Tag Archives: 1950’s

ADVERSITY CAN BE A GOOD SCHOOL

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Catholic Elementary School

I’m older than most of the people who may be reading this, but still, I think my experiences may resonate with some of you at some level. I believe that the experiences I had and endured made me the person I ultimately became. When I was quite young in elementary school, I can remember making the decision to be true to myself at a young age. Even if that meant some people didn’t like me, including some of my family members. In a way, I became my own best friend.

The fact is that I’m not your run-of-the-mill person. I never follow the crowd. I didn’t try to fit in. I don’t and never felt the need to follow trends. I attended Catholic Parochial School, which means that I was forced o wear a uniform and shoes that everyone else wore. And woe be him or her who didn’t obey those rules and regulations.

I followed the rules regarding wearing the uniforms, including the hideous shoes, and wore a beanie. I didn’t have a choice. But, I didn’t agree with or follow all the rules regarding believing every word taught by the nuns. I was a quiet child, but I had my own mind and my own thoughts, and they often conflicted with the rules and the punishment that the nuns subjected children to in the 1960s. We were told in Church and our classrooms that wherever two or more of us gathered, there would be love. That certainly was not true in my experience for the twelve years I attended Catholic school.

I was a quiet child in the classroom. But, outside the classroom, I was always making jokes and telling tall stories to my friends and anyone who would listen. I’ve always had a highly active imagination.

Because I had a tendency to joke around with m fellow students, I found myself being hit with rulers with metal edges and being put in the boiler room for hours by the nuns. Or worst of all, being ridiculed in front of the class if I was asked a question. My mind would often go blank when I was asked a question out of the blue. And I would just stand there, struck dumb.

After twelve long years of these types of experiences, I developed the mindset of a prisoner of war. I recall one experience when I was in fourth grade. Sister Joseph Catherine, who was teaching us, called me up to Blackboard and asked me to complete the arithmetic problem. I was so frightened that I couldn’t think straight.

high school graduation picture

Susan Culver- high school graduation picture

And she yelled at me, came up behind me, grabbed me by my ponytail, and slammed my head repeatedly into the blackboard. After that, I tried to keep myself on guard against any type of behavior that might draw attention to myself around people with whom I was unfamiliar. People always described me as shy, but I wasn’t shy. I was protecting myself.

Some of my school experiences helped develop my imagination. For instance, this was a release from my everyday experiences that I had no control over. We had to go to confession on the First Friday of the month. As a child, I didn’t believe I really committed any mortal or venial sins as the nuns suggested that we all did. So, the week before I had to go to Confession, I used to spend some time making up some “good” sins to tell the priest in the confessional. I did this every first Friday of every month for the eight years that I attended Catholic grade school. Father Nolan (the priest I always confessed my sins to) said, “And are you sorry for all these sins you committed?’ And I would answer,” Yes, Father.” And then, for penance, he would tell me to” say three Hail Marys and three Our Fathers.” I  hadn’t committed any sins other than lying to the priest once a month about my sins.

Although the nuns were strict with all kids, they were particularly strict and tough on the boys, especially in the eighth grade. The nun that taught my eighth-grade class didn’t seem to have a problem pushing a boy down a flight of stairs if he acted out. I never understood why they were allowed to do that to anyone. At one point, I decided to tell my parents what was going on in school. And my mother said, “Do you want me to go up and talk to the nuns?” I said, “No.” Because I was afraid, that would make everything worse. Looking back, I wish I had told my parents to talk to the nuns to stop abusing me and the other kids.

In addition, my parents shouldn’t have left it up to me to decide what should be done. They should have taken matters into their own hands and complained to the school or perhaps removed me from Catholic School and enrolled me in the local public schools.

In addition, I live two houses away from the Catholic School, so whenever the nuns needed help in the classroom after school, during Summer break, or after a snowstorm, I was called in to help. Also, I had to go up to the convent where the nuns lived. It was about five blocks from my home. And I had to clean the storage room where the nun’s canned food was stored. And clean the cans and the room from top to bottom once a week. I’m not sure, but it’s possible that my parents were getting a discount on the Catholic School tuition because of the work we did in the convent, and in the school, in the summer and in the winter.

Of course, not all my experiences in Catholic School were negative ones. I made a great many friends. And I learned how to spell and do basic math. But, what I learned most thoroughly was English Grammar and writing. And to this day, I appreciate this skill that I’m still benefiting from in my writing and my ability to express myself verbally and in the written word.

I learned self-discipline and how to work hard and be thorough in everything I attempted to do in life. And overall, I have to say in every job I ever had in my life, I always excelled. I benefited from what the nuns taught me, albeit hard-won lessons.

This is me writing a new story.

I don’t really know how Catholic School children are disciplined nowadays. But, I hope by this point, the Catholic Schools and teachers have some deeper understanding and knowledge about child development and keeping control of a classroom without verbal and physical abuse of any kind. When I got married and had children, I enrolled them in public school. There was no way I would have wanted them to have the same experiences that I and my generation had to endure in the 1950s and ’60s.

So, overall, Catholic School was not entirely a negative experience, but it is one I wouldn’t want to repeat. It helped shape who I am to this day, and that is a strong, moral, hard-working, intelligent, and creative person who is not afraid of trying something new to this day. I am self-confident about my skills and my abilities. I’ve had to face many challenges during my life, but here I am, still intact and ready to face anything life has to offer me. In other words, What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger comes from an aphorism of the 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It is generally used as an affirmation of resilience.

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THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE CURIOUS

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There are many ways that someone can be described. I’ve been described as intelligent, not bad-looking, and funny. But the truth is my most outstanding trait is my curiosity.

As far back as I can remember the force that drove me is my curiosity. You may ask, “But what are you so curious about?”

“And the God’s honest truth is, everything.”

I remember an incident from my early childhood. I was about four years old. And I decided to take a walk down my street about four houses down from where we lived. I was standing next to a telephone pole that was out in front of Mrs. Collins’s house. And her trash can was sitting there waiting to be picked up by the garbage man. They always come at 8 AM every Friday morning. 

My father had a weird fascination with counting how many garbage cans people put out in front of their house the day before the trash was picked up. He got angry if the neighbors put out too many and even more angry if they didn’t put out any at all.

So perhaps because he talked about the garbage cans every week to such an extent, I became curious and wondered, “what is so interesting” about garbage cans? And on this particular Friday morning, I decided to take a walk down my street, and investigate just what was inside these metal cans that everyone wanted so badly to get rid of them, and have them driven far, far away from them every week? And why did they keep buying things that they eventually couldn’t wait to get rid of?

As I stood there staring at Mrs. Collins’s trash can I couldn’t help but notice that there was a disgusting smell emanating from the depths of the can that had a bent and rusty lid on it. The lid was being held closed by a broken brick. Because the lid didn’t fit well. And would often fall off before the garbage men emptied its contents into the maw of the giant monster of a truck that swallowed everyone’s garbage every Friday morning.

