Cedarwood Soap, Caramel, and Sea Breeze Memories from the Jersey Shore

The day started out like a typical workout day:

Dog walk, Coffee, Spanish, Carboload, out to the park before 9AM.

I seem to enjoy going around in large lazy circles on plastic wheels with ceramic bearings.  Ceramic, like your coffee mug made out of Sapphires.

Long story, I won't go into that here.

I was out at Mills Pond Park in Fort Lauderdale.  If you aren't from the area, this is the same park that Jackass did some scenes for their own insanity.  Jumps and leaps over partially submerged ramps is not my preferred way to get Beta Endorphins.

I did my 18.7 miles for the day and came home.  That would be 30.09 KM if you're counting.  Good day for a workout too, temps in the high 70s, light winds, bright sun... that sort of thing.  Even the grounds were watered in a way I could get through them.

Kids, don't try this at home.  I have Ceramic Bearings in my boots so I CAN get them wet.  If you try that with "regular" skates, they will rust solid before you can get them cleaned at home.

After having lunch it was time to clean up.  Shower time, Coach!  I selected some music to play on the speaker and set the volume.

Classic Disco Mix.  I was feeling retro today.  I do that frequently.

One other thing I do frequently is make my own soap.  I have been for a few years now.  I do it so I can dial in the quality I demand, the scents I want, and just the right amount of moisturizing.  It works well and it helps me work through the chemistry that I aced in High School.  The teacher was a big stoner and used to give us labs that we would finish while he went out and "relaxed" with the math teacher for a bit.

He also knew that I was there and would help people out.  I used to get 99.5% or better of theoretical results on my Chem labs. 

So my soap is down to a science as well.  I have a couple scents that I like but this one... well it gave me a flash back to childhood.

It was a "Cedarwood" scented bar. 

If you are a Jersey Boy like I am, and no I don't mean like those Noo Yawk Idiots that go and do the Jersey Shore nonsense on TV, you know the scents of the Boardwalk.

I mean "Boardwalk" as in Atlantic City.  I also mean "boardwalk" as in Ocean City.  Both in New Jersey.  Almost everyone there were from South Jersey and Philly anyway since we were inconvenient for the New Yorkers to get that far South.

It's "Boardwalk" in AC.  And ONLY in AC.  Because someone named Board built the thing.  Anywhere else it should be in lower case. 

There's a "scent" to that part of the Jersey Shore.  Think Cotton Candy, Popcorn, Caramel from the Salt Water Taffy, Roasting Peanuts, and when you walk into a store, Cedar.

A quirk of these Boardwalk and boardwalk shops was that you could find trinkets all made of Cedar.  Smelled like "Mom's Cedar Chest". 

And so does that soap.

There I was finishing up soaping my head with Cedarwood Soap, and I tend to not send that stuff out when I make bricks since it's for me.  On pops Bonnie Pointer singing her heart out that "Heaven Must Have Sent ... You Baby, For Only Meeeee"!. 

I'm getting a childhood flashback.  Sitting in Dad's Old Buick Limited.  It became mine after he died.  The timing is a bit odd since I'm conflating a couple Jersey Shore Memories, but stick with me. 

When you're driving a Big Old Buick down US 30 towards ACY you hit a curve around Pomona NJ.  That's where you get that smell from the Jersey Shore.  First dad would say "Hey smell that salt air" to us, and we'd breathe deeply.  In the summer he would switch off the air conditioning in the big car so we could smell it.  Pomona was where the "thermocline" was and the temperature would drop a solid 10 Degrees F on the right day and you got nice and cool.

Then as you got closer to your destination you would catch that smell from the shops.  I swear they pump that stuff out the windows of the shops so you would be dragged in.  It's like being near a Cinnamon bun place in a mall, Remember Malls?

Of course we would go in there and get some stuff to give our pre-teen selves a sugar high and head to the water to look for shells and clams and lay out for a "couple-a-hours".

Down-a-shore we would go.  Dig a hole, hit the water table in less than a hand's depth, and build a drain for it to get to the ocean and you would have a sand castle with a moat.

I was in that shower, warm water, cedar scented soap, and finishing up with Bonnie Pointer singing.  It all reminds me of when we piled into that Buick later those two weeks between High School and College for a vacation.  Me and my buddies in a cheap hotel room doing the last gasp of childhood.  We drove down and hit that spot in Pomona and rolled down the windows and took it all in.

So if I catch a whiff of my own private stash of Cedarwood soap I just may be thinking of Ninth Street Beach in Ocean City, NJ and if the radio is playing just the right track, I'll be smiling.

Hey, youse wanna go downashore?  Just watch for those seagulls, they'll steal yer food right from yer hand!

When Summer Comes, The Traffic Cones Sprout Near The Jeep

When the universe wants to mess with your head... 

It leaves you Traffic Cones.

Living as close to The Bars in Wilton Manors as I do, I see a lot of strange things.  I have seen people coming home from the bars on foot, wandering around aimlessly, and even had some clown fall asleep in my garden.

That is a story for another time.

