Two Pretty Girls

Two pretty girls moved into a house across the street and "good grief," I was in love again. They were twins, I think and they were always smiling. Now I was in love with 3 girls and my teacher. I wondered if anyone else had the same problem, I never asked.

A girl from up the street started coming around and she would always sneak up behind me and give me a good shove. I mentioned it to Mother one day and she said it's because she likes you. What a strange world, I didn't think it would be wise for me to start pushing the girls I liked around.

One day the girl invited me to go on a picnic with her to black hill. I went expecting some good sandwiches, but the sandwich was white bread and ketchup. As soon as I got the chance, when she wasn't looking, I buried it in the sand. She was so happy that I ate the whole thing.

My Own Little Business

When Lois and I went home from Wildwood each year, we had a few weeks to do what we had to do at home, and then it was time to go back to school. I use to go to the farm down the street with Grandpop (My Dad) We would help clean the horseradish. That smell went up my nose, burnt my eyes and made me want to get out of there, and still I went back. Mr. Green always had his radio on. I think it only had one station. Right after we got there each day, the man on the radio said, "This is singing Sam, your sunny smiling man." Daddy and Mr. Green would talk man talk as they worked And I would wonder off to the corner in the hay to play with the little kittens.
Lois and I would walk through the Corn Field to go to the store with Mother's list
of groceries . I had a Goat cart with two large wheels. It had two handles that looked like sticks to pull it with.
One day a lady asked me it I could take her groceries home for her. I did, and she gave me money. Wow, That gave me an Idea. I could do that more often , So I started my first little business.

The Boy Next Door

The boy living next door to us on 4th ave. was named George Darnell and when Aunt's Lois and Wilda were down for 2 weeks, they teased him by playing a popular song at that time. I believe it started out like this, "georgie porgie pumpkin pie, kissed the girls and made them cry." There was as old piano in the garage and they played that song over and over. I heard him saying, "I'll be glad when they go home, I'm sick and tired of that dumb song."

Crabbing

There used to be so little traffic on the road leading into North Wildwood, that it was a pleasure to crab and fish from the small bridges. We used to get quite a few crabs off them. I guess Dad didn't know about all the clams about there, because he never took us clamming. There were no closed waters in those days.

I liked the salt water fish much better than the fresh water fish we used to get in PA. They didn't have that strong fish taste. My favorite was flounder. Fried flounder on rye bread with coleslaw and tarter sauce was my pick of all fish. Add fries and it's fit for a king.

A Peck of Dirt

Uncle John was down visiting us and had to get some work done on his car at the garage. He took Jim and I with him and while we were waiting, he took us into a bar to get sodas for us and a beer for him. He also got me a little box of hard candy which I spilled all over the floor when I was trying to open it. A lady at the bar said "don't worry kid, you have to eat a peck of dirt before you die." I didn't know what a peck was, but I figured I was safe and put them all back in the box for later.

We got a lot of visitors from PA in those days, I guess they all wanted to see what Wildwood was like.

Our Church

Mother and Dad made an agreement that we would go to the church nearest to our house. It happened to be a Methodist church, so that is why we became Methodists. I liked it and our Sunday school teacher was very nice. I also got to see my girl Cookie more often, she also was a member.

It was getting close to Christmas and the church gave each of us a great big stocking filled with all kinds of good things. Mother made a chalk drawing of Santa Claus and we took it to school. The teacher was thrilled with it and hung it up in front of the class.

Our Teacher

We got a new teacher, fresh out of college and she was the only pretty teacher in the whole school. I don't know if she was aware of it, but every boy in the class was in love with her. I saw in the newspaper a few years ago that she died and she never got married. That was very surprising to me.

She actually spoiled me, because I thought all teachers would be as nice as her. I didn't have a nice teacher again until the 7th grade. That's one of the reasons I never cared for school.

Spaghetti Dinner

Can you remember the first time you had spaghetti, I can, Mother sent me over to the little store on the next street and said, "tell the lady you want the spaghetti dinner in a box," and gave me the money. The lady took a long time in trying to understand what I was saying, but she finally figured it out. I had spaghetti from a can before, but this was a whole new thing and I was hooked. I could eat this stuff for every meal and never complain. I even made spaghetti sandwiches from the leftovers.

The Starlight Ballroom.

This is where Dad and Mother went ballroom dancing. It must have been great, because I heard Mother talk about it many times. We had our boyscout shows in this same building and it was still very neat inside with all the stars and mirrors.

There were a great many things on the boardwalk that always made it a fun place. I used to feel sorry for the kids that didn't live near it.