I picked up the broken brick and put it gingerly onto the ground next to the can. The stink intensified. I took off the lid and put that on the ground next to the stinking can. The first thing I saw inside was a large can. I recognized it as something my mother used to call “The Crisco Can.” I didn’t know that everyone had this “Crisco Can.”

I thought, “wow, that’s really a big can. I wonder if this can will fit over my head. It looks big enough.” And so, I picked up the can without investigating the contents. It felt empty so I thought it would be safe to put on my head. My older brother had been kind enough to give me a haircut recently. As a result, my hair only came down to the tips of my ears. For some reason, my mother asks, “why, why did he cut your hair? And why would he cut it this short? I told my mother that he cut it short to see if I would look like a boy.

Anyway, it turns out that the Crisco Can was almost a perfect fit for my head since I had very little hair left on it. I wiggled my head a bit to see what if anything would happen. And then out of the blue, I felt something or someone biting my head. Not just the top but all over. And not only did the bites sting like crazy but my scalp started to burn like it was on fire. And whatever it began running down inside my shirt and biting me all over my chest and stomach.

I began to scream like crazy and running at the same time back to my house. I ran to the kitchen door and screamed at the top of my lungs. “I’m on fire, help I’m on fire.”
My dad and mom who had been sitting quietly at the kitchen table drinking their first cup of coffee of the day came bursting out of the kitchen onto the side stoop. And my father started yelling, “what the hell is wrong with you? You’re not on fire. And why in the hell do you have a Crisco can on your stupid noggin?”

“My head is on fire. And something is biting me. HELP.”

My mother said, don’t yell at her, you’re just making it worse. Why do you always have to yell?”

“For the love of god, take the can off her head.”

My father yanked the greasy can off my head. I yelled even louder. “Ow, ow, ow. That hurts.”

My mother said, “what is it” what is it?”

“Holy mackerel she has red ants all over her head, and on her neck, and in the front and the back of her shirt. “Take her clothes off, and I’ll get something to kill them. And with that, he ran back into the house and off to find something that would kill the “red ants.”

I hoped he wouldn’t kill me in the process. Sometimes with my father in charge, the cure was often worse than the ailment. I started crying anew. My mother started pulling my top off and my undershirt and then my pants and underpants. I was now naked as a Jay Bird in front of everyone who happens to drive or walk by. And the worse part was, I could see our evil next-door neighbor’s face pressed up against the windowpane. And there was a horrible grin on her face. For some reason she just despised me. She was always calling me The Cry Baby.

And then at that very moment, my father burst out of the kitchen door and he had a big metal can in his hand. “Step back from the child, I’m going to pour this all over her head. This should kill the bastards.”

My mother yelled, “What? You can’t pour turpentine on her head. It will kill her. She’s just a little girl and it will get in her eyes and blind her.”

She stepped back and I felt a burning liquid pouring down over my head and face, I quickly closed my eyes tight. And then it dripped down my front and back and down my skinny legs. My mother forgot to take off my shoes, so my new sneakers got all wet too. My mother said, “oh no, you ruined her new sneakers.”

I had tightly closed my eyes but tears somehow managed to creep out of my eyes and down my red and swollen face. My father yelled, “get the hose, and we’ll hose her down.”

And that was what they did. They hosed me down for what seemed forever. I had finally run out of tears and was just standing there in my ruined sneakers and red and itchy skin and soaking wet. And my father said to me with all seriousness,” are you happy now?”

I stood there soaked to the skin with itchy, burning bites and dead ants pooling around my feet. And my father said, “why in god’s name did you put that filthy, disgusting can on your head for? Can you just tell me that?”

I looked at him and said, “to see if it would fit on my head of course.”

“Did you hear that? She wanted to know if the can would fit on her head?”

“Yes, she’s always been a curious child. She’ll probably be the death of me yet. I’m going to take her in and put her in a tub and clean her off. And then I’m going in my room and say the rosary.”

Of course, this was neither the first or last horrible experience I had because of my curiosity. My best friend and I often took long walks around town or rode our bikes all over the place. My mom always said to me as I was on the way out the front door, don’t slam the door and be home for lunch (or dinner) on time.

My best friend would always go along with my plans and never questioned or suggested. Nor did she ever suggest that perhaps this was not a good idea. She just went along with whatever I said. So, one fine summer day, I said, “Wow, it is really hot outside, I would really like to go swimming. She said, “Me too.” I was about ten years old then and she was nine.

“Why don’t we go and get our swimsuits on and walk down to the hotel on Route 73 and sneak into their swimming pool. I bet they wouldn’t even notice us. I’ll meet you at your house in about fifteen minutes. Put your clothes on your swimming suit and bring a towel. “Ok, I’ll see you in about fifteen minutes. I went to my house and changed into my hand-me-down swimsuit and put my shorts and tee-shirt on over it.

My mother told me to be on time for lunch and I said, OK. She never asked where I was going, she just reminded me to be on time. When I got home from whatever adventure I was up to she said, “oh good, there you are. Go get ready for dinner.” And by that, she meant to wash your hands. Neither my father nor mother ever ask where I was. They might say what were you doing today? And I would just reply, riding bikes.

And so, on this particular day, we rode down Route 73 which was a State Highway in South Jersey and heavily traveled. Luckily, it wasn’t rush hour so there weren’t too many cars and trucks on the road. And somehow, we made it in one piece to the hotel.  When we got there were several families with kids already swimming in the pool. So, we just parked our bikes next to the fence behind a bush and walk through the gate and put our clothes on our towels and nonchalantly jumped into the pool. We had a great time. Unfortunately, both of us got sunburned and when I arrived home my mother said, “Good grief, you’re as red as a beet. You should have known you were out in the sun too long. You need to go take a bath in baking soda. My mother thought baking soda was a cure-all, either that or Vic’s Vapor Rub.

I never let a previous negative outcome to one of my little adventures deter me from continuing down the path I follow to satisfy my curiosity. I really don’t allow anything or anyone to stop me once I got an idea in my head. My father often told me I was the most bullheaded, stubborn person he ever knew bar none.

And so, about a year later, when that self-same hotel that my best friend and I went swimming in added a trampoline for the guest children to enjoy I thought, why shouldn’t I enjoy the trampoline? What’s one or two more kids jumping on the trampoline going to harm? We had a half-day at school this Friday so I would just fail to inform my mother and she would not be the wiser, no harm, no foul, right?

I waited for my friend to come out of her classroom on Friday and we dumped our schoolbags on my back porch and we went on our merry way towards Route 73 and our new adventure. Once again, we managed to get safely across the highway and up to the hotel. My friend did have a few moments where she freaked out as we crossed the highway. When we got to the other side I said, “what are you crying about? Nothing bad happened we’re fine.”