This time, I am thinking a similar fate happened to this cone.  From what I can tell from the road rash on the base of the thing and how it was left on the driveway, I have a story to tell.

Some random person came to my town, and visited the Arts and Entertainment District on Wilton Drive.  They probably had a rather nice time there, dinner, drinks, maybe some dancing.

Once they were through, they decided to take a drive and come home.

I have to assume there was some impairment included because I now have a new traffic cone.

Their car had hit the cone, dragged it along under the car.  Either when they pulled in to my driveway here to inspect the noise, because there is always noise when you run over a traffic cone, or when they threw the car into reverse it left the thing there, the cone remained.

I am in the back of the house here, away from the parking areas, and away from the street.  I sleep with earplugs.  I did not hear a thing.  

When I got up, put on enough clothes to take Mr Dog out to water the hedges, and walked past the gate, I spotted the thing.  When I walked over to it, I laughed at it because it reminded me of a younger me and a trip through Cherry Hill and Haddonfield, NJ.

You know, where they set the Halloween movies?  Michael Myers?  Haddonfield was a town east of Cherry Hill, where I grew up.  The movies were shot in Illinois, and the name came from the writer knowing South Jersey.

Living in Cherry Hill, you knew Halloween was in Haddonfield (even if it wasn't shot there) and was southwest of you, and Voorhees was Friday the 13th and was east of you.  Ok Jason?

I have been driving Jeep Wranglers since 1997 continuously.  They fit me, and they let me go where I want to go comfortably.  My head does not hit the ceiling and that is important.

Well before then, I had a Jeep CJ7.  Much rougher ride, and I eventually got rid of it because it hurt my back riding long distances. 

One night I was doing a similar thing.  Coming home from the city, I had a ride on the PATCO Hi Speed Line that took you from Center City Philadelphia to the Suburban South Jersey of my youth.  I got off in Haddonfield, and mounted my CJ to ride home.  

I think I may have wanted to wait another hour before I did get into that old Jeep because somewhere in Haddonfield, I clipped a different cone.  It hooked itself on the steering linkage on the front end and I kept going.  By the time I left Haddonfield, and came up Brace Road towards my childhood house, I heard that scraping.  

I shrugged and pulled into the driveway there.  Not waking Mom, or my sister, I looked under the Jeep and there it was.  

"How on earth?" I said as I pulled the cone out.  I left it in the front of the driveway and came in to sleep the rest of the night away.

So there you have it.  The Universe wanted to remind me of that trip and give me a gift of bright safety orange plastic.

I had to tell the neighbor, Diane, about this story, and she was laughing as I was.  She's welcome to this new cone, I have two of my own to protect the property from ne'er do wells and partiers when she moves out to her new home.

Welcome to the neighborhood.  Strangeness happens and you find things.

50000 Miles in 18 Years in a 2002 Jeep Wrangler, 45 Minutes to Air Up 5 Tires

 

I don't drive the Jeep as much as I would like.

I've had it since Chrysler was taken over and then neglected by Daimler, right around Xmas 2002.

Give or take a few weeks.   I'm sure I could find the specifics but it isn't really that important.

They had "Zero Point Zero Financing" and I really hated that the earlier Jeep I had had an Automatic Transmission.  

To me, it needed a stick.

I have been driving Jeep Wranglers, and the CJ7 I had back in the day, longer than anything else.

It just fits.

I have plenty of room.  It's thirsty but I don't go that far.  2778 miles in a year on average.

But every time I get in it, I smile.  Sure, it's basic and primitive, but it is beyond fun to drive.  

This is the "Bulletproof Combination" of that car.  4.0 Inline Six Cylinder, 5 speed Manual transmission.  Soft top if I want to have the sun bleach my hair and tan my skin on the way home from where ever I want to go.

Like I said, I don't drive it often.  I was working behind the TV set next to the window and when I stood up, I noticed through the living room window that one tire was low.  It meant I had to get into the car and drive somewhere to get the air back in the tires.  When I got "there" the air pump was not working no matter how I begged. 

On the way home, I noticed I was very close to 50K so I got the phone out and took a picture.

Really, I should not take pictures while driving.  40 MPH in a Jeep and I was just due to shift up into the next gear.

I got home and let him sit in the driveway.  Having to get the portable air compressor out on that afternoon meant I wanted to try it out with the power pack.  Nope.  Snapped the circuit breaker immediately.  

As it was, each tire would take 5 to 10 minutes to air up.

I pushed the car forward and settled in to sit around doing nothing for the better part of the hour.  Wait, check the watch, lather, rinse, repeat.

It gave me time to think. 

Jeep needs a bath.  Too much dust on it from the beach 2 1/2 miles away, the Bahamas, and the Sahara across the ocean.

Check the air, move to the next tire.

Wave at the neighbor.

Check the Mailbox.

Sit on the front bumper and stare at my boots.

Check the air, move to the next tire.

The air compressor is getting warm.

Started thinking.  Some day I really do want to go back to visit New Jersey.  Sure, North Jersey is one ugly city and you can see the pollution from that and New York when you approach New Brunswick, exit 9 on the Jersey Turnpike.  

