WHEN A CHILD IS BORN

Years ago I was appointed by the bishop to a small church in the Pine Barrens. It was a historic old church across the road from the Smithville Inn, a grand old restaurant that once was an 18th century stagecoach stop.  The congregation was small when I went there (8 people in the pews on my first Sunday, and one of them was asleep), but we managed to get attendance up to 75 eventually due to a new development taking place in the area.

However it was a slow crawl to get there making progress. In December I decided to hold a Christmas Eve service, which is something they never had had before. The church leaders were a bit skeptical, but I convinced them that we should give it a try. They agreed to that and even got excited and got busy decorating the sanctuary. A group of men managed to get a huge Christmas tree from one of the local Christmas tree farms—probably 15-20 feet high. 

On the morning of Christmas Eve, I went to the grocery store and bought some paper bags and small candles to put some luminaries along the walkway up to the church front door. No one had ever seen them before, and as various people drove by the church, they would roll down their car windows and ask, “What are you doing?!” My answer was, “You’ll see tonight. Make sure you come to the service at 7:30.” 

When the people started to arrive, a few of the church members helped me light the  luminaries once they saw what I was doing. It looked beautiful outside that old church, if I do say so myself. The atmosphere inside was almost in grand Victorian style with the wains coating walls and ceiling, lovely new chandeliers which we had purchased several months before and the candlelight along the aisles. 

The  congregation was thrilled to see their old church packed with people like never before, people singing Christmas carols at the top of their lungs. I remember preaching a sermon I titled “When a Child Is Born,” inspired by a song of the same name. I actually sang that song with my guitar in the service and invited the congregation to sing along with me. All of this by candlelight!

We didn’t have a Christmas Day service, but we didn’t need to because people were filled with the season’s spirit enough to have a truly joyous day of family time and feasting around their table. I know that because the next Sunday, people were still talking about the Christmas Eve service and the feelings they had when they saw how lovely and full their church was. As for me, I felt that a child had been anew in all of our hearts that night.

As a result of that service, we added some new worshippers, including the manager of the Harlem Globetrotters, for whom I later did a wedding. And some of our new people, formed a small choir that sang almost every Sunday. 

My Once A Year Hometown

I got a set of Lionel Trains for Christmas one year. Along with that my parents also each year gave me some buildings to make a village. The company that made them was called Plasticville, which I think is still in business—at least I’ve seen some of those buildings on eBay and have been tempted to get some, purely out of nostalgia because I don’t have my electric trains anymore.

A few weeks before Christmas my dad would work on setting up a train platform, around which my trains would travel through the little village, Being an electrician, he took great delight in wiring the platform with lights over which the buildings would be placed. In the center of the platform would be our Christmas tree which we would have gotten in the Pine Barrens—a delightful smell of the long-needle white pine to come down to all through the Christmas season.

One year they added to my train collection by getting me a milk car which contained little milk containers that you could put on a platform merely by pushing a button. What fun!

My first Plasticville building was the train station; then after that came some houses, a police station, a fire house, a gas station, a frozen custard stand, a diner, a hospital, a bank, a grocery store.  It really was a wonder, especially at night with the lights around the village, and my imagination going to work, bringing it to life in my brain and heart. 

One year my dad brought home a timer from work and set the train to run automatically, stopping and starting all by itself. I give that mixed reviews based the fact that it was out of my control. But then i realized that the trains were as much his as they were mine. And that’s as it should have been! Why shouldn’t he have the joy of such a childhood treasure—especially since he used to tell me that the only thing he got for Christmas as a child when he was growing up was an orange. 

Alas I don’t have Lionel Trains anymore! I have often thought of getting some and maybe someday I will. But when our grandson comes over, he loves to play with the little wooden train set we have. His father, Pete, usually makes the track layout and I get to play along with Rowan.

ALWAYS A SHEPHERD

As in just about every Christian church in the US, my home church had an annual  children’s Christmas pageant. Helen Johnson was in charge—very in charge. She was a fourth grade teacher in my elementary school, and she was also in charge there, so to speak, but that’s another story. Being a soft spoken, timid child, I was intimidated to be in her presence. I’m not sure why. She wasn’t a mean person at all—just strict, and she was a member of my church, Medford Methodist Church.

My parents did not go to church in those days, but they made sure I went to Sunday School. The truth is, though, my sister is the one who took on the responsibility getting me there.  She taught Sunday School and so I would go along with her, though I wasn’t in her class.

Meanwhile, back to the pageant and Helen Johnson. For me, it was always a mixed event. It was exciting because something was happening that was related to Christmas, which was the biggest and most joyful day in the whole year as far as I was concerned. It was magical in the truest sense of a child’s imagination to conceive of. And it wasn’t just about Santa and gifts, though I have to admit that those was certainly important to me. But there was something about the atmosphere of the world and my home and our town’s various festivities that was not like any other time.

So the annual Christmas Pageant was part of the spirit. It was held in the sanctuary with its dark oak pews and woodwork, including the mysterious enclosure for the organ pipes. It would be tastefully decorated for the season—holly, pine branches, red ribbons; and Helen would sit in about the fourth row from the front, from which she would direct the drama and manage the lighting, such as it was. 

