaneck on Friday evening – a town that didn’t look much different than Millville – except the homes were much closer together.  I could have fit three backyards here in my back yard.  This trip not only marked my mall introduction, but it was also a meet the parent’s occasion that made me sweat a bit.  Joe and Connie greeted us at their door with hugs.  And after we settled in and to my surprise Joe offered me a vodka martini – now this was so different from my rustic experience to date.  And it was just the beginning of the eye openers that were to come.  I would learn just how different North and South Jersey were and more than just 100 miles apart.

Saturday morn we went for bagels.  Bagel?  What’s a bagel I asked (really feeling like a bumpkin)?   Nan laughed and said, they Jewish and you are going to love them! 

When we entered Cohen’s Bagel shop I was taken aback.  It was filled wall to wall with customers.  Nan urged me to take a number!   “A number of what?” I replied now feeling really dumb.  She explained that’s how they knew who to wait on.  I was astounded.  In Millvile two ahead of me would be a crowd and I now had number 56 as they called 37.  Millville bakery folks always knew me – they needed no little paper numbers.  Life was crowded here for sure.

After bagels, lox and cream cheese – which I had to admit were very good but would take some getting used to, we left for the malls  a few miles away.  I have never seen so many cars in my life.

Route 4 was a thoroughfare girded on both sides by enormous parking lots surrounding warehouse size department stores – all the big names I had read about, Macy’s, Bamberger’s, Lord & Taylors – all familiar  except the one we pulled into – Alexander’s ! 

Now for a real surprise in the 500 car parking lot there was not a single open space. 

Cars slowly stalked behind shoppers leaving with their bags and pounced on their parking space as soon as it was vacated - as if it were a stake in a silver mine.  We cruised up and down row after row for ten minutes.  This was ridiculous in my opinion as I had never searched for a parking spot on High Street or even Landis Avenue ever – even at Christmas time.  Finally Nancy nosed into a spot just beating another shopper who tossed us a single digit salute.  Whew! Was all I could muster?

We entered the largest array of goods I had ever seen in one place beside browsing the Sear catalog. The jewelry counter alone was bigger than our W.T. Grants at home which was as close to a department store as Millville could get.  

Nancy was on a mission and knew exactly where she wanted to go.  I would need a map to shop here so I just gawked.  The place was packed and there was a din of mingled voices and sounds of ringing cash registers and an occasional PA announcement – “Would the owner of a Blue Ford…your lights are on…etc.

We repeated this routine from store to store, up one side of Route 4 and back – it took most of the day.  I carried bags and mumbled from time to time – Gee, Wow, and Duh.  Nancy bought stuff. 

On the drive home Sunday I pledged to myself to start reading the New York Times and Gentleman’s Quarterly in our college library – determined that I was going to be much more sophisticated and better dressed from that day forth.

SCHOOL CLOTHES

At this time of year – when the days start to shorten and there is a change in the air.  Less humidity and a search for a light blanket.  I always think of school with a tinge of sadness that those wonderful days which we tried to make last ended much much too soon.

And then I’m back in 1956.

Labor day was just two weeks away and I would be back.  And to be honest I missed school.  I loved school.  One night at supper Mom announced it was time for our annual “school clothes day” on High Street and we would have this adventure this coming Saturday. 

I got out the latest Sears & Roebucks catalog and perused the clothing section for some ideas on what was the cool styles this fall  (I ventured here only once a year for research, after many visits to the toy and sporting goods sections.)  To be “in fashion” pants had to have a small belt in the back that did nothing and shirts had to be with buttoned-downed collars.  I was ready to shop.

First stop was Freeman’s Shoes.  According to my mother school shoes had to be “sensible” which meant to her no Flag Flyers or loafers.  She always reminded me I had flat feet and needed “support.”  Support meant creepy looking tie up oxfords that workmen wore.  After Mother instructed Fred, the great shoe salesman in her parameters he showed my some Buster Brown’s that looked like official Girl Scout foot ware.  But there was no arguing.  I lied and said I “liked” the least cloddy looking pair and Fred escorted me to the box-like machine at the back of the aisle of countless shoes.  It was a fluoroscope and wa la  –  My clodhoppers fit.

Next we visited Jules Men and Boys.  And Jules immediately went into his high gear sales routine.  “Margaret, I’ve got the newest thing for Calvin, let me show you.”  Why I wasn’t a pertinent part of this discussion was always a mystery to me?   He laid out a bunch of shirts on the counter and uttered one word – “Madras”, making it sound as mysterious as its namesake in far off India.  To me the shirts just looked like plaid.  My mother made a small a-huh noise as if she knew what he was talking about.  I think Jules realized we both weren’t too impressed so he cranked up his pitch, “They are guaranteed to bleed on the first washing!”  “Hummmm”, my mother offered a bit dubiously.  (She had been wary of fabrics that “ran” in the washer her whole life, now this was a benefit?)

“Guaranteed!, Jules repeated.

“What do you think,” my mother asked me?  According to my research Madras was really in this sartorial season.  I replied, “I really like them.”  And she bought me 3, one in each color.  Next we needed a new pair of chinos.  (Jeans were never worn to school in my day)  Jules escorted us to the “chubby” rack.  I got shoes that I hated and shirts that bled – but this was the unkindest cut of all.  I would be in that size section until high school when, as grandmother Ethel noted, my “baby-fat” just melted away one day.

My school clothes shopping day was done after a trip to W.T. Grant’s for some new Fruit of the Loom underwear and white socks.  My mother had to be certain that if I were ever in a serious accident I would be wearing clean and non-holey underwear.  I was new on the inside my whole growing up life.