And then we walked up to the gate where the trampoline was located and before you knew it, we were jumping up and down to our heart’s content. It was amazing. I felt like I was flying. My greatest desire in life was to be a bird. And to fly from one side of the planet to the other. We must have jumped up and down for three hours. My stomach was growling like crazy because I didn’t eat breakfast that morning. And we skipped lunch. On the other hand, there was a really strong chance that if I did eat anything I would puke.

I yelled as loud as I could, “hey my legs are getting tired. How are yours?”

She yelled back, “they are killing me let’s go home now. It must be getting late.” By then we were the only kids left on the trampoline. “Yeah, let’s go home now.” We took our time walking back to our houses because not only were our legs killing us, it felt like we were still jumping up and down. It was a weird feeling, and it took us twice as long to get back home. When we got back to my house, we went to the back porch and grabbed our school bags. I yelled, “I’ll call you later,” to my friend. She barely waved at me. No doubt she would go home and fall in her bed and not get up to twelve o’clock on Saturday afternoon.

I have to admit my legs were absolutely killing me. But there was no way I could tell my mother what I had been up to. Or my father would have made sure that my legs were the only thing that would be hurting for a few days. When I got up to the side steps, I could hardly lift my legs up to the next step. There were only four steps but I wasn’t sure I would be able to make it. It took me about five minutes.

When I got to the top step, I saw my mother looking at me through the windows on the kitchen door. I waved at her. Thank god, my arms didn’t hurt. Or the jig would be up.

My mother opened the door and let me in. She said, “where have you been your sister has been home for several hours? She said you had a half-day today.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you. But I had to stay after school to practice diagramming sentences with Sister. This was a frequent occurrence so she didn’t question me again. But the problem was I was hardly able to walk because I had such terrible leg cramps from jumping on the trampoline for hours.

As the school year came to a close, I began looking forward to going to Strawbridge Lake. My friends and I used to ride our bikes there. I was twelve years old now so I didn’t think it was a problem to ride there it was only two towns away. Of course, I didn’t tell my parents where we were going, they would have told me that I wasn’t old enough to ride my bike that far. But unbeknownst to them, we had been going there for years. But as I mentioned earlier, my parents never ask where we went. They only told us not to be late for lunch or dinner. Unlike me, they didn’t seem to have any curiosity about where I was and what I did. As long as I got home in one piece more or less.

Anyway, on this particular day, I had the brilliant idea that today would be the perfect day to walk across the waterfall at Strawbridge Lake. Up until now, we had all been too chicken to cross it since the water was at its deepest at the Falls. It would be really, really fun. I called a couple of my friends up and ask them to meet me outside my house in a half-hour. Only two of them agreed to go. Since they had all suffered some negative consequences when I got “some crazy idea” about what would be fun.

At eleven o’clock we all met in the church parking lot. And then we headed to Strawbridge Lake. It was in Moorestown. So, it took us about forty-five minutes to get there. And it was at least ninety degrees out and humid. In other words, typical summer weather in NJ. By the time we got there, we couldn’t wait to get in the water. However, no one was allowed to swim in the lake. It was strictly a fishing lake and a place to have family picnics. But of course, that didn’t stop us.

I had brought a towel and a blanket in my bag. So, I laid the blanket out under a Willow tree and we all took our sneakers and socks off. Then I said, “let’s go.” And off we went and walked toward the waterfalls. I kept saying, “come on, come on let’s go.” There was me and my best friend and two of my school friends, Diane and Helen. I said, “come on last one there is a rotten egg. And we all started laughing and running.

When we got to the edge of the water I stuck my foot into the water, and said, “holy mackerel it’s freezing.” They all looked at each other and I could see they were going to chicken out. “Come on, come on. I’ll go first and then each one of you goes in one at a time. The water was shallow at first but got gradually deeper as I moved forward. And then there was a sudden drop off as I got to the waterfall, the water was up to my knees. I started making the climb up to the top of the waterfall. It was really slippery.

I could see about six or seven fishermen standing on the top of the waterfall and spread out all the way to the other side. I heard one guy yell,” hey kid be careful the water is really deep along here. You shouldn’t be up here. Go back.”

I just ignored him. There was no way I wasn’t going to go all the way across the falls. My feet were already numb from the freezing water. But I was almost to the halfway point of the falls and there wasn’t I was bound and determined that I going to go all the way to the other side. And then it happened. My foot slipped and I was just about to fall off and down into the lake. I screamed at the top of my lungs. One of the men, yelled, “grab that kid she’s about to fall off into the lake.”

And that is when the fishermen closest to me tried to reach down and grab me, but he couldn’t reach me. Then he yelled, “Hey kid grab ahold of my fishing pole. Yeah, that’s it, grab it. I’ll pull you up.” And he did. I was small for my age so I wasn’t that heavy. And he pulled me up by the fishing pole. When he finally got me back to the top of the falls he said, “are you crazy or just stupid?” My father used t say that to me all the time. So, it didn’t really bother me that much. I said, “thanks” and walked back to my friends.

They were all standing there with their hands clapped over their mouths. And then my best friend said, “good grief, you could have drowned.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t. And this goes to the grave with you and the rest of them.” Then we all walked back to the blanket and I flopped on it and I just sat there until my clothes dried off. And then I said, “well, I guess it’s time to go back home.” None of my friends ever mention this experience again. I thought about it quite often and I decided it might be a good idea if I learned how to swim.

My experiences as a child growing up in the 1950s and the 1960s were fueled by my curiosity and desire to experience everything I could and if there was a chance that it was a little dangerous well, all the better. I was a quiet child around adults and no one would imagine that I would do anything dangerous. But I was often the catalyst for all the exciting and yes, possibly dangerous activities that I and my friends participated in over time. My friends knew it was going to be an exciting day if I preface a statement with the phrase, “Hey, I was thinking wouldn’t it be exciting if we…

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BOOMER

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Twins Susie on the left & Karen on the right

“Yeah, I have to confess I was born a long time ago. No, not in the caveman days, as you seem to think. But, in the 1950s. You don’t have to bug your eyes out like that. You are young, so young that your Wisdom Teeth haven’t fully erupted yet. Why don’t you sit down and let me tell you a story, and maybe you can come to a better understanding of why people my age have a different perspective than your generation does.”

Many people have described my generation’s childhood as idyllic. And in some ways, it was idyllic. That is if you only scratch the surface. And secondly, even though most middle and working-class people lived in similar homes, most kids attended public school. It doesn’t mean that everyone’s childhood was perfect. Every family was different than you might realize.