But I am from South Jersey.  Life is different there.  The air is cleaner.  Not clean, simply cleaner.  After all, at 40 Degrees North, the air flows from the Midwest Cities and drops the pollution on Philadelphia. Allergies are quite common.

My allergies vanished when I moved to Florida.  It's dusty but the air is always clean until the Everglades start burning.

I do want to go back.  I have a few trips I want to make.  Out to the Pine Barrens.  Beautiful pine forests, cedar creeks, hiking trails, and maybe drive the Jeep to the top of Apple Pie Hill to look at the stars.

Once you could climb the fire tower up to the outlook and look around.  Well over the tops of the trees, at night you could see Atlantic City, Philadelphia in the distance, and way up there on a very clear night, you could just make out New York City.

Can't do all that on flat tires can you?

With Covid, you can't do it at all.  It is also 1200 miles from here so visiting my Sister, Friends, and Family as well as climbing a muddy fire tower in the wilderness is off the table.

Check the air, move to the next tire.

Might want to check the other tires while I am at it.

Spare has no air.  Pressed the air pressure gauge to it and it didn't move.  

Can't replace a flat with a dead tire, that will take more time.

Back out to the front of the car.

Lock the house doors, I need to start the car after this tire hits 30 PSI.

Check the air, move to the next tire.

Wandering around the yard is getting boring.  Sit back on the front bumper and watch the parrots screeching in the trees, the buzzards making lazy circles on the updrafts North of downtown Fort Lauderdale. 

"Hey Buzzards!  We're not dead yet!"  Seriously they must be "Pinin' for the Fjords" or something.

It's time for the spare.  Last to go. 

I plugged the now hot compressor in to the spare, sat the compressor on top of it, and settled in on the bumper.

Bumpers are important.  If your bumper does not stick out past the nose of the car enough a simple tap in a parking lot will cause thousands of dollars of Sheet Metal damage.

I figure this one will take about 15 minutes.  I started the motor.

The Jeep roared to life and settled in on a smooth idle.

50,000 miles and not a problem.  

I know this car like the back of my hand.  Many cars at this age are rusting in a junk yard.  Jeeps don't.  They hold their value.  The motors were designed in the 1950s or 1960s by Willys/Kaiser.  Then a merger to form AMC.  American Motors.  Limped along into the 1980s and got swallowed up by Chrysler.  Chrysler was mortally wounded by the "merger of equals" with Daimler Benz.

Became Daimler Chrysler.  As the joke went "How do you say the name of the company?  Daimler, the Chrysler is silent."

Then with Fiat to become FCA, and the pending merger with Peugeot and who knows what else.

Meanwhile, I inspect the tubes, the belts, the tires.  I've fixed one of the most maddening problems with Jeeps.  The Check Engine light will come on and you may or may not get A Code.

I found my problem with a finger length piece of tube that cracked and was replaced.  A truly competent young woman helped me diagnose what I needed at Autozone up on Oakland Park Blvd. 

Helpful hint - if you are in a place where a woman is working and it is "non-traditional" for her to be there... Always, Always, Always go to the woman.  She knew her stuff.

Nothing wrong with my Jeep that a bucket of soapy water could not fix.  I may wash off the dust from the Sahara Desert off the car an ocean away, but not today. 

Today, smile on my face, it is time to take the Jeep for a lap around town.

Beep!  Beep!  I'm A Jeep!  I wonder how long it will take to get to 100,000 miles?

In Retrospect A Cadillac Wasn't The Right Car To Take Offroad

Admit it.  We have all done some pretty bizarre or boneheaded things in our days.

If you haven't, I bet you're not all that much fun.

Yeah, I said it.  You're not that much fun.

We all know someone who decided to launch a trash can onto the roof by putting it on top of a piece of fireworks then lighting it in their front yard.

We all know someone who used to build go carts in their back yards.

We all know that neighbor who insists that Raccoons are great pets.

All of that happened in my own childhood in my own sheltered suburban upbringing in the fabled city of Cherry Hill, NJ.

So get off your damn soapbox and hear the story of one of my own boneheaded trips.

You see, I like to travel.  Truly.  I like to get out and explore and see things not necessarily in my own backyard.  I used to go on my bike and ride out of my protected neighborhood to the wild place called Woodcrest Shopping Center.  It would take me out to Berlin Road, then over the I-295 bridge and the NJ Turnpike Bridge.

It was a world away, and it made me feel like I achieved something in my own pre-teen mind even if it was only a mile and a half off from the house.

Later when I got my first car, we started to explore.

I'd go down to a semi-adjacent town to visit a friend.  Somerdale, NJ.  An older settled burb that was a little less Wonder Years than my own home.  It felt different. 

We'd go further on until we got hooked on going offroad.  I still have my third Jeep Wrangler, but the first was a CJ-7.  The CJs were a rough buckboard of a car that were so uncomfortable that I traded it in on a compact car in Indianapolis after going for a visit one year.

But while I had it, I discovered the New Jersey Pine Barrens.

