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Singing a Nickel Song

Singing a Nickel Song

I am back from western Pennsylvania and I am home alone again.

My wife stayed to help her mom.

Sunday afternoon I was sitting alone on the couch in my basement watching the Steeler’s play the Titans when a bug literally flew up my nose.

“Seriously?” I said out loud as I snorted and shivered.

“A bug just flew up my nose?”

Ironically with everything that has not gone well this crazy year of 2020, the Steelers began this game 5 and 0 for the season.  Though they were winning early in the fourth quarter, they did their best to set up the typical Steelers nail biter finish by pretty much letting the Titans catch up.

But it’s just football in a year when everything that has happened or equally as important, isn’t happening makes it just trivial.

On the way up to Pennsylvania last week I took a break at my usual stopping place, a McDonalds in Clear Springs, Maryland.  Returning to my truck I found a nickel on the pavement.

I had to think but don’t remember the last time I saw a nickel.

 

When I was a kid growing up in Oceanport, New Jersey I lived on a dead-end street. Once my dad finished building our house on property he bought from my mother’s parents, there were seven houses on the street.  According to my mother, my great grandparents owned all the property on the street at one time.  What was not sold off was left to my grandmother. The street was called Willow Court because of the numerous willow trees that grew on the end closer to the river.   Access to my street was via my little town’s bustling business district that we referred to as “downtown” and off one of the main roads called Oceanport Avenue.  As you made the turn it did a dog leg right up to where it ended with an apple tree.

Oceanport had a variety of commercial establishments “downtown” and how you remembered them depended on what era you identified with.  Art’s liquor store was one, Art was the grandfather of my first friend John who lived in a house on the river behind the liquor store.   Our friendship was arranged between our moms since we would soon need each other to walk to school because we were starting kindergarten that year.  We remained friends a long time.

There were also three gas stations or service stations as they were known back then;  a drug store called Park’s Drug store, and a couple of luncheonettes.  Bob and Norma’s was on the river side, and also sold convenience items like cards and razor blades, and deodorant.

I once bought my grandfather some Old Spice deodorant from Bob and Norma’s for his birthday.  I am pretty sure that was his best gift ever.  My mother even worked there as a “soda jerk” when she was in high school.

Next to Bob and Norma’s was the Village Market run by a guy named Frank Callahan.  His son Kenny would join my friend John and I and become good friends from kindergarten.

Being just over the bridge from the Army base at Fort Monmouth, we had three barbershops and three bars that kept busy.  In the middle of all these businesses was a large, very old house which was owned and occupied by my great grandparents when they were alive.  When I was a kid however, it was then left to my grandmother and had four apartments which she rented out.  In my family we referred to it as “The Big House.”

I was very familiar with nickels growing up as a kid in the early 60’s because our kid currency mainly consisted of nickels and pennies.  We worked for those nickels and pennies by scouring the properties around those businesses for deposit bottles.  You could get two cents for a small size bottle like an eight ounce Coke bottle or a nickel for a larger twenty eight ounce bottle.  With those three bars, the liquor store, the three service stations with soda machines, those luncheonettes, and the market, we had the deposit bottle business locked up in that neighborhood.

Throw in a whole lot of GI’s in town with the Vietnam conflict ramping up, and the Monmouth Park Racetrack less than a mile up the road when horse racing was in its heyday in the 60’s and yup, the bottle deposit business could be lucrative.

And this was before there were litter laws.

Bottles were everywhere.

 

As a result, an enterprising six or seven year old could do pretty well.

We would just go find our days’ work of bottles, take them over to Callahan’s market, plop them on the counter, and wait for our payout.

Then we would take our earnings and head down the street to Park’s Drug store to do our part in helping the local economy.  Mr. Park the pharmacist was kind of grouchy and scary but the guy that worked for him, Rios was always happy.  We could get our Bazooka Bubble gum for a penny, or maybe some baseball cards and gum, or Beatles cards and gum, or on a good bottle day maybe even an ice cream sandwich.

As I got just a little bit older the bigger money could be made raking leaves.  I could actually get a quarter or two out of my grandmother for raking leaves.

I hated raking leaves for my grandmother.

But work was work.

You had to take it when you could get it.

And in the winter, my brother Carl and I would team up and shovel snow.

We would walk the neighborhoods and knock on doors and shovel snowy sidewalks.  That was really the big time because a sidewalk in the snow could be worth a buck or two.  We split it 50/50, but most times we just ended up in the luncheonette eating our profits.