I grew up in the small town of Maple Shade. It could have been any small town in America. But mine was in New Jersey on the other side of the Ben Franklin Bridge from Philadelphia. Most families were large. There were six children in my family. Why you may ask would anyone want six kids? There was a reason for that, lack of adequate birth control. And the fact that many families were either Irish or Italian and therefore Catholic. And the Catholic church put the onus on birth control.

In other words, if you were Catholic, you were forbidden to use artificial means of birth control, including condoms. They did allow the rhythm method of birth control that meant keeping track of when the woman ovulates. This was not a guarantee of unwanted or unplanned pregnancies. As I have explained, many families were large. I had friends who had fourteen siblings in their families. When the birth control pill was first made available, only married women were allowed to get it with their husbands. Doctors would not prescribe birth control to single women.

I recall when I was about fourteen or fifteen years old, my mother confided to me that when she was younger, she envied women in town who only had two children. I can remember being somewhat taken aback by her statement since I was number six in our family. It made me feel like she thought I was a burden that she wished she hadn’t had. I don’t think she meant to hurt my feelings. She was expressing how she felt being a mother of a large family. Still, her statement hurt me.

My mother was a kind and caring person. She put all her energy into being a parent and wife, which left precious little for herself. I rarely saw her sit down. In fact, even at meals, if she took the time to sit down and eat with us. She would get up and down, wait on everyone, and clean the table off and wash the dishes. She never asked for help, and none was offered. She wasn’t a great cook, but she was a great baker of cakes and cookies. Almost all the meat was fried except for roasts, which we had once a week on Sundays. She fried the meat in the bacon fat leftover from the bacon she fried on Sunday mornings.

The rest of the time she spent cleaning the house, endless washing of clothes, and ironing. I remember coming home from school, and she would be standing at the ironing board ironing the seemingly bottomless basket of clothes and sheets. There was no wash and wear clothes back then.

My mother was a quiet woman; she would listen while I recounted my school day. She undoubtedly grew tired of my complaints of how I hated schools and the nuns that taught me. Since from my perspective, they were mean spirited. In reality, they were overcrowded with fifty or sixty students in each classroom. Whenever I had a  difficult day and had been punished for one reason or another, my mother would offer to go up to school and talk to the nun in question. That would put an end to my complaints for a while. Since I was terrified at the thought, she might tell the nuns what I had said. And I believed they would go to even more extraordinary lengths to punish me. I had already been locked in the boiler room all day, had my head banged hard on the blackboard, told I was stupid daily. And compared unfavorably to my sister.

Now you may think this was just because I attended a private school. But no, corporal

high school graduation picture

Susan Culver- high school graduation picture

punishment was the norm in all schools in those days. And so was verbal abuse.

“Oh, you want to know if I have any good memories. Yes, plenty. Because my mother and most mothers back then were so overworked, they didn’t have time to micromanage their children. We were often told to “go outside and make sure you are home on time for lunch or dinner.”

And the fact is, neither my father nor my mother ever questioned what I was doing or where I went. If my mother said, what did you do today?” I would answer, “I was out riding my bike with my friends.” And no further questions were asked. Even if I had been gone for five or six hours, I guess it was all a part of the “Don’t ask, don’t tell mindset of their generation.

And believe me, they should have asked, because my friends and I would ride all over the place on our bikes. Sometimes several towns away. We used to sneak into swimming pools at the hotels on route 73, which were only a fifteen-minute bike ride from my house. I used to like to take long walks by myself and often talk to people I didn’t know. If someone asks me if I would like to come in and have a cookie, I would say,” Sure, I love cookies.” And off I would go with strangers. Luckily, no one ever hurt me. My parents never ask what were you doing all day? If we came back alive, then all was good in their minds.

There was no stranger- danger back then, no fingerprinting; on the other hand, the schools did have a bike safety lesson, so we all knew we were supposed to ride our bikes on the right-hand lane. So, there was that; we were completely unprepared.

And corporal punishment wasn’t off the table if you got into any terrible trouble, like talking back to the teachers or your father. Suppose you didn’t have a desire to live longer. Talk back to your father, and even I never did that. Well, I did talk under my breath, but my father was partially deaf and didn’t hear me.

We weren’t given an allowance, so if you wanted to buy anything, you had to become an entrepreneur at an early age. I started babysitting when I was about eleven. I loved little kids, but I really didn’t have any experience since I was the youngest in my family. It was a learn on the job kind of thing.

I used to walk all over town and pick-up soda bottles. Then I would take them to the local store and turn them in for either 2 cents or 5 cents. After I got the money, I would spend it on candy at Schuck’s. It was a store that sold candy, hoagies and had a soda fountain, and had a Jute Box in a separate room, and the teenagers used to dance in there.

You could say that my generation was the first to recycles glass bottles and then spend it at local stores, which benefited everyone. Plus, we picked up the glass bottles that were left in the street.

If I didn’t spend the money on candy, I would feed my addiction to comic books. I was a die-hard enthusiast for Superheroes and Wendy the Witch, and Casper the Ghost. I used to buy them and then sneak them into the house. Before I graduated from grade school, my father found my comics stash and it was the last I ever saw of them. Of course, I never questioned him. Since I wasn’t interested in my father being angry. You didn’t want to see my father angry, believe me. It was a terrifying sight.

When it was time for me to enter high school, my parents decided to continue our Catholic School education. We had to take a test to get into the Catholic high school. There were two Catholic High Schools, Saint Mary of the Angels Academy and Holy Cross. By some miracle, I passed both tests. My parents thought an all-girl school was the best choice.  So away, I went to four years at St. Mary of the Angels Academy in Haddonfield, NJ. I wasn’t a good student as I rarely put much effort into schoolwork or homework due to being told how stupid I was since first grade by the nuns and my father. So, I thought, why bother? I won’t be able to do it anyway. I had no self-confidence at all.

People try to keep in mind if and when you have children that children believe what you tell them about themselves. If you tell your child he or she is stupid repeatedly, they believe you.

In my senior year, the Principal of St. Mary’s Sister Eileen Marie called me into her office and told me they had found a job as a dental assistant for me in a nearby town. Since I had nearly all the credits I needed to graduate; I started working part-time there until I graduated. And so, I did, and I worked there until I was twenty-one or so.

I found out that I was indeed quite competent, capable, organized, friendly, and outgoing. And the most surprising thing of all I realized that I was not stupid as just about every adult told me most of my life, but I highly intelligent. I believe Sister Eileen Marie had insight into me that even I wasn’t aware of until I started working. And also, Sister Venard taught me French for four years. She encouraged me and assured me repeatedly that I was indeed capable of learning French. And here I am some fifty years later, still able to read and write French to some degree. And for these two dear sisters who believed in me, thank you.

And so, straight out of high school, I had a full-time job that taught me many things, including a sense of responsibility, being organized, and be reliable and trustworthy. And I believe I have done just that my entire life. I have always given my all to every job to every commitment I ever made.