Our Walk to School

It's really a wonder that we ever made it to school. We always took the woods route and passed through 3 swamps on the way. Naturally we had to check out the frogs, birds, rabbits, and even some gold fish. During the Winter we even had ice to skid around on and make our trip interesting. There was one spot that had frozen gold fish and we chipped them out and put them in deeper water to watch them thaw out and start swimming again.

After about 6 months of school, I found out that a girl named Cookie liked me, so I started walking her home on the NJ ave route and forgot all about the woods route with the wildlife. That's what a girl will do to you.

Margie Got Lost Again

One day Mother suddenly realized that Margie wasn't in the yard and we all started looking for her. After quite a while someone finally found her several blocks away by the town house 5 and 10 store. We were all keeping a more watchful eye on her after that. It was strange that she got that far, because everyone knew each other in the neighborhood and not one person saw her leaving.

It was actually a dangerous place for little kids, because there was a creek on one side and 3 swamps close by. North Wildwood was not built up on every block in those days.

Margie's Trip to Canada by Aunt Wilda

The year the DeMusz family moved to North Wildwood, Aunt Lois and myself were invited to spend a couple of weeks with the family. One day Margie was out playing, and I was watching her, and John was working around. Margie had something in her hand. She went up to John and said,"Daddy, what's this?" John said,"That is a quarter from Canada." Margie said,"Where is Canada?" John just pointed and said,"Down that way." He went back to what he was doing, and I went in the house to see why Margaret was calling. When I came back I said "Where is Margie?" John said,"I don't know, I thought she was with you." I started looking all around and John went in to the house to see if she was there. Everyone came out yelling for Margie, and I ran up to the corner and looked up the road. There she was Pedaling her tricycle as fast as she could. I ran and caught up to her and said,"Where are you going?" She said, with that cute little baby voice,"To canada to spend my quarter."

The Collie

One day when we were walking home from school, a lady and man stopped us on the sidewalk and asked us if we wanted a puppy. The lady handed me a little collie puppy and said we could have it if we wanted it. We said okay, we were looking for a dog.

We started home with the puppy and tried to think of something to tell Mother, because we didn't think she would believe someone just gave it to us. Well, we got home and before we could say a word, Mother fell in love with it right away. So, we had ourselves a puppy.

We got a red wagon called the "atomic flyer," and we used it for just about everything. Jim and I used to take it down to the ice house to buy ice for our icebox, then take the oil can to the gas station to buy kerosene for the heater in the house. Sometimes we would take it around and collect newspapers to sell. In the Christmas Season we used it to sell holly. We got 10 cents a bunch for the holly and I was surprised at how picky some people were for a dime.

One time there was a bad ice storm up in North Jersey and Dad got sent up there for a week. So we had to use the wagon to go to the food market for that week. The market was owned by a father and son partnership and they were very friendly and helpful to us. Mother would give us a list and they would pick out the stuff and get us on our way.

The Fog Horn

We were not too far from the Anglesea lighthouse and on foggy nights we could hear the fog horn blow every few minutes. It was a mournful sound in the middle of the night and it used to keep me awake. I would lay there in bed and wonder if there were any boats out there lost and trying to hear the horn.

We had a lot of neighbors that were fishermen and that song "shrimp boats are coming, there will be dancing tonight" was very popular with them. Mary Shivers, our neighbor was always singing it. I'll never forget her, she was always over our house. She took us to see our first movie, it was Abbot and Costello meet Frankenstein and it scared the wits out of us.

Tomatoes on the Roof

The place we were living in had no yard, so Dad got some 5 gallon buckets and put them on the roof to grow some tomato plants. They turned out pretty good. So, he had some kind of garden going every year, even when he had no ground.

Jim and I started school at the Margaret Mace school and we had to walk the 16 blocks. We also had to walk home for lunch and walk back, so that made 4 trips a day, rain or shine. They never heard of snow days and it snowed plenty that year. We were just like the kids in the "Christmas Story."

Black Hill

Between 5th and 6th street there was a hill that filled a whole city block. You could see all of Wildwood from the top of it. It was there for many years because it had pretty big trees growing all over. It was our favorite playground. We had a cave made on one part with a secrete path leading to it. No grown-ups knew about that.

Electric Company

Dad got called to work for the Atlantic City Electric Co. in their Wildwood plant. We then moved to 4th ave. in N. Wildwood. I really liked it there because there were so many kids living on the street. There were 9 families of kids within 3 blocks of us. It was getting close to Summer and the beach was close by, life was great.