Of course we had a couple of rehearsals, but with little children, rehearsals were mainly to familiarize the whole operation for the adults who would be giving us our cues, so to speak. 

Every year that I participated (maybe three years), in spite of my shyness, I would silently hope to be a Wiseman with their royal purple garments and crowns or Joseph the father of Jesus. But, alas, I was always a shepherd. Typecasting, I suppose, since I was more of a blue collar kid (the days before “blue collar” was not necessarily related to political views. In fact, my father, an electrician, was an avid Democrat). 

Truthfully, I don’t know that that had anything whatsoever to do with me being assigned the role of a shepherd. In these days of my life, I have since realized that that was the appropriate role for me. I was not the Magi type nor in any sense did I possess the dignity of Joseph. Also in these days of my life, what’s the matter with being a shepherd?  Answer: nothing. And anyway, I ended up being a shepherd for my career, so they say.  Turns out it was type-casting after all.

ONE CHRISTMAS I WILL NEVER FORGET

I get very sentimental at this time of year because it was always an exciting and joyful time in the house in which I grew up. I don’t mean that every year was flawless in that sense. There were years when there were financial problems for my parents. One year, for instance, the company for which my dad worked went on strike, and at the same time, he was physically suffering from bursitis in his shoulder. I remember him pacing the floor in agony.

That year we were delayed in getting our usual Christmas tree. To add to that, there was a significant snowfall. It was a few days before Christmas and things were looking pretty bleak as far as holiday festivities. Suddenly my mom said to me, “Come on, Jack. Let’s go down the street to Harriets and get a tree.” My mother was a little woman whom you wouldn’t think could have conceived of going out on such a night. But she was determined we were going to have a tree.

Harriets was a gas station down the street from where we lived. It was actually a forerunner of that kind business in that it included a small store for such things as Wonder Bread, cigarettes, candy, a pinball machine, and most importantly, ice cream. And in that particular year, the manager, Lloyd Parks, was selling Christmas trees.

So my mother and I bundled up and headed down the hill on Main Street with the snow swirling around our heads. To add to the adventure, we took no money with us because my parents were fresh out of cash (no such things as credit or debit cards in those days). My mom asked Lloyd, who knew us very well, if we could get a tree and we would pay for it after Christmas when my dad’s strike was over. It was small town America and Lloyd wouldn’t hear of that—“Just take one! You don’t owe me anything!”

I remember trudging back up the hill in the blowing snow—both of us delighted that we had a tree. My dad felt terrible that we had to do that without his help, but we assured him that we were fine and happy that we had a tree to decorate. And we did!

I don’t remember that there were any gifts under the tree. There probably were because my parents loved that season so much, including  the gift-giving part of it, carefully wrapping presents and putting them under the tree for Christmas morning. And we always had a great Christmas dinner of either ham or turkey and all the extras that went along with it.

I’m sentimental about that because it was a time when my parents seemed to be at their happiest—though there were other happiness times too. But Christmas had a special warmth in our household. I am also sentimental about it because my mom and I were a great team the night we got the tree down at Harriets, and thanks to Lloyd Parks, the tree was also a gift under which other gifts went too.

Bobbie Had a Nickel

Today for some reason I was trying to remember some of my favorite toys and books from childhood. I know that sounds like a strange thing for a 79 year old man to spend time thinking about when so many much more significant things are happening in the world at the moment. 

The inspiration, though, came from a Billy Collins poem I read. I won’t go into great detail about that—suffice it to say that he has a poem entitled  “Bathtub Families.” (By the way, I highly recommend his poetry as a way for sheer enjoyment and imaginative reflection on life.)

When I read this one, which I have read many times before, for some reason this time it suddenly inspired me to think about the joyful treasures of childhood even though he wasn’t talking about childhood.

My sister and I not too long ago were talking and reminiscing about our early years growing up at 77 South Main Street in Medford, NJ. She remembers reading stories to me (she’s 11 years older than me) and in particular, one that I constantly asked her to read: Bobbie Had a Nickel. 

(I didn’t buy it , but still available on eBay)

Of course I had a Slinky and ran it down the wooden front stairway. Then there was a Canadian Mounted Police costume I got for Christmas one year because I use to listen to “Sergeant Preston of the Yukon” on the radio and later when it came to TV. I think I was about 6 (Funny I almost wrote 60). 

I had a toy movie projector which actually showed cartoons and short 16m movies excerpted from feature length films. And I loved the board games that my parents and I played sometimes in the evening: Pahrcheesi, Checkers, Chinese Checkers, Old Maids, and of course, Monopoly, among many others. 

Not all things from my childhood belonged to me. One of my best friends had electric scissors. I was over at her house one day when it raining and she got out those scissors which I thought were the coolest things ever. I remember just wanting to keep cutting paper with no particular design in mind. (She was much more artistic than me.)