 

Life was very different.

A nickel like I found and tossed into the console of my truck maybe never to be seen again, had some value then.

On Sundays we went to church and Sunday School in the morning but because businesses were closed due to Blue Laws we couldn’t do much else on Sunday afternoons.

We had Sunday football on TV but it was in black and white, and baseball was still the big attraction back then so not too many paid attention.

And since blue laws meant the bottle deposit business was shut down too, maybe I raked my grandmother’s leaves, or helped my dad the basement as he built something (I hated that even more).

Now we don’t go to church on Sunday mornings because of COVID, but we can go shopping till we turn blue.

Go figure.

Well that’s my two cents worth or five cents worth, but luckily you don’t have to take it when you can get it.

 

As expected with 14 seconds left the Titans just needed to make a 46 yard field goal to tie the game and send it in to overtime.

Then the snap… the hold…Gostkowski’s kick was up…

And it passed just right of the uprights.

He missed, and the Steelers went to 6 and 0.

Maybe a bug flew up his nose?

 

The moral of the story?

 

Hard work pays off?

We need to return to a life that was simpler?

or

It’s best to be alone when a bug flies up your nose.

 

Post Script:

Make sure you get out and vote!

The Rose Ceremony

The Rose Ceremony

I could be handy, mending a fuse
When your lights have gone
You can knit a sweater by the fireside
Sunday mornings go for a ride
Doing the garden, digging the weeds
Who could ask for more?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I’m sixty-four?

From When I’m Sixty Four by Lennon and McCartney

 

The song When I’m Sixty Four was released on the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album in May of 1967.  It is said that it is one of the first songs written by McCartney when he was just sixteen years old.  Quite an accomplishment at such a young age to try to project what it might be like growing old together in a relationship.

Sounded perfect.

Who could ask for more?

 

 

The Rose Ceremony.

A single rose always means “I love you.”

As the first gift of a husband and wife, they exchange the single rose each holds.

Remember, in every marriage, there are times when it is difficult to find the right words; difficult to say “I am sorry” or “I forgive you.”

If this should happen, the gift of the rose will say for you.

“I am sorry.”

“I still love you.”

And the other should accept the rose for the words which cannot be found.

 

I celebrated my 64th birthday this past weekend.

Kim celebrated her 59th birthday on Monday.

And twenty years ago today Kim and I said the words and exchanged the roses as part of our wedding vows.

It was a simple wedding.

With the exception of Kim’s sister Kathy and my brother Gary, the wedding party was made up of kids.  Some ours, some not ours.

Pastor Lee Crosby officiated on the first day of work with his first assignment right out of Divinity School at the Sterling United Methodist Church.

The reception was simple, catered by the local deli with a keg of beer and box wine and held at our townhouse.

The next day we bolted up to New Jersey for a second reception at Monmouth Park’s Clubhouse outdoor patio for the Jersey group.

We even had a race named in our honor, and a photo in the winner’s circle.

 

 

I think there was a time for both of us when we didn’t feel we would get this opportunity.

Answered prayers I always called it.

The past twenty years have gone by quickly.

We were talking the other evening while hunkered down in the compound which is our backyard where we find ourselves a lot lately, our marriage has never been stressed.

Not that we haven’t endured stress, in fact, we have had unbelievable stress.

But it’s never affected our relationship.

We had our four kids.  And they provided plenty of opportunities for us and our relationship to be challenged.

But that never happened, even in the worst of situations.

And we had some Holy Spirit heavy lifters.

 

Now I find myself sixty-four and like in the song, growing old together, and realizing the growing old part may present the biggest challenge in life that I, or we, will face.

My lyrics, however, might sound more like:

I could be handy, clean the garage

When your patience is gone

You can sit and relax by the fire pit

In the morning go for bike ride

I’ll do the garden, dig all the weeds

Clean the bathrooms too!

Will you still need me, I will still feed you

When I’m sixty four!

 

And true to our Rose Ceremony, there were more than a few times when I had to cough up a rose to bail myself out.

Wait, now that I think about it, I may have been the only one coughing up roses the last twenty years, I might need to go back and read that Rose Ceremony fine print again…

Seems I may have been the only one ending up in those situations for which words cannot be found.

 

Truth is…

I couldn’t ask for more.

Happy Anniversary Baby