That night while we watched Lawrence Welk I tried everything on and modeled during the commercials.  I received kudos and assurances that I would be well dressed on my first day this year.

As for me, I couldn’t wait to see the shirt with the small buttons on the collar come out of the washing machine.

A SUMMER DAY

Dog days – that’s what grandmother Ethel called the days of August; hot, sticky, humid dog days.  I wondered just what that meant.  Did dogs have days?  Did my Spotty suffer because of the heat.  I knew he panted a lot that’s for sure.  Nanny said dogs pant to sweat.  I wondered?

When August rolled around I always started to wish that school would begin.  I waited the whole year for summer but when it came I did about everything I could do by around the 4^th of July.  

So the daily task -  how to fill my day?

Well, I thought, I could play war with Wesley across the street.  We would sit for hours in the sand.  (There were patches of white sand everywhere in south Millville)  And play with the 100 green rubber World War II army figures that I got for Christmas.  The set including a couple of plastic tanks, some tan tents and a bunch of other instruments of death!  I had painted many of my “men” with wounds of red nail polish – a garish color that my mom gave me because she hated it.

Wesley would attack my mud fortifications and I would beat off the Germans.  (My army set came with a like number of gray guys we called the Germans) Then my turn and I would attack his mud caves.   The Americans always prevailed. 

This activity got old real fast.  Imagination just goes so far and then fades.

What could I do now?  I know!  Ride my bike around the block and pretend I was a race car driver.  This two got old after about four or five revolutions down Stratton Avenue and back.

 

My day dragged on.  And then I got the best idea of the summer.  I am going to build a tree-house!

I asked my Pop Pop when he came home for lunch if I could use some of the wood from his pile of various boards that he seemed to be always collecting behind our big garage.  He said yes – but be careful of the rusty nails.  

Now rusty nails were an anathema in my world – one misstep was known to pierce the toughest sneaker and cause a dreaded case of lock-jaw – according to my grandmother who related tales of poor unwary kids who met untimely ends because they “did not watch where they stepped…especially by Herb's ugly woodpile!”

And so that afternoon I began and worked throughout the day.  

Wesley and I drew a rough “blueprint” of what I knew would become a masterpiece of  kid craftsmanship.  After much engineering discussion and false starts we began to build a clapboard and crooked box like room against the big ancient pine tree in my backyard.  (Editors Note: For practical reasons it was decided that the building team didn’t have the skills to build a tree house in the tree – both were afraid of heights – so it was to be a house by a tree.)

My plan called for a first floor  10 X 6.5 foot "house" with a hatch in the roof which would gain access to the “second story” observation deck.  This deck would be perfect to spy on girl neighbors and guard against attacks from imagined Indian tribes.

We toiled the rest of the day.

When Pop came home from work he took a look – he just smiled and asked if I needed some help?  

After supper he installed a door and a window.  Helped me with the hinges for the roof escape hatch and shingled the plywood roof.  We decimate his wood pile to my grandmother’s glee.   

With Pop’s help I now had Cal’s Clubhouse (the painted sign also read "For Members Only")   I spent the rest of August deciding just what the purpose of this “club” would to be.  And I spent many hours lying on my shack's roof, cap gun in hand,  surveying the neighborhood for invading armies.

Most of all I was pleased to report to Nanny Ethel that, to date, I had not stepped on a single rusty nail.

OLE RILE

RIP in peace Coach

  

Sad news today that a former high school teacher and my football coach passed away – and memories took me to MHS and days I thought would never end.

Bob Riley – known to Thunderbolt linemen as Old Rile was an enigma for sure.  A former Villanova Football All-American, noted body-builder and math wizard.  He was the logo picture for the Charles Atlas ads in the men’s magazines.  But hidden in that barrel chest was the heart of a poet.

One would never guess that he was math teacher from his appearance or manner.  He smiled too much to be mathematically inclined!  But he was and he loved figuring out equations as much as figuring a new defense against Vineland on Turkey Day.

I have expunged the memories of most of my year with him in Algebra II.  (The human brain’s survival instincts has a way of forgetting extreme pain and remembering just the good times)  I do recall I sat in his class fearing the inevitable embarrassment of being called on to make the trek of shame to the blackboard to solve an equation.  This torture usually ended with Rile whispering, “X times 2 over 9 plus B to the third power…you can go back to your seat now Cal.”  Even when I would call David P the “math shark” I still couldn’t remember how this stuff worked.

Rile’s work went far beyond his classroom.

He loved coaching football, wearing short short orange and blue gym shorts, raggedy sweatshirt and high-top cleats to football practice when it was around 30 degrees.

He loved writing, directing, producing, casting, lighting, staging his annual Senior Variety show which was a couple of hours of parodies about current events, TV and the movies.  (I played Mitch Miller, Happy the Clown and did my magic act in the 1962 edition)

He loved making his annual batch of “Riley’s Rotten Root Beer” (that was indeed one of the worst concoctions ever concocted) and he reveled in his secret formula that created an effervescence that could propel a bottle cap into orbit if the drinker wasn’t careful.

But most of all, I think he loved telling a good joke that came from his mental card file of hundreds of old ones discarded by Milton Berele and Henny Youngman.  He and I would play “yeah, but did you hear the one about…” for hours.  And he got laughs without ever telling a dirty joke.

He loved coming to our class reunions and getting a bit misty-eyed about what was and what might have been.

He loved doing a double jack-knife off the high board at the Holly City Swim Club to oohs and ahs of his aquatic pals.

But most of all Robert Riley loved sharing his life with young people. 

And his child-like wonder and enthusiasm rubbed off on his students and players and they loved their lives too - that was his reward.

Rest in peace my friend and mentor.  

I think I can hear you now…”Hey GOD, did you ever hear the one about the …