When my parents were in their last years, my mother developed dementia, and my father was diagnosed with lung cancer and emphysema. These were long, sad, painful days. They passed away eight months apart.

The years when my children were young, and I watched them grow and learn and hopefully taught them what they needed to know in life and left them with some happy memories that will remain with them long after I’m gone. I was fortunate to learn what intelligent and incredibly talented people they would become.

At thirty-six, I decided to go to college. I didn’t have the opportunity to do that at the traditional age out of high school. My parents didn’t have the money, and at the time, I wasn’t inclined to go to school when I graduated from high school. Then, my father believed and shared with me that it was a waste to send girls to college since they would end up just getting married and having children. This was not an unusual belief for fathers in 1969. Girls and young women were not looked at as people that really needed higher education.

I prepared a portfolio of my work and applied at three different schools: Temple University, Moore College of Art also in Philadelphia (an all-girl university and Hussian School of Art, which was at a school that concentrated on graphic arts and illustration. I was accepted into all three schools. I was offered a full scholarship for my first year at Temple and grants for some of the three years after that. I never made a better choice than going to school. It was hard because my children were relatively young, my oldest was six, and my youngest was three. I graduated in the top 10% of the entire Temple graduating class in 1991 with a double major in Graphic Arts and Art Education with a teaching certificate when I was forty-years-old.

If I had a wish, it would have been that my parents were still alive to see me graduate. I wonder what my father might have said to me on my graduation day.

After graduating from college with a teaching degree, I found out that schools were phasing out art in schools across the North East, and retiring teachers were not being replaced. I was unable to find a teaching position. It was beyond discouraging.

I decided to find a job helping children. I worked at a residential treatment program in Alloway and New Jersey called Ranch Hope. I was a houseparent responsible for kids from the inner city, Camden, NJ. The courts had adjudicated them. These were boys at risk because of poverty, drugs, gang violence, family problems, or kids who grew up in foster care tossed from one family to another. When I left, I was the Assistant Supervisor in Turrel cottage with fifteen boys ages fourteen to seventeen. Also, I took these boys to Scared Straight Programs in Federal and State Prisons to speak to prisoners and hopefully learn from their experiences.

My next position was in Camden, NJ. At Project Cope, I worked with five churches with kids at risk and matched them to mentors in the churches. I also visited all the prisons in South Jersey and Philadelphia area to talk to incarcerated parents about their at-risk children.

And now here I am thirty years later after a lifetime of hard work of being a wife, mother, student, and advocate. I’m retired, it’s true. In the last four years, I have become politically active. My husband Bob and I were volunteer Captains working in Elizabeth Warren’s Campaign for President. During the last election, I was a volunteer for the Democrats in Johnston County here in NC.

I  started this blog in 2018 and wrote one or two stories a week since that first story was published. I volunteered in the NC courts protecting at-risk children with the Guardian ad litem. And I volunteer three days a week at an animal sanctuary taking care of exotic birds for the past four years.

I look to the young people to take the torch I and the rest of my generation carried, and it’s time to pass it on. And know that I and the majority of my generation worked hard, did what we thought was right. I know we made mistakes along the way. And we tried but did not always succeed in leaving the part of the world we lived in a better place. Nothing was ever handed to us. We worked for it every day.

Please try not to judge us too harshly. Know that most of us did the best we could and forgive us for our mistakes along the way. Be aware that your generation and the ones that come after you will judge you as you are doing to us; your generation will make its share of mistakes and realize as you get older.

And here I am now in the Winter of my life and have concluded that overall, I have lived a good life with ups and downs as everyone has. There had years when things were so bad that I didn’t want to get up out of bed, but I did anyway.

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GROWING UP CATHOLIC IN AMERICA IN THE 1950-1960’s

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I was born in 1951at the height of the Baby Boom, which followed WWII. Hence the name Baby Boomers. I was one of a pair (of fraternal twins) Baby B was born seven minutes after my sister, Karen. Catholic families often had many children due to the fact that the only form of birth control that was allowed by the Catholic Church was the” Rhythm Method. Not a particularly reliable birth control method.

Susan Culver- high school graduation picture

We were a part of the ever-growing number of families in the working class. My father was the dispatcher for SEPTA the public bus company in Philadelphia. I grew up in a neighborhood of similar but not identical homes. We all had big backyards. We always had food on the table and clothes on our backs. I was the youngest so it was not uncommon for me to get the hand-me-downs. As did all the youngest in large families in our predominately Irish and Italian neighborhood in Maple Shade, NJ.

There was no “extra money.” However, since most of my friends were in the same boat, I did not consider it a big deal.

Being Catholic in a Catholic neighborhood also meant attending Catholic School. All other kids who didn’t go to Catholic school were called “The Publics.” And for some reason, we were told that this was a fate worse than death. If we misbehaved, we would be threatened with being sent to public school. Something akin to being sent to the third circle of hell.

The Classrooms were often too small for the large numbers of students occupying them. We often had to share books and desks. In first grade, I didn’t have my own desk right away and had to sit on a windowsill.

We were taught by nuns. Who considered themselves to be “brides of Christ.” In elementary school, I had St. Joseph nuns in high school I was taught by Franciscan nuns. The Saint Joseph nuns were a particularly strict order of sisters. They wore heavy woolen habits. Made from yards and yards of fabric. Their “habits” were fitted at the waist with voluminous skirts and a “belt’ that resembled a large rosary with a huge crucifix that hung down in the front. It clicked and clacked as they floated by seemingly without touching the ground. On their foreheads, they wore a “wimple” which was stiff as cardboard. And another piece that covered their chins. And a huge, white bib, that covered them from their necks to their chests, shoulder to shoulder.

I often wondered if they had hair underneath their veils. We were told never to touch the sisters for any reason. They were untouchable. I often wondered if they had ever been regular human beings or entirely another species. We were never brave enough or bold enough to question their words or their behaviors. No matter how unfair or unfathomable it seems to us.

Part of my Catholic School experience was wearing “uniforms.” The Our Lady of Perpetual Help uniform (OLPH) for girls was a maroon jumper with a white short-sleeved blouse, and saddle shoes, which were black and white. And a “beanie,” which was a maroon wool cap with a maroon wool-covered button on the top. Girls had to keep their heads covered at all times, especially in church. The boys wore dark pants, a white shirt, and a tie. The wool uniforms were itchy and uncomfortable especially as the weather became warmer. In the winter, girls were allowed to wear pants under their uniforms outside. But once inside, we had to take them off.