Probably my most favorite toy was my set of Lionel Electric Trains. My dad made a train platform for them to run on and we put together a village with a train station, fire houses, police station, hospital, bank, a diner of course and a few houses. That is also what our Christmas tree sat in the middle of (Plasticville). 

I’m sorry I’m rambling on, but if any of you would be interested, you could use the comment section of this blog to tell about any of your favorite childhood toys. I’d be very interested and would perhaps create another blog posting just about that. 

In the meantime, my reason for this whimsical, and I guess, sappy post is simply as a kind of distraction from other things going on in the world that I don’t always want to think about.

Small Town Doctor

The usual way of putting it is that he brought me into this world
but that would ignore the fact that my mother had a lot to do with it as well, bearing me in her womb as she did for 9 months or so (not intending to omit my father’s contribution, as it were.)

Doctor Small was our family healthcare system in the days long before Penn Medicine, Capital Healthcare, Robert Wood Johnson and many other such extensive medical practices of the present age. 

His office was in a house on Branch Street in Medford. When you went there, you entered a room that historically may have formally been a sun room for a family before him. But it was lined with very nice wooden colonial arm chairs along the walls. The last to enter sat in the last empty chair in the row, and as each person or persons were invited into the inner office (announced by him personally), you moved around until you were “next.” By the way, that was the way barbershops also maintained crowd control in those days.

There were some exceptions, and for some reason I was one of them. My father would usually go with me, and Doctor Small would come out into the waiting room and see us and no matter where we were in the chair lineup, he would say to us, “Johnny, Morris! Come in! To this day, I don’t know why because there was nothing about my family that would be of any social importance to him at all. By the way, he’s the only one in my life who called me Johnny.

Nonetheless we were given special attention, even though my family lived on South Main Street where, with a few exceptions, the common folks lived. North Main Street was where, with a few exceptions, the more “elite” folks lived. So I guess there was  something about us personally that appealed to Dr. Small.

Dr. Small was also the doctor who was given the responsibility of visiting my elementary school for checkups such as hearing tests, etc. On those occasions, he showed no favoritism or partiality, which was just fine.

He was a great story teller, especially with regards to Maine, where he had a summer home. He would weave stories about his neighbors up there and how backwoods some of them were. But he found them both amusing and interesting at the same time. And, I have to say, he made them come alive when he described the way they looked and some of the peculiar habits they had. I sat spellbound listening to him tell his tales.

I don’t remember at what age or why I stopped going to him, but I was still seeing him when I was in my first year of college at least. And I’ve never known what happened to him—when he died or anything about his burial or anything else. He was one of the last of the small town doctors who still made house calls and charged only two dollars for each visit. No charge for cough syrup or any other meds. 

The reason I’ve written about him is because he was a truly unforgettable person in my life who made me feel important. As you’re growing up you are influenced by so many adults who can either help you or hinder you in feeling good about yourself. He made me feel that I was somebody important.

One of the last things he told me when he learned that I was thinking of going into the ministry was “Johnny, don’t get carried away with your self importance, If you can’t save someone in ten minutes, just stop preaching and sit down.”  

By the time I finally made it through college and seminary, I had long since lost track of him, but I have to admit that I didn’t follow his advice. On the other hand, I’m not sure I did any more soul-saving in 20-25 minutes than10, if in fact I ever saved anybody, so to speak. But THANKS, DOC, wherever you are!

UNCLE JOE’S CHRISTMAS TREES

(The following is an excerpt from my memoir, still in progress. It falls into the portion about the most memorable people of my life—a  section that is proving to be much longer than I had anticipated.)

Uncle Joe was a man of few words. When my aunt died, he would frequently come to our house and sit in the living room and just be—to use a spiritual description of his presence. Every now and then he would say something which caught us off guard and probably made us pay more attention than if he were a man of many words. I don’t think that was an intentional strategy on his part, it was just simply who he was.

 

He was a welder by trade and no doubt a good one. He and my Aunt Almyra (aka Aunt Maurie) lived in the family homestead on Branch Street, in which my father and my Uncle Ernie had also lived during their growing up years, along with my grandparents of course. The sibling lineup was: Aunt Maurie was the oldest, my father was next, then Uncle Ernie.

 

Uncle Joe had a couple of beehives from which he showed me how to extract the honey. I watched him with wonderment as he pulled the trays out of the hives, not wearing any protective equipment, bees landing on his bare arms and buzzing around his head. If he got stung, he never let on—again, a man of few words.

 

I guess he has come to mind recently because Christmas is on the horizon and our Christmas trees always came from his property in the Pine Barrens. They were long-needle white pines, one of the most fragrant and sweetest-smelling of all the trees in the forest. 

On the established day, we would get into our ‘46 two-tone green Plymouth and go into the woods to pick out the perfect tree for that particular Christmas. It would be in the center of the platform around which my Lionel trains ran through a little Plasticville village,which included a service station, hospital, a train station, a few houses, a post office, police station, a few other things—all to my great delight.

I suppose I could say that the sweet-smelling needles of Uncle Joe’s Christmas trees were like being vaccinated with true Christmas joy and wonder.