South Jersey is nothing like what "You People" think of when you think of New Jersey.  No closely settled homes in rows where you might get a good meal on a Sunday afternoon, those places have their own charm, if you grew to know them.  They're also kind of polluted, since they are too close to New York City or Philadelphia.

The Pines are where the roads turned to dirt.  There never was a real reason to settle these areas since the soil was basically beach sand and you couldn't farm other than Cranberries.  If you look from the skies all you see are pine trees, berry bogs, cedar water rivers, and small towns in the middle of a vast "empty" area.

But if you explore them, you find a beautiful forest unlike any other place that was surprisingly easy to get to.  They're latticed like a good pie, Cris-crossed by groomed fire-trails so that when the dry summer season hits, the fires can be stopped before they burn down those little towns.

You really didn't need a Jeep to go through those areas, but it helped.

We'd drive down to the Carranza Memorial and see the monument to the man who died flying back to Mexico to speak in New York about the children's fate back in the pre-war era.  Those same children saved their pesos to build that monument.  Now, you can get there and picnic easily since the state built a small parking area.

From there you can hop on one of those sand trails and drive almost all the way to the Jersey Shore without ever touching tire to tarmac except to cross over the road.  We'd stop at Apple Pie Hill to take in the view from the highest spot in South Jersey, a whole 205 feet or so, plus the fire tower.  On a good day you can see Atlantic City, Philadelphia, and if you are really lucky and it is clear, New York City was just in view.

Beautiful spot.

But most of that time I did it in my Honda Accord that predated the Jeep.  A 1978 Honda.  You had to hope it didn't break because parts had to come from Japan directly, and it rusted out by the second year in the front quarter panels because they designed little pockets for water and debris to sit in and corrode.

Surprisingly I didn't get stuck.

When Mom got her new car, I knew I had to go explore with it too.  Great.  Me and two of my friends piled into Mom's Car, an early 1980s Cadillac Sedan deVille D'elegance and headed out.

Mind you, since Jim was living in Medford, NJ, a beautiful suburban town on the edge of the NJ Pine Barrens Preserve, we knew we were going to see what this puppy could do.

Great, lets go to Atsion Lake.  Beautiful place where you were supposed to be able to see the Milky Way if the night was clear.  I never did.  I always believed it was a myth living in the light polluted areas near Philadelphia all my life.

But we got there.  Easy to get to, open two lane black top and we could open it up.  Nobody else there anyway.

I got a gallon of Pump Water for a girl I was seeing at the time since she always raved about how sweet the water was there.  It just tasted like iron to me so I let her keep the jug.

After boring ourselves, we hit the sugar sand road that went east toward Long Beach Island.  Not such a good idea.   The first couple miles were great.  We wallowed past a pothole or three, but nothing really tough.

See that's the problem.  Eventually those roads became the road less traveled.   Bringing a full sized Cadillac on a sand trail made no sense to anyone but us.  The pines closed in on the trail and eventually it got so that the trees were just on each side of the road. 

Beautiful spot but you just knew you weren't in the right car when driving on the road felt more like you were going through 6 inches of snow.

When is the last time you saw a Cadillac going through a 6 inch snowfall before the snowplow hit?

You guessed it.  About five miles from Atsion Lake, we wallowed to a stop.

Jim said it first: "You're stuck, Bill".
"Yeah I know, lets see what happened."

I was wheel hub deep in white beach sand.  That big Caddy buried itself to the transmission.

I popped the trunk and began to dig.  It moved easily and we were able to free the beast and back out of the road.

"Not a good idea, Guys, lets head back to the lake!"

We all agreed and got everyone back home.   I rolled into the driveway around midnight.  Mom was fast asleep as was Pat.  Giving the car a quick hose down, I washed away most of the evidence.

Mom drove the car to work the next day not knowing what happened.  She did have me hose down the driveway and ask how all that sand got onto it.

"Sorry, Mom, I don't have a clue."

Lets just say it was my education leaking out onto the driveway.   We never did the Caddy again.  The Jeep worked fine when it arrived, and until then we fed our offroading needs with my buddy's CJ-7.

Now that CJ ... that's a story in itself.

But people do ask me why I keep my Jeep.  Because of times like that.  When I do go back to visit friends and family in New Jersey, I intend to do that trip.  It may be the last time I get a chance to go offroad, but trust me, I'm looking forward to it. 

In the Jeep.

Merry Chrismoose

If you look around at what you have, you may find yourself amused by what you keep with you.  What gives the most pleasure may be something simple because of the memories attached to the item.  An item of that sort of sentimentality may be worthless otherwise, but you have a life enriched by having them.

Of all of the things we collected in our life, I found myself looking at this scrap of cloth, deeply worn by use, and smiling.  The improbability that what is now a rag would have made it this far over the decades is something quite surprising.  More surprising is that I had given it this much thought.