Under Hunts Pier

This is the 36 plymouth that Dad owned. It has 1945 PA tags on it. That was a very reliable car for many years.

That first Winter in Wildwood, we spent a lot of time under the boardwalk, especially under hunts pier and around that area. The place was more deserted than a ghost town. It was like we landed on some planet that lost all it's people. We had no idea of what it was like in the Summer when all the people returned.

A girl our age lived in our apartment building and we became good friends until one day we started a bonfire next to the garage. Lucky for us a neighbor saw it and put it out before the whole thing went up in flames. But the girl was never allowed to go near us again.

The Coke Box

This is the only picture I have of the beach with Mike in it. He is looking over the edge and Margie is looking down at him.

Dad's Job

Dad got a job with a contractor that was building the new bell telephone office on Pacific Ave. in Wildwood. It's still there as far as I know. He also put in an application with the electric co. We move into an apartment in the center of town that was only available for the Winter months.

I was supposed to have started school in the Fall, but we were moving around so much that I was missing a whole year of it. I would have started in the 1st grade in PA, but in NJ they start you in kindergarten, so I was behind 2 years from what I could have been. This bothered me all through my school years, because teachers were always asking me which year I flunked and I don't think they believed me when I told them I never flunked any year.

The 36 Plymouth

After all the animals were sold and gone, all the belongings that would fit in the old Plymouth were packed in and we were off to NJ. We arrived in Wildwood and stayed a few days in a man's house that Dad knew from somewhere.

That's where I got my first look at the ocean. It was a cold windy day, so all we could do was look at the shells and starfish. I believe it was in March when we got there. One thing I remember was the globs of thick crude oil that you had to watch out for. I think these were from a Norwegian tanker that was torpedoed 5 miles off Wildwood.

There were many old cars left on the beach in those days. They were neat to play in.

The Bikes

Jim and I had bikes that needed welding on the handle bars. We went with Dad when he took them to a welder. The men were talking about how everyone was losing their job at fleetwings now that the war ended in Europe. One man told Dad he ought to go to Wildwood, NJ, he said the electric company was hiring there.

The next thing we knew, all the animals were being sold and we were packing to move to NJ. A man came in a big red truck to take the animals. Dad didn't know if he would even get hired, but I guess he thought it was worth a try. He did work for the Philadelphia electric co. for a while.

Sweet Snowballs

I don't think I would try this now days, but we used to eat fresh snow all the time. Dad had this big bag of brown sugar he got somewhere, I don't know how because sugar was rationed at the time. His idea was to make candied popcorn to sell near the movie theater. Well this bag of sugar had a hole in it and I would grab some to snack on every so often. One day when we had fresh snow I sprinkled some brown sugar on a snow ball and found something as good as ice cream.

We moved to NJ before Dad ever got to sell any candied popcorn, but he made some and it was really good. I liked it better than cracker jacks.

The Good Old Days

How far did we come and what did we do to our selves? I can remember when a doctor came to your house and only charged $5. You didn't need health insurance, because a hospital stay was less than $20. a day. You didn't worry about diets, because it was hard to get fat on what we ate.

Gas was only 16 cents a gallon and the same for a loaf of bread. We had radios which you didn't have to stay still and watch. A good story told on the radio will stimulate your imagination. Everyone in the neighborhood seemed to know each other and people took care of their own. You would dress up to go visit someone.

The Lizards

One day Aunt's Lois and Wilda got a box of green and orange lizards from some place. I was really fascinated by them, especially the little orange ones. No one was around so I picked up one of the lizards and was checking out it's little eyes and nose and stuff and it separated from its tail. It fell to the ground and a chicken ran over and ate it. It's tail started wiggling in my fingers and I dropped that too and the chicken got it.

I couldn't believe it, now I was in real trouble, I put the cover back on the box of lizards and left to see what kind of punishment I was in for. Well nothing ever came of it so I guess the chicken did me a favor by eating the evidence.

So Peacefull

The lockhouse was so peaceful, all you could hear most of the time were the animals going about their business. It would be nice to be able to go back to that lifestyle.

The bread man used to deliver bread and whatever else you wanted, like pies or cakes. We never seemed to get anything good like Grandmom did. I'll never forget the coconut custard pie she got one day, I could not get over how good it was. We always got the whole wheat bread which tasted like dried cardboard to me, but she got the Italian bread which I loved.

We were lucky to have lived on the little farm in those days, because meat was rationed, but we had all we ever wanted.

Ducks in the Canal

This is the only good picture of the lockhouse. The house was to the right on the higher ground.