We were expected to stay neat and tidy at all times. My mother was kept busy washing and ironing our uniforms. The nuns kept order in the classrooms at all times. We were not allowed to talk back, or ask questions. Or heaven forbid chew gum in school. If anyone was caught with gum, they were forced to wear it stuck to the end of their nose for the rest of the day. If your behavior was out of line, you would sit in the corner. Your name would be added to a list on the blackboard. It was on there more than three times, you would be in for a world of trouble. And you warned it would go on your “permanent record.”  Which we were told would follow you around for the rest of your life. The final threat was you would be expelled and never heard from again. This would be the ultimate embarrassment for your family, of course. What would the neighbors think?  The sisters were not beyond using physical punishment, either. Rapping the knuckles with a metal-edged ruler, slapping, knocking the more rebellious boys down a short flight of steps. And name-calling, such as stupid, or lazy, was all too common a punishment.

There were some rewards in Catholic School too. You could become a hall monitor. Or you would be given a responsibility such as clapping the blackboard erasers. The greatest honor was being the child who crowned the Blessed Mother statue in the May procession.

On the first Friday of every month, we were all marched up to the church for Confession. There was a lot of pressure involved in going to Confession. Which was considered a Blessed Sacrament. Coming up with good sins to tell the priest, aside from the usual I got in a fight with my brother or sister, I lied. I was a quiet child and didn’t always have good “sins” to tell the priest. Sometimes, I felt compelled to “make up” more interesting transgressions. After Confession, we all had “pure souls.”

On Sunday mornings, we all went to the Children’s Mass at 9 am. During the Mass, if you were foolish enough to commit a transgression, the sisters would come up to the aisle where you were sitting and click a little metal clicker they had in their deep pockets.

My aisle often got into trouble because I always felt a compulsion to make all the girls in my aisle to start laughing. I would do this almost every Sunday without fail. Make a face or fart and cause a domino effect when my friend next to me would laugh, and then each girl next to them to giggle. The nuns would be clicking like crazy. We would be kept after school and punished by having to diagram sentences. Over fifty years later, I can still diagram a sentence.

In Catholic School, the curriculum was basic: reading, writing, arithmetic, history, spelling, science, spelling, English, and, more importantly religion. We had religion every day. In this class, we were given questions and we had to memorize the answer. If you weren’t good at memorizing your career in Catholic School was at risk. It turns out that I have an excellent memory. And I always received straight A’s in Religion and History and spelling. We’re not permitted to question these Religious beliefs. You were expected to believe on Faith. Anything less was considered a sacrilege.

Another important skill all good children needed to learn was the Palmer Method of Writing. We spent endless hours writing in blue books. We filled these books with strokes and ovals. It was tedious and a waste of time, and I was terrible at it since I was bored. We were using dip pens in bottles of ink. By the fifth grade, there were cartridge pens.

At that time there was a great deal of excitement about the Space Program. And a TV was brought into the classroom so we would all observe a space rocket being launched from Cape Canaveral. Not everyone had televisions back then. It was exciting to watch.

As far as sex education, in the eighth grade, we received a lecture. Of course, the boys and girls were in different rooms. The girls learned about menstruation. A very vague explanation was given and pictures of something (supposedly sperm) swimming towards a waiting ovum. No questions were allowed, and we were warned not to discuss this with the boys. One girl was assigned the important task of smuggling the little booklets out of the room under her jacket.

God knows what version of the truth the boys were told. I was still trying to figure out what a hickey was, let alone how someone got pregnant. No one bothered to tell me about the physical manifestations of menstruation, and I had three older sisters.

When it was time for my sister and me to attend high school,  we had to take entrance exams. We were both accepted into St. Mary of the Angels Academy and Holy Cross High School. My parents made the decision that we would attend Saint Mary of the Angel’s Academy because it was an all-girls high school.

I was a shy girl all through my high school years. St. Mary’s was located in Haddonfield, NJ. Which was a higher income area than Maple Shade, NJ, where I grew up. There were some benefits to attending an all-girl school. One was girls didn’t have to fight for attention because there were no boys. In grade school, the nuns always called on the boys. Girls were told it was a known scientific fact that we could not comprehend Math or Science. Many girls at St. Mary’s found out that they were quite intelligent. In fact that they could excel in both Science and Math. We also had a basketball team that competed with other girls’ teams throughout the state of NJ.

The Catholic School system taught me many things: reading, writing, math, history, and basic knowledge of Science, French, and a smattering of Latin. It also taught me self-control, discipline, and determination.

However, it took me years to overcome the lack of self-esteem and inhibitions that sometimes overwhelmed me. Catholic high school did protect us for four additional years from the harsh realities of life. But I don’t know if they did us any favors considering the turmoil of the seventies that awaited us.

SUSIE-KAREN

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My sister and I were born on May 24th, 1951. We were the fifth and sixth child born to Marie and Hugh Carberry. My mother didn’t know that she was going to have twins, and so when I was born seven minutes after Karen, I was a surprise. I have always hoped I was a pleasant surprise.

Carberry Home Maple Shade, NJ 1950

We lived in a small stucco house in Maple Shade in what was then considered to be rural New Jersey. My family had moved from Philadelphia, Pa. to NJ.  They didn’t own a car at that time and arrived in Maple Shade by taxi.

Carberry Family

Mother, Harry, Jeanie, Eileen, Betty,, Karen and Susie 1951

My brother Harry was nineteen years old at the time, my sister Jeanie was fifteen, Eileen was eight, and Betty was seven. This was back in the day when birth control was not all that reliable. My mother gave birth to twin boys a year after Karen and I were born. They did not survive. They were called Stephen and Gerard. My fraternal grandmother Elizabeth Carberry moved with my parents.

One of the unfortunate experiences of being a fraternal twin is that people seem to be unable to remember who is who. When we were young, people often called us Susie/Karen or, more often, Karen/Susie. Whenever anyone saw me, people would ask, “Where is your better half?”

My twin and I couldn’t have been more different in our appearance. She had dark brown curly hair, and I had straight blond hair. She grew faster and looked older than I did. And I well I was quiet and shy and imaginative.  She was outgoing. Throughout our childhoods, My sister and I were often compared although Fraternal twins are no more closely related or similar than and other siblings.

It is only recently that I found out just how uncomfortable that Karen had me for a twin as a child. Although of course, there were many indications throughout our childhood and our lives.

I started this blog a year ago and began writing my memoirs, my sister, Karen took exception to my interpretation of my childhood experiences. And she felt the need to explain to my readers her feelings about me. And she posted this comment on my blog. I have to say I was hurt. Although it wasn’t all negative. Here it is:

“This is Susan’s twin sister.
We couldn’t have been more different in our likes and dislikes, and our thought processes Susie was a person that kept almost everything to herself. So, there are many things I never really knew about her until we were older. And she was able to transform herself and to a normal and open person. We really didn’t become friends until we were adults and married. We are close now and have been since we were young adults not that we haven’t had our differences of opinions and outlooks that we came to appreciate and respect one another for our differences and more interesting she is always surprising me with the different pursuits that she continues to develop throughout her life she never sits down she’s always going. It has made her a wonderful person.