We had boxed everything we wanted to save.  The basement of our almost 2000 square foot house on top of the hill in the Greene Countrye Towne of William Penn was full.  It became our Box Farm.  First we emptied the basement.  Then we cleaned it for the first time in years, properly.  Raising so much debris that we had had to put an exhaust fan on full blast to draw the air out of it, we swept, vacuumed, and dusted.

The North side of the basement filled.  Boxes collected there and under the stairs, as well as finally on the South side.  More than 200 boxes to be moved to Florida.

Somehow this scrap of cloth made it.

It is half of a towel that we kept for the holidays.  A dish towel in reality, it was never really notable, but it gave me a smile.  A gift from my sister, she knew that I'd be amused by it.  My attraction to Moose was always a source of amusement to me and my friends, despite never having actually met one.  I'm given figurines, statues, plush animals, and this towel.

It got a tear in it along the way and at some point it ended up getting sliced in two.  I may actually have that other piece somewhere, wadded up in a ball most likely. 

Who knows?  But there it was that laundry day.  Sorted out from the socks and towels and sheets on the Hot Wash Load, I separated it out and left it on the big green chair.  Taking the rest of the load up in my hands, I looked back at it and smoothed it out on the chair.

Stopping and staring at it, I thought of my sister, her family - husband and son, still in their home in New Jersey, living their own suburban life.  The green prairies of South Jersey are carved up into small plots with their Wonder Years homes, neat and tidy, in the land of Nice White People, 2.3 kids, and two cars.  Warm and comforting life in one of the ten best cities of the country to live in, and it always has been for as long as anyone can remember, Cherry Hill, New Jersey.  When the survey said you could pick it or any of the neighboring towns as number one, I understood why.

It made it all the way here, improbably, to my chair in the little house, on the quirky little island, in the Florida sun, to remind me of the journey and that all that wander are not lost.

We all have our own collections.  Things that make us happy.  Things that make others scratch their heads and wonder why.  Usually they are quite worthless, perhaps worn down or worn out.  They'll be tossed away by someone with the detritus of life when the time comes.  They are the definition of ephemera, something that is designed to fade away with time.

But for now, enjoy what they mean to you, and enjoy the secret smile that comes from having a life worth remembering.

57 Miles For A Watermelon?

I wasn't thinking of produce that day. 

It actually was something new.  We were going to a "hamfest and flea market" down in Coral Gables.  That of course set off a chain of events because of what I call "Suburban Inertia".

Inertia is the physics maxim that those bodies at rest tend to stay at rest, those bodies in motion tend to stay in motion, unless acted upon by external forces.

Yes, Science Content.  You expected anything less from me?

Suburban Inertia is the theory that once you move your body into the car and get going, you may as well keep going until you get all your errands done, or run out of interest.

Cash, Time, Interest, Need for a Rest Stop... all that qualifies.

We got out of the house at 7ish.  About a quarter after 7 if I misremember right.  Got into the big blue beast because my Jeep eats gas and I hardly ever drive it.

No, really.  I was asked by a neighbor if it worked since I use it so infrequently.  Yes, I do, and Yes, I still enjoy driving it.

We were heading to the University of Miami main campus in Coral Gables to hit a quarterly Hamfest and Flea Market.  I figured it would be fun, if nothing else, to go there and look for electronic fiddly bits.

Fiddly Bits is a serious technical term for small items that are necessary for life.  The little things that go together to make life itself possible.  You know, that one screw that fell out of the bottom of the case you were fixing and now the door hangs crooked?  It ticks you off to no end because you can't find the little thing because it rolled under the refrigerator after you kneeled on it when you got on the floor to find it in the first place?  It stuck to your jeans and bounced off and rolled under there and you can't be bothered to go after it because you'll have to move the pantry and clean the damn thing?

Yeah that kind of fiddly bit.

I was actually hoping to find some "bell" wire to make an antenna and figured something calling itself a hamfest would be chock full of "cool stuff" as well as fiddly bits.

I was thinking of maybe the 1990s.  That sort of flea market was massive back then where you could go and buy one part and walk through hundreds of tables entertaining yourself with the question "What the heck is that thing" and getting back an idea that convinced you that you needed it to repair that old tool sitting in the shed so you really can get that chore off the honey-do list that's been there since the turn of the millennium.

Come on, we all have one or two of those chores!

The hamfest was modest.  Fun but modest.  Only about 20 tables.  It did have a vendor with Vacuum Tubes, so I'll go again.  After all, Dad's Radio could use a tune up!

We were through in under 15 minutes.  Walked through again a third time and decided to go.  I didn't exactly want to go back so I suggested that we go down to "That scruffy farmer's market down near Homestead" and poke around.

Redland's Farmer's Market.  Homestead, Florida.

After getting the "Are You Nuts" look, we started heading back to the main road.  By the time we got there, I heard from the Driver's Seat "Yeah that would be fun, lets go look around for that place".

Mind you, we had stumbled across it once on the way to the upper keys.  It was an insane crush of people then and we thought it would be fun to wander around it just because.

When we got there it was just as much of a crush of people on a Saturday morning.  It also felt like home.

I used to entertain myself going to this exact sort of place all over South Jersey and later in Pennsylvania.  They're all a little rough around the edges, but you can find things you can't find anywhere else.

