NJ Ave.

NJ ave. had railroad tracks running down the middle of it when we lived there. They still had passenger service in to the center of Wildwood. Those old steam engines used to put out a whole lot of smoke. Sometimes you could get yourself covered with black soot if the fire wasn't burning right in the engine.

I was fascinated by them and the railroad workers were always friendly and talked to us kids. I asked for an electric train for Christmas so I could have my own train. I had that train for years and kept adding to it each Christmas.

I never wanted to be an engineer like a lot of the other boys, I wanted a ranch like Roy Rogers. Aunt Mary's father was a real cowboy from the west. When he was young, he rounded up cattle and all of that and I thought he was a special person, above everyone else.

The Dentist

My trip to the dentist in Wildwood was an experience I'll never forget. He was as big as Paul Bunyan and his fingers were so big and fat that I couldn't see how he could work on any one's teeth with them. The hardest part of the whole thing was there were about 12 kids in front of me and they were screaming like they were being chopped to pieces. If the big nurse wasn't blocking the door I would have taken off.

They didn't have fluoride in those days, so dentists were pretty busy filling cavities. I finally got to the big chair and couldn't believe how much torture equipment was around that thing. The drill is what I didn't like, something about the sound it made is what turned my bones cold. It's funny, but the drilling didn't hurt at all and I was surprised that the other kids screamed about it. The dentist thanked me for being good and off I went.

The Gullies

When the tide started going out in the ocean off North Wildwood, it would form gullies or sand bars under the water. These made safe places to swim where you wouldn't get taken out in the undertow. The water also was a little warmer in them from the Sun hitting the still water. We spent a lot of time at the beach when we lived there. After we moved to Erma, it was only a few times each Summer.

No one used sunblock in those days, I wonder why skin cancer is on the rise now. Our skin used to peel off every June and we would be tan until school started again.

Roy Rogers

Jim and I each had a dime and Mother said we could go to the newsstand and buy 2 comic books. We each bought the Roy Rogers comic, because he was the was the king of the cowboys and there was no 2nd place. Well Mother said we were crazy and made us take one back and exchange it for another comic. So Jim exchanged his for a capt. Marvell.

I recently saw that same Roy Rogers comic at a card show and it was listed for $10,000. Boy, if we only knew what things were going to be worth.

Long Nights

I used to think nights were weeks long compared to days. It was because I used to wake up during the night and it would seem like a very long time before I went to sleep again. I didn't like nights at all.

When the Sunday school teacher told us that bad people get tormented forever after they die, I figured they were put in a pitch black place where they never saw anything again. They were all alone with nothing to do, see, or hear for the rest of time. What a horrible thought.

Blackberry Pie

One day Dad loaded us in the car and said we are going to go blackberry picking. We rode offshore to an abandoned railroad track bed and overpass just west of Court House. There was loads of ripe blackberries and blueberries all free for the taking. We had a good time filling our pots with berries and eating as many as we could.

When we got home, Mother made two large pies in her baking pans and they were really good. I still have never tasted a berry pie as good as the ones Mother used to make. Somehow you could taste both the blackberries and blueberries that she mixed in the pies.