From Aunt Wilda

Aunt Wilda refreshed my memory about some things and added a little story from the lock house. I had forgotten the dog's name and about the geese.

The picture of the lock house is a good likeness, but the basement door was on the side, close to the back of the house. Where you have the chicken coup was a tool shed that looks just like you have the chicken coup, and the chicken coup was directly next to it. Do you remember how when we would open the door in the morning to the chicken coup, they would come flying out and the ducks and geese would head right for the water? The poor little dog Dazy would see them coming and head right into her little house.

One day Mother was cleaning house and she said we could play on the ice but not to go near the locks, because the ice was soft there. She said she couldn't watch us because she had a lot to do, but she would trust us to listen. So Lois and I went out to play on the ice. We were running and taking long slides. Well, one of my slides was too long and right through the ice I went. Lois came as close as she could and pulled me out. The first thing I could think of was to say "don't tell Mother, please Lois, don't tell Mother." Lois said, " I have to silly, your clothes are all wet." WELL, SHE TOLD.

Back of Lockhouse

This is what I remember the back of the lock house looked like. The house sat on a cellar that went into the canal bank a ways. The canal locks were right in front of the house. The tow path was on the far side of the canal and was lined with a wide hedge row.

There was a wide porch in front of the house where you could relax and watch all the white ducks swimming around. We started off with a hundred of them and they made quite a show.

Our Evening Entertainment

We didn't have a radio or TV at the lock house, but Mother used to read or make up stories for us every night. She really should have written her stories down, because they were really good. She was also a very good artist. I wish we still had the cartoons and the animals she used to draw.

I didn't always understand what she was talking about. One day we were walking by the school and she said, "when you start school I don't want you playing hookie". I had no idea what she meant by that. I imagined a bunch of kids playing around with fish hooks.

I heard her say many times how good tomato pies were, that was the name for pizza in those days. They didn't sound too appetising to me, I could not see how you could make a tomato taste good. Well one night we went in to Bristol to the Italian market and got one. I was hooked from then on, it didn't taste like tomatoes at all.

Butchering The Hog

One day Grand Pop and Dad were butchering a hog and they already dipped it in the hot water and were shaving the hair off it. They kept telling us kids to stay back out of the way, but we were so interested in the whole thing that we didn't listen very well.

Grand Pop stepped back to check his side of the pig and his big heel ended up on my big toe. I couldn't say anything because I wasn't supposed to be that close to him. After he said a few words to Dad about how they used to shave the pigs with a broken piece of glass, he finally moved and I went limping off.

They smoked all the meat in a little smoke house there at the farm and it smelled so good. I loved it when the breeze blew the smoke towards the house.

Grand Mom's lard sandwiches

You could always tell when Grand Mom was making coffee. You could smell it a quarter mile away. We kids got to taste it when she would slice up her Italian bread and put lard and sugar on it. If you were lucky you got to dunk it in the coffee and it was then a very good snack.

My favorite though was her cornstarch pudding. It's still my all time choice of any dessert. You could stick a spoon in it and it would stand on its own. That's the way I like it, good and solid.

The Big Fat Snake

Grand Pop did have a sense of humor. One day there was a whole group of black men fishing in the canal and I saw Grand Pop walking towards them with a sly smile on his face and something in his hands that he was holding behind his back.

When he got to them he said "look at this" and dropped the biggest, fattest black snake I ever saw at their feet. The dead snake shivered as it spread out in all its glory. I still have to laugh when I think of those grown men jumping back and screaming.

John and Jim in front of the barn with their apple in hand.

The Weasel

One day Grand pop said there's a weasel getting the chickens and I'm going to smoke him out of his hole. He wrapped one end of a long stick with a rag and soaked it in kerosene, he called it "coal oil".

The hole was just above the water level on the canal bank and he stuck the burning stick into it. Sure enough, a red weasel came running out of another hole further down the canal. Grand pop said that was his escape hatch. I don't know if he ever caught the weasel or not, but I never saw it again.