Apparently "real" seeded watermelons are one of those things.  I mean, really?  All season I could only find those vile tasteless un-seeded watermelons.  For years I couldn't find a "Real Watermelon".  The deep pink to red flesh that tasted sweet and eventually would drip down your chin or your arm with a sticky watery juice.  

The un-seeded varieties didn't taste like that.   May as well eat the rinds.  Blah.  Can't have seeds?  Too damn bad because you never ate the real thing.

It's a Jersey Tradition around the Fourth of July to stand in the backyard eating a wedge of watermelon and ending up with the seeds trying to take root in the garden because one of the kids spit them there.

Kids being anyone, even adults.

Everyone enjoyed them because they were good.  Not that over priced basketball sized thing that they sell now.  These would take up the entire bottom shelf of the refrigerator and promise goodness.

That was the first thing I saw - a monster watermelon.  So I mentally made a mark in my mental checklist to stop back and grab one when we went exploring.

Never really found anything else I needed.  Wanted, yes, but needed?  Nope.

Heading back to the fruit stand I grabbed the largest watermelon and immediately was warned "They have seeds!".

Yes, that's the point! That's how you want them!

I also grabbed a couple oranges, apples, a large sweet potato, and a few lemons and really REALLY looked forward to that watermelon.

Getting home I checked calorie count and figured a "candy bar" ration of calories would be 24 ounces of the thing. 

Yes, A Bowl Full turned into a "Salad Bowl" full of a pound and a half of Watermelon.

Frankly, for an ex-Jersey Boy like me, that's par for the course.

And BOY did I enjoy that.  The wall of sweet, the juice stuck in my Movember Beard, the seeds to discretely spit out into the bowl.  It all put a big smile on my face.

Then I realized.  Movember, er, November.  We're way out of season.  Where would I get another?  How far was that again?

Checking the map... 57 miles.

Yes, we drove 57 miles for a Watermelon and some other assorted fruit and veg because I just couldn't find it in any of the "normal" places.

Would I do it again?  Sure.  Just not every damn week.  After all, there has to be somewhere closer I can get them.

I know of this little fruit stand on Dixie Highway up in Oakland Park...

I'm already plotting a trip out for next weekend when the Suburban Inertia strikes!

Karen's Portulaca

One of these days I will break down and plant some of these little flowers.

The plants themselves have no thorns.  The leaves are succulent.  The flowers are, at least in my mind, intensely colored, and have delicate petals.

That isn't why I like them.

I had a friend, back in my neighborhood when I was growing up.  Karen was her name.  She's still around so I should say Is Her Name instead.

A very sweet girl, very gentle soul.  We became friends as children and stayed that way for most of my pre-college years.

We had a few interests together.  We'd go back into the fields near the 295 Hill and look for blackberries, poke around in the pond looking for tadpoles and frogs.  When we got into riding bikes, she'd have her doll in the basket of her bike, I'd pull a Tonka Truck behind me, and we'd ride all over the little neighborhood.

If you're thinking Wonder Years, yes, it was that time and it was pretty much like that.

I always had a little garden in the yard where I'd grow a few flowers.  Someone one year gave me some Zinnia seeds.  They grew great in the climate of the South Jersey Prairie where we lived.  I cleared out the weeds, stuck them in the soil in nice neat rows and they'd bloom in insane color combinations.

Karen didn't want Zinnias.  The leaves were a little rough to her hands.  She went to her mom and dad and asked for some seeds that same year and came home with some Portulaca.  We didn't know what they were called other than what her mom called them "Rock Rose" or a "Moss Rose".  No pointy thorns in these to stick little fingers, they grew well in the poor soil in the little container garden near her back door.  I'm guessing that her mom was feeling a little homesick for her own native Maine since they grew well there.

Every year we'd have our respective flowers.  Zinnia in my yard, Portulaca in hers.  It might have been a Thing.  That was what Karen Grew and this was what I Grew.

When we grew, we seemed to stop planting them at the same time.  Every year we had set aside seeds and would plant them in spring around the same time in late April.  I guess it came a time to set aside childlike things and move onto others.  I got into electronics, she had her piano, and we eventually grew up and away.

Walking around here, these flowers were a bit odd.  A little incongruous.  Tropical flowers these were not.  Maybe that is why they were blooming in Late September, the weather is finally cooling down for us.  Never mind that Karen's back porch container garden was blisteringly hot in full sun on those summer days in South Jersey.  South Jersey itself is hotter than South Florida is in High Summer, so that may be why these little flowers are doing so well around the mailbox around the corner on the neighbor's front yard.

But no matter where they are, those little flowers will always be to me, Karen's Portulaca.  Even if it reminded her mom of Maine.

Happy Birthday Pat

Somewhere in the beautiful and fabled land of Cherry Hill, New Jersey, there lives a woman. 

You may know her, but you probably do not.  If you don't that is your loss, because I do.

She's my sister.  If you do know her on Facebook, wish her a happy birthday, I know she will appreciate the thought.

