Tag Archives: home town

YOU GOT IT MADE IN THE SHADE

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Maple Shade, New Jersey, is the name of the small town where I was lucky enough to spend my childhood until I moved to my own apartment in Haddonfield, New Jersey when I turned twenty-one. 

Maple Shade has a long history dating back to 1672. It was originally an agricultural community. And was called Chester Township. It wasn’t until 1947 that the Carberry family moved there in what was still primarily a rural township but one that was growing and becoming more modern.

By the time I arrived, it was a thriving small town with its own downtown where there were several banks, a post office, a police station, and its own fire company. The downtown consisted of a bakery, Ben Frankling 5&10, a Rexall Drug Store, and an A & P Grocery store, and we had our own Doctor’s office consisting of Dr. Hartman and Dr. Bukley. And my favorite haunt, The Ice Cream Stand.

As I look back over my life, I realize that I was lucky to grow up in Maple Shade in the early 1950s. I doubt I could have had a more idyllic childhood anywhere else. The fact that I was a part of the baby boomer generation played a great part in it. My generation was given a tremendous amount of freedom by our parents. When we weren’t in school, we were allowed to go and come as we pleased. As long as we came home in time for lunch and dinner. My parents never asked me where I was going before I went out for the day. And when I returned, they didn’t really inquire what I had gotten up to or whose house I went to. 

In addition to the downtown section of Maple Shade, there were Tar Pits. Where my friends and I would spend hours exploring and digging and looking for treasures, of course, my friends nor I would tell our parents what we were up to, which made it all the more fun for us.

And then there was the Roxy Theater on Main Street, where we kids could go to see the latest movies for twenty-five cents on Saturday morning. I can remember so clearly the Saturday that my friends and I attended a movie at the Roxy Theater called the Village of the Dammed. About these eerie blond-headed and blue-eyed children with extraordinary intelligence that were targeted by the government because they feared they were aliens who might take over the planet. It was a scary movie for that time period. And then, when my friends and I left the theater after the movie, all the kids started pointing at me and saying I was one of these creepy children, as it just so happened that I had blond hair and blue eyes.

In addition to the theater, Maple Shade provided a bus ride back and forth to a roller rink in Riverside. A town about a twenty-minute bus ride away. Where we could use roller skate all day for fifty cents, and that included the skate rental. I spent a great deal of my time falling down and getting up. And saving myself by slamming into the wall. I wasn’t a very good skater, but I loved it all the same.

The Forth of July was the best day of the year for kids. First, there was a parade that went down Main Street all the way up to the border of Lenola. We would all decorate our bikes with red, white, and blue streamers. And then, after dark, the kids in Maple Shade would go outside their houses with sparklers and run up and down their streets.

But my favorite, by far, was Halloween. As soon as it got dark out, all the kids in town would go out in their homemade costumes with empty pillowcases and go to every house in town to collect candy. And when that pillow case was full, we would stop at our homes and empty them and go out for more, and that included stopping at all the stores downtown and the police station. When we got home with all our goodies, we would go through the candy and separate the good stuff, chocolate, from the not-so-popular treats like candied apples. There was nothing that I loved more in life when I was a kid than candy. It’s hard to believe that I still have most of my teeth in my mouth.

But the absolute best holiday was Christmas, which also had its own parade in which Santa Claus was the main event. He would ride in the biggest, gaudiest float and throw candy at all the kids in town. The Main Street in Maple Shade was decorated from top to bottom with Christmas decorations and lights. Santa Claus would make an appearance at the Roxy Theater on stage and give out gifts to the kids at the Saturday Matinee, and then we would sit and watch a Christmas movie, and we would get a box of candy to take home with us.

Overall the memories that stand out the most to me of my childhood were the absolute freedom that we had as children when we were not in school on holidays, but most of all, during the long, hot summer, we could come and go wherever we wanted to. Our parents would say, be careful and make sure you get home in time for dinner. In the summer, we were allowed to go out after dinner until it was quite dark, and then we would hear our parents calling us at the top of their lungs that it was time to come in. And when we finally did arrive home, we were told not to let any mosquitoes come into the house. But, if some mosquitoes did manage to come in, we would spend the next hour trying to annihilate them. Because if one got in your room, one would get little sleep because of the constant buzzing in your ears. Not to mention all the mosquito bits that itched like crazy.

And this is hard to believe, but in the summer, there would be mosquito trucks that would travel up and down the streets, and we kids would follow behind them on our bikes, never realizing that the spray was DDT and toxic. Apparently, our parents had no clue either.

But that is one of the things about childhood. There are many bumps and bruises along the way, but if you survive them all, you grow stronger and fearless. So, when you finally outgrow your childhood, you are ready to face the bigger challenges of becoming an adult with all its slings and arrows.

So, yes, Maple Shade and all the similar little towns in America during the 1950s and ’60s were a great time to grow up and discover just what you were made of, and prepare you for a life that would be both challenging and full of both joy and sorrows. And frankly, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

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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.