There were quite a few cotton mouth water moccasins around the canal locks. Sometimes we would see a dozen or more of them laying out in the sun. I don't know why we used to swim in it with all the snakes and snapper turtles that were swimming around in it.

Fleet Wings

One day we walked over to the Fleet Wings factory where Dad worked. It was a facinating place for me. It was at the Bristol airport and it was the first time I got to see the planes close up.

They had a Japanese Zero, that was shot down, on display in front of the plant. I climbed all over that thing looking at all the bullet holes in it.

From across the fields we could see the trains heading to Philadelphia loaded with tanks, cannons, jeeps, and army trucks. They went by day after day in what seemed like a never ending line.

Our Own Little Zoo.

Every day at the lock house was a new adventure. Some days one of the animals would get loose and we would have to stay in the house until it was caught. The worst one was the white goat named snowball, that thing was the terror of the barn yard. He loved to chase people and butt them. He caught me off guard a few times. One day he had me trapped in a little shed for hours.

We also had one big rooster that was almost as bad. He was almost as tall as I was. The most frightening animal was the young bull we had. Just the size of him and the way he snorted at us was enough to keep you far away.

All the other animals were tame and fun to be around. There were more goats, a cow, chickens, ducks, pigs, and later we even got 15 turkeys. Of course there was a dog. It surely was our own little zoo.

Moved to the Lockhouse.

Canal at the Lockhouse

My Father got a new job at the Fleet Wings Plant. He was building wings for warplanes. We moved to the lockhouse where my Mother's parents were already living. We divided the house into two apartments and we lived upstairs. This was a great place that was right on the canal that ran along the PA side of the Deleware River.

My Grandparents, George and Beatrice Miles, My Aunt Lois and Aunt Wilda, their youngest daughters lived there. We had a new sister, Margie, so now it was my parents and the three of us kids.

The place was really a small farm with a barn, chicken coups, and pig pens. These came in handy for our food, because meat was rationed because of the war.

Our White House

My father had a small chicken coup at our white house. Just about everyone had a "victory garden" in those days. We used to walk down to the place where the people from town had little garden plots. Everything was geared to the war effort and it seemed like that was all people talked about.

We had black out curtains on all the windows and when the air raid sirens would go off, we had to turn off all lights until they gave the all clear signal. One night we were having a hot dog roast at Grand mom's when the sirens went off and Grand pop put out the fire. We were sitting there in the dark and we heard a loud explosion towards the Delaware River a few miles away. Later that night I heard one of the grown-ups say that saboteurs hit the chemical factory.

Some of our cousins lived near by and they used to come over and play. On day we got too close to our neighbors garden and he came out and chased us with his hickory stick. He had a wooden leg and everyone called him "peg leg lutz". He was very grouchy.

Although I was not yet 4 years old, I remember very clearly the day I got my shinny new tricycle. My brother Jim got one the same day. Those tricycles got us moved to Wildwood, NJ, but that's a story for another day.

My First Memories.

Me at 3 years 9 months old.

I can remember in 1943 we lived in a white house in Bristol, PA My father was John and my mother was Margaret. I was their oldest child and my name is John. At that time I had one brother named James who was 18 months younger than me. I was born in Sept. 1939.

On my first Christmas there I got an army truck and Jim got a fire engine. I remember that Christmas so well I guess because my mother had Jim and I make a pot of chocolate pudding for Santa Claus and we were supposed to have whatever was left over for breakfast. Well, there was none left in the morning and I remember saying "that's why he is so fat"

My father was a cook in the Keystone Hotel at that time making less than $20.00 a week, but we had a place to live and we even had a car. Food was rationed in those days because of the war, but I don't remember ever going hungry.

One memory I have that no one else seems to have is this. I was standing behind a horse ridden by a young girl and the horse kicked me in both knees. I was taken inside and stood in a basin of water and I remember the water turned red and scared me half to death. I still have the scars on my knees.