A SATURDAY SAGA Part 1

           

          On any given Saturday in the summer, when I was a kid, my parents might announce that we were going to go visit our relatives in Tuckerton, which also meant that we would be going crabbing. At that time of year, the crabs would have migrated into the briny creek waters fed by the Great Bay, and we would go to one of the clam and oyster docks with our crab lines, net, and a bushel basket to be filled for feasting.

          The crabs didn’t need much coaxing to be lifted out of the water, clinging to the bait we tied to the end of our lines. One after another would sacrifice itself for the sake of some “tasty” delight we were offering, and my dad would scoop them up and into the net. Most of the time our bushel basket would be completely filled, and Dad would cover the crabs with seaweed for the ride home in the trunk.

          When we got home, my mother would be cooking up the crabs in a big pot on the stove, and Dad would be standing at the sink, opening and downing the dozen or so clams that he bought at a clam house just before we left Tuckerton to go home. It was a regular event every summer and sometimes twice in a summer. Often my aunt and two cousins would be with us, and we would all get excited each time someone had a crab on the line as if it were the first time it happened.

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          Summer Saturdays in my childhood during the 1950’s always had something going on. If it wasn’t crabbing, it might have been going to the beach on LBI or on the boardwalk at Seaside or Atlantic City. Or it might be a day of playing all day with my friends, building a tree house, hanging a Tarzan rope, exploring the woods and beyond, going swimming in the creek, riding bikes around the countryside. The possibilities were endless.

          Saturdays in the life of a kid in those days, growing up in Medford, NJ had a unique feeling, at least they did to me. I really can’t describe it or explain it—they just felt different. And if I close my eyes, sit back, take a deep breath, and concentrate, I can recall that feeling, albeit for just a few seconds. And if you’ll pardon my sentimentality, as you’ve had to do for several other blog postings, I would like to share with you something that I don’t believe I’ve shared before. If I have, my apologies, because I am well-known in the family for telling the same stories over and over until everybody is looking at one another, rolling their eyes, trying to think of a way to politely make me stop.

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          One of the things gave Saturdays a particular feeling is that I would occasionally work with my father when he would be doing an electrical job on the weekend for someone in town or in the surrounding area. Doing that, I learned just enough, as they say, to be dangerous. But weekend jobs for him were a sideline because his fulltime job was in Philadelphia at SKF Industries. And I’m not sure he made much, if any, money on those weekends, but he did them, sometimes as a favor for a friend or sometimes just because that’s the kind of guy he was—kind, easy-going, and an overall nice person.

          He was very patient with me as his “helper,” but I did do some things for him that I know he would have rather not or could not have done by himself, such as crawling in tight spaces under porches, feeding wires through certain walls so that he could grab them at the other end. Things like that. But, by and large, the work itself was not the only thing that I think of when the memories of those days come surging back into and through my brain.

          What I think of mostly is the time spent with my dad and the various places we worked. One of them especially came to mind the other day when I was reading a book about the Pine Barrens (Medford, by the way, is on the edge of the Pine Barrens—thus my wife takes great delight in calling me a “Piney”—which I don’t mind in the least). The place was located in a town or settlement called Retreat. I’ve not looked, but I’m pretty sure you won’t find it on any map. The closest town near it is Vincentown, but that’s beside the point for what I want to say.

          So one Saturday my father told me to get ready because he needed me to be his helper that day. I don’t remember if I had other plans or not, but if so, they didn’t happen because we were going to do a job in Retreat, which in those days, I had never heard of. As we travelled along back roads, I was staring out the window, wondering where in the world we were heading. Eventually we came upon an old ramshackle of a house, and I remember thinking to myself, who would live in that old place? And as fate would have it, or my father would have it, one or the other, that was exactly where we were going. We were going to be doing electrical work in that very old ramshackle house.

          I have to confess that I was a bit uncomfortable because I had never been in a place like that. When we went inside, I wasn’t any more comfortable, probably less so, because the people inside were a heavyset, late middle-aged woman and two men who looked rather scraggly and the overall sense was that they might be very poor. The house was filled with clutter. A few cats wandered around here and there, a saucer or two of milk on the floor, a kitchen sink with a hand  pump, a kitchen table covered with an oilcloth table cover, some pots and pans on the drain board.,

          My dad, being who he was, seemed to be quite comfortable with them, smiled and made small talk. Then they showed him what they wanted done and where. I don’t remember the exact job we did, but we were there all morning, and at noontime, they made lunch for us. It was, and I remember this very well: eggs, bacon, canned peas, and toast. At first I was very sheepish about eating, but they insisted that I needed to eat something. And I did—and it was delicious, though probably not very healthy.

          I don’t know if my dad got paid at the end of the day, but I did. My pay was in learning not to judge someone just because their lifestyle does not come up to some superficial standard that you set in your psyche. That was thanks to my dad because that's the kind of man he was, and to the people in the ramshackle house—very nice people who were friendly, maybe poor, but not poor in spirit.