At the end of September, She called me. She was angry.  My sister let me know in no uncertain terms that she didn’t like the memoirs I have written, and she wasn’t going to read them anymore. She didn’t explain what I had said or why it bothered her so much. Karen also said she wasn’t going to read my fictional stories either. This upset me since I have always supported her in everything she has done. And this was the first time I ever asked her to do anything for me. As a result, she hasn’t spoken to me in five months. Even though one of the final things she said to me was that she had always been able to forgive people quickly, apparently, that ability did not apply to me.

In the last several weeks, I decided to attempt to gain a better understanding of why my sister, as a child, felt having me as a sister and a twin, was a liability. I have reflected on my childhood behaviors.  At one point in our late adolescence, she yelled at me, “if I ever run away, it will be because of you.” I recall responding,” Me, what did I do?” I have pondered this question many times of the years, and I believe I have finally come up with the answer. Karen just wanted to be an ordinary girl with an average family. And then there I was big as life, and somehow inadvertently calling attention to myself by being so different. And because I was an unusual child, my differences reflected on her. Because we were in the same family, and in the same classroom for the majority of our school experiences.

These same differences are what have enabled me to become an artist, a writer. These are not character flaws.

I have to admit that many of my closest friends were of the four-legged variety. I befriended every cat and dog in my neighborhood and any ones I met along my path in life. I also had a best friend that lived two doors down from me and neighborhood friends and school friends. Karen and I had some friends in common we just never went to visit them at the same time.

As a child, I was often content spending time by myself and recalled going out and sitting in the backyard and watching the birds flying in the sky. And I have clear memories of being able to imagine myself being a bird and flying across the sky. One-year, when we were probably seven or eight. My sister and I were given chicks for Easter. I named my chick Maverick after a character on a TV show I watched. I used to walk around my neighborhood with Maverick on my head. It never occurred to me that it was unusual or weird. But even if it did, I would have done it anyway.

I recall watching a movie called “The Flower Drum Song” about a beautiful young Japanese woman.  I was about eight or nine years old . I became enamored with the music and how beautiful the woman was, and for a few weeks, I pretended to be Japanese. I put my hair in a similar style as she did and walked with the kind of shuffle she had because she was wearing a kimono and wooden shoes. Of course, I wasn’t wearing the shoes or the kimono, but that didn’t stop me. I don’t recall my parents or siblings asking me, “what are you doing” Why are you walking like that?” I would have explained it if they asked, but they never did. I suppose they just thought I was acting weird again.

My sister and I shared eight years in the same classrooms in Catholic Parochial School. She avoided interacting with me. She never acknowledged that I was her sister. It was not uncommon for the other kids, not to know that we were siblings. Many people thought my friend Helen and I were the twins. In high school, My sister and I were in different classes, and I rarely saw her. At home, if we talked to each other at all, it was usually an argument.

It’s unfortunate that Karen didn’t get to know me when we were children. Possibly she would have realized that I was an interesting and intelligent person with a wide variety of interests, including art, sewing, animals, writing stories, and reading on every subject imaginable.

Someday hopefully not too far in the future, she will reevaluate her feelings towards me because the clock keeps ticking and time is slipping away. And none of us know when that time will run out for us. Perhaps she will come to realize that what other people think about our family makes little difference. What is important is what we mean to each other. And our acceptance of who we are with our strengths and weaknesses. I’ll always love my sister. She is in my heart.

As a final note, I would like to add that I have observed that creative people share some common traits. They can have a rapid flow of ideas, sometimes, multiple concepts at one time. Also, they have acute sensory skills, strong intuition, heighten awareness, empathetic, and tuned into other people’s emotions and feelings. I have some of these traits myself. Also, when I attended Temple University at Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia at the age of 36-40, I observed these traits in my fellow students. Being creative can be both a gift and a challenge. You are often seen as too sensitive, too much of a perfectionist. I can not stress how often I have was told I was too sensitive throughout my entire lifetime.

And finally, I would like to say in a world where you can be anything, be kind.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Goodbye Beautiful Sister

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I grew up in the small town of Maple Shade in Southern New Jersey in the 1950’s and sixties. At that time Maple Shade was populated by a mixture of Irish and Italian Catholic and Protestant families. My family was Irish Catholic.

You couldn’t ask for a better place to grow up. We were a family of eight living on a tree-lined street called Fellowship Road. Our stucco Cape Cod house had four-bedrooms. It was located two doors down from Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church and the OLPH Elementary School. We heard the church bells peal out whenever there was a Mass, wedding, funeral, or christening.

Father’s old car

When I was young, my parent’s bedroom was on the first floor, and my older brother Harry was across the hall from them. Harry was nineteen years old when my twin sister, Karen and I were born. In fact, he drove my mother to the hospital when she was in labor with us.

My three sisters and I shared one bedroom. While my oldest sister Jeanie had a room across the hall, she was fifteen years old when Karen and I were born.

In the room I shared with my three sisters, Karen, Eileen, and Betty there was little in the way of decorations aside from a crucifix on the wall. The front half of the room open to the eves of the roof. It was large and uninsulated. There was only one heating vent. The room was freezing in the winter, and unbelievably hot and humid in the summer.

The floor was a worn green linoleum. It had small, circular indentations from my sister Jeannie’s high heels. A queen-size bed resided on the left side of the room. My twin sister, Karen and I slept on that side. And my sisters Eileen and Betty slept in the other bed on the right side of the room.

My parent’s conversations downstairs in kitchen drifted up through the heating vents in the floor. My father always seemed to be unduly concerned with the number of garbage cans our next-door neighbor, Mrs. Rice put out. And that she had the unusual habit of cutting the grass in the rain. We always knew what we were having for dinner since the aroma made its’ way up through the vents.

Our bedroom had one window. It faced the Lombardi’s house. Their bedroom windows face ours. The Lombardi’s used to have loud arguments, although some of it was in Italian. We could hear every word. My father installed an exhaust fan in the window in the summer that would suck all the hot air out. The fan was the only thing that kept us all from expiring through those long, summer nights. We would pull the sheets over our heads to avoid the mosquitoes buzzing our ears and biting us.

The only thing that occupied the eves was a pole that ran the length of the space. We hung our clothes on that pole. Whenever I was alone, I would try on my older sister Jeanie’s gowns. I would dance and spin around the room. Jeanie had worn these beautiful dresses to formal dances and as a bridesmaid in her friend’s weddings.

One day when I was about nine, I decided I would cut some of the fabric off of one of her gowns. I wanted to make some pretty dresses for my dolls. Needless to say, my sister, Jeannie, was upset with me. I wished I could take back my careless act. I was afraid she would never forgive me. But she was a kind and forgiving soul, and eventually, she did.