I won't put her picture up here, she never liked it when I took them of her so I don't have too many to share.

A couple weeks ago, I sent her a "Care Package" for her birthday.  I purposely did it early.  Packed it chock full of goodies that I know she likes.

About a half pound of my best home-roasted coffee.  Ground to Espresso Grind, roasted to Second Crack - A Full City Plus or French Roast if you know the lingo.

There were three jars of homemade jam in there.  Cherry Jelly, Lemon Curd, and Key Lime Curd.  The Curds are a recipe that I posted a while back.  It works great with any citrus fruit that I have tried it with, including Grapefruit. 

There was also a birthday card in the box.  I wrote a note for her, by hand of all things!  Yeah, really, I write on here sometimes as much as a thousand words a day and I actually put Pen to Paper and scrawled out something for her to read.

I also tossed some random things in there because I do that sort of thing.  Just a few things I thought would make her scratch her head and wonder whether I have lost my mind, because I generally have. 

I'm sure it all made her smile.

The reason why I sent it early was so that it would be there roughly at her husband Mike's birthday as well.  Mike's a great guy, and I have to say I was truly happy when they got together and built a relationship, then a marriage, then a life together.

Thanks Mike for all of that.

So Pat, nothing else is coming in the mail, but if there is any of the jam or the curds left, I suggest a little on a toasted English Muffin with some cream cheese.  It's excellent.

Oh Scrapple, Why Do You Taunt Me?

They say that South Florida is the Sixth Borough of New York City.

I think that's a bit inaccurate.

A better title would be "Little New Jersey".

It's chock full of refugees from NYC, of course.  I can even find a good Brooklyn Bagel here, and I know of a decent Jewish Deli if I choose to drive a bit.

Lox, Bagels, and Cream Cheese... Yum!

But I can also find Philadelphians by the Septa Train Load, People from the "Pennsylvania Dutch" areas out by Lancaster and Reading, and folks from Connecticut by the Fishing Boat full.

We're all here.  I personally think Broward County is "Little Long Beach Island" because it's mixed pretty thoroughly of New Yorkers and Philadelphians.

That Philly Pretzel place nearby even has a Drexel University flag inside it.

So I wasn't completely shocked when I went to the Big Publix in downtown Fort Lauderdale and found some Habersett's Scrapple.  The one near me in Wilton Manors has packets of Taylor Ham, which was a treat too.

If you know either of those products, you are from an area that is roughly 150 miles from around the Liberty Bell in Center City Philadelphia, know someone from there, or just got curious when you saw them in a random shop.

Both of those are what are loosely called "Breakfast Meats".  Fry them up like you would bacon.  Serve with your eggs in the morning.

In this case, I served my Scrapple with a 2 egg onion omelette on top of a home made rye bagel with some extra sharp cheddar.  Not a light breakfast, but I finished it off with my coffee and that was it until lunch that day.

Scrapple is vaguely like sausage.  It's sold in a brick, frozen.  Like sausage you don't really want to know what's in the stuff.   Other than corn meal, spices, and perhaps some thickeners, it is a Pork Product.  Everything but the oink, as we say in Philly.

There are two schools of thought, either thick and creamy or thin and crispy.  You slice the stuff off the brick, toss it in a skillet, and fry it up.

Yum.

But in my case, I'm being taunted.

I prefer mine creamy in the middle, crisp on the outside. 

First things first, that slicing bit.

I remember my father on a weekend morning.  Only on the weekends.  Saturday or Sunday, and you will like it.  Get the picture?

He'd fry up the slab of Scrapple in the skillet, getting it good and crispy on the outside, hot and creamy inside.  Served just as I like it.  Yeah, Dad taught me how to eat the stuff, I'm sure your parents broke you like that too.

Except there's the rub.  That slicing of a slab.  Doesn't go so well.

I have a habit of making things in "prepared serving sizes" like they're listed on the package.  Two ounces of the stuff is one serving, 120 calories.  Not terrible.  Except that that is an eighth of a brick.

How do you slice an eighth of a brick of frozen sausagey-like goodness into a skillet? 

You don't.  You thaw it when you get it home from the Big Publix that you park on top of, or the Acme in Roxborough in Philly, or even the Shop Rite in Cherry Hill.   Put it in the refrigerator on Friday Morning.  Saturday Morning it will have thawed enough to be sliced.

Except.

Now you have a roughly 37 degree Fahrenheit, 2 degree Celsius block of grey gritty gooey block of Pork and Pork By Products with Spices.  Cut open that Red and White package.  Some undefinable liquid leaks out.  The package is briefly looked at and then you realize that the Quixotic desire to be thrifty is pointless and you reach under the counter for a plastic container to place the remnants in. 

Lay the Scrapple block lovingly on a "Cutting Plate".   You want an eighth of the block for your serving, right?  Go to the knife drawer and select the sharpest blade you have.  You will need it.  Walk over to the cupboard and grab a ceramic coffee mug and sharpen it on the bottom, or just use your sharpening stone.