It may sound strange, but I felt very lonely in that room full of sisters. Karen and I were fraternal twins, but we didn’t spend a lot of time together. We had different friends. I was a different kind of child than her. I was gifted with a lively imagination and made friends with all the dogs and cats in our neighborhood. My sister, Jeanie, was fifteen years older than I. My sisters Eileen and Betty were one year apart. This was called Irish twins. Eileen was eight years older, and Betty was seven. It might as well have been a hundred years.

My oldest sister, Jeanie

The day arrived when my sister, Jeanie, left for good. She was getting married and moving to White Plains, New York, with her new husband, Patrick. I will always remember how beautiful she looked that day. She came upstairs to say good-bye to me. I knew it was her before she stepped through the doorway. I heard the click, click of her high heels on the linoleum floor as she came up the steps and through the hallway and into our bedroom.

She was tall, even taller in her heels. They were very high and had a black bow with a rhinestone clasp on top. I pretended to be asleep.

“Susan, I know you’re awake. Come and say goodbye. I won’t leave until you do.”

I looked up at her. I loved my sister Jeanie most of all. She had a wonderful sense of humor. Whenever she was home, laughter filled our home. I thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world. I hoped that I would grow up to look just like her.

She had short, shiny black hair, and high cheekbones. She wore tangerine-colored lipstick. Her eyebrows were perfectly arched. Her eyes were blue-grey and slightly slanted. They sparkled when she laughed. She had an exotic look. As if she was a princess from some far-away foreign land.

Her laugh was contagious. She possessed a great sense of humor. She was fun to be around, always joking. It was easy to love Jeanie.

That day she moved out of our house, she wore a lavender suit with a silk blouse. Whenever she wore this suit, she would say, “Susan, did you know this was Marilyn Monroe’s favorite color.” And on her earlobes, she wore pearl earrings, that were ever so slightly tinted a pale purple.

She leaned down and kissed me on the cheek. She smelled like the honeysuckle that grew in our backyard on a warm sunny afternoon. She whispered in my ear,” I’ll see you soon, Susan. I’ll miss you.” I closed my eyes tightly, but a tear escaped and ran down my cheek. I felt a knot forming in my stomach. It began to ache.

She turned and walk out the door and into her future while I was left behind. I decided then and there I would never wear high heels, and I never did. After she moved away, the house seemed somehow empty.

She had left her beautiful gowns behind in the eves of the house, and when I missed her, I would put one on and dance and twirl and spin in the eves, whenever my parents weren’t home.

Sweet Tooth

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I didn’t get it from any stranger.  My mother has the same addiction. She joneses for Peppermint Paddies. It started innocently enough. At first, I would nosh on a bag of shredded coconut or a miniature box of raisins on our front steps. You know, the ones I’m talking about, the one with the dark-haired little girl with the bonnet on her head. It wasn’t long before that didn’t do the trick for me. I needed more, better, sweeter.

Finally, the day arrived when my mother decided I was old enough to learn how to cross the street. “Susie, take my hand and watch what I do, and cross the street with me. Don’t let go of my hand.

After we practiced this a few times, she felt I was ready to take my maiden flight alone. “Remember what I said: look both ways, look right, then left, then right again. Then cross the street when you are sure there isn’t any traffic coming in either direction.”

“Ok Mom, I know how to do it, you don’t have to watch me anymore,” I assured her.

Finally, I was free to roam not just my side of the street but everywhere in town. Maple Shade was mine for the taking. My first destination was Shucks. I heard all about it from my older sisters, Eileen, and Betty who worked there on their school lunch breaks.

When all the other students from Our Lady of Perpetual Help Elementary School would go home for lunch, they would head around the corner to work for an hour at Shucks. They made milkshakes, malted milk, and hoagies.

In exchange, they would get a free lunch, anything they chose to eat. They were always talking about it, saying how all the cool kids in town went there after school, eat French fries, and dance to the 45’s on the Jukebox.

Well, I had a nickel that was just burning a hole in my pocket. No sooner had my mother watched me cross the street than I was off and running. I took a shortcut through Mrs. McFarland’s yard. She was out in her yard, as usual, weeding her garden.

“Hello, Susie, how are you doing today? Where are you off to in such a hurry?”

“Oh, hi, Mrs. McFarland, I’m just going around the corner.”

Mrs. McFarland is a nice lady. And sometimes my friend Joan and I sit on her garden swing and play dolls. She would bring out her doll from when she was a little girl to show us. It looked really, really old. It had a face made from china and had real hair.

Other times, she would take me for a walk on her garden path and tell me the names of all her flowers, explaining the special care each flower needed. Her favorite was her tulips, which she explained had come from some far-away place called Holland. She told me how she had to dig them up each summer and replant them the next year. “Bye. Mrs. McFarland, I’ll see you later.” And I was off and running again.

As I rounded the corner to Main Street, I saw my friend Joanie’s father driving down the street and waved at him. He pulled over to the curb and rolled down the window. “Hello, Susie, what are you up to? Does your mother know that you crossed the street?”

“Yes, you know I’m not a little kid anymore!”

“Alright, be careful when you’re crossing on the way back.” I was almost home free. I came up to the door, as two teenagers walked out, I ran in. They laughed and said, “Look out where you’re going kid!”

Candy from the 1950s &n60’s

There it was. I couldn’t believe it, the holy grail of candy counters. I stood before it, transfixed by the amazing assortment of candy. There were red-hot dollars, dots, ribbon candy, licorice, red and black gumdrops, wax lips, and every kind of chocolate candy imaginable. I stood there, with my mouth watering, almost immobilized by the decision that lay ahead of me. A lady came up to the counter,” Hi dear, what can I do for you?”

I said,” Well, I have a nickel, and I want to buy some candy.”

“You do, well you just take your time and decide which ones you want. It’s penny candy, so you can get five pieces of candy for a nickel.”

“I want a licorice whip and a red-hot dollar, bubble gum, dots, and oh yeah, I want wax lips.” She took a small paper bag and put my booty in one at a time.

“Here you go, sweetie. Now, don’t eat it all at once.” And she handed it over to me.

“Thanks,” I said as I was walking towards the door. Two girls walked in, but I was too busy looking in the bag to notice that it was my friends Helen and Teresa from school.

“Hi,” they both said at once to me. I mumbled hello and took off for my house. I couldn’t wait to get my first taste.

After that first bag, I couldn’t stop thinking about getting more, but the problem was I didn’t have any money. Then, I came up with the idea of collecting the coins from the church floor that people dropped during Mass on Sunday.

And so that’s what I do. Every Sunday afternoon after church, I walk up and down between the pews collecting money. I’ve become a regular customer at Shucks’. I wish I could tell you that I feel guilty, but I can’t. Life has never been sweeter!