No, really, you need deadly sharp here.  The dog will now be curious, this would not be a good time to step on his feet.  Be careful there.

Look at that block of Scrapple lenghtwise.  Lovingly draw your blade on the top to mark but not cut it in half.  Cut each half in half, then each in half again.  You have just approximated eight pieces.

Yeah you could just toss the damn thing in the skillet and make a monster scrapple but where's the fun in that?

Now look at your eight even pieces.  The outermost one needs to be cut off the block. 

As you draw back that deadly sharp knife through the slightly gelatinous gritty block of savory goodness, you realize this won't go well.   It begins to break apart like a meteor hitting the atmosphere.  Instead of getting a thick slab of grey goodness to toss in the skillet, you have three "large" pieces, and a pile of grit.

Cursing at your luck, you walk across the kitchen to the preheated skillet.   I can't heat it up too high because the skillet has a non stick surface and if you have a parrot, that will kill them if it scorches.  You had better have greased the thing up because if you hadn't you're going to make scrapple crumbles.  Even now, you have a pile of grit to toss to the flames.

Here's where I got creative. 

I had saved a couple ceramic tiles.  They're nothing special being from my old kitchen in Philadelphia.  Some day I will incorporate them into this house here.  For now, they're wrapped in aluminium foil and used to press things down to flatten them in my skillet.  They're my very own "Fryer Blocks".

I take my Scrapple crumbles, and edge them together.  Pressing down with the Fryer Block, I am able to roughly reshape the crumbles into a solid mass.

Now, patience is a virtue.  Cook them until the bottom crisps up.  I can't tell you how long that is.  I went out into the next room, found some wire and needle-nosed pliers for a project, made two copper loops, finished cleaning the counter, and started roasting a batch of coffee in the time it took to get that brown scrapple look that I wanted.  Five Minutes a side?  Six?  Ten?  I just don't know!

With a plastic spatula, I tease the scrapple up from the bottom of the skillet.   It wants to stick, but this stuff has a sheen of grease, a gift of the Pork goodness inside.  Flip it over and hope that it won't fall apart.

It did, push it back together, and use that Fryer Block to re-form the thing roughly back into a square.

Walk away.  More patience.  More time.

The dog is getting curious, the parrot is begging by saying "Hello!" and blowing kisses.   They both want some of your scrapple-y goodness.  But no, Dad was right.  This was a special thing.  This is Scrapple.

Not for dogs!
Not for parrots!

Has it been long enough?  Worry the edge up.  Did it stick?  No!  Tease the now thin Scrapple cookie up off the skillet.   Place on the cheese to warm and melt it into the bagel.

The egg you scrambled will get poured onto the onions that are now translucent with sweetness, your weekend breakfast commune with Dad will come soon.   Reaching through the years, you taste the savory goodness and smile.  I think of the Stoltzfus and Yoders in the Pennsylvania Dutch areas and thank them mentally for passing this recipe on through this day.

This was a good breakfast.  But it just doesn't stick together, no matter how tasty it is.  Not to worry, I'll try again tomorrow.  I have another slice to make.   Maybe I'll get Dad's old Cast Iron skillet out.  Really go Old School on this Scrapple thing.  Serve it with some pancakes and real Vermont Maple Syrup.

A slab of crumbly creamy crispy crusty heaven on a plate.

Into The Black Showing The Light

When I was a child, I felt the Milky Way was a fantasy like Santa Claus.

After all, I can't see it.  I would go out onto the yard with a telescope, armed with a pocket book called "Stars" from my school library, and try to find the stripe of the Milky Way.

Failed every time.

Oh sure, I could find the Big Dipper, The Little Dipper, Polaris the North Star, the belt of Orion and a few others.  The Moon itself was fascinating to turn that 50 power telescope on and pretend you could see the landing sites. 

Hey I was a kid with an active imagination.  Now I'm an adult with an active imagination.

I didn't actually see the Milky Way for myself until I got my first Jeep.  A couple of us had Jeeps at that time and we took them out to the New Jersey Pine Barrens to poke around.  I loved doing that and will do it again, you can depend on that.  Next visit...

One time we got caught out there at night.  We wandered around on the sugar sand trails on a warm summer night and found ourselves up by the fire tower on Apple Pie Hill.  Deciding to be daring, we'd climb up on the fire tower and look around.   Once I got up above the tree line I simply stopped as if welded to the spot.  There it was, the Milky Way.   It really did exist.

The reason for that skepticism was that I lived in the great Megalopolis in a small corner of it called Cherry Hill, New Jersey.   Zip code 08034.  Just about 10 miles from The Bell in Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.

It's not a great place to learn to appreciate the stars.  Being in the middle of things, the great hive of Humanity on the Eastern edge of the North American Continent, you had a lot of neighbors.  People would turn on things like light bulbs, car headlights, and street lamps.  Even in smaller towns, there were always lights around us.

There I was smack dab in the middle of the stripe of people that goes from Portland, Maine to Richmond, Virginia, and beyond in all directions thinking that I'd get to see stars.

Sure if I slipped on something left by my dog when I went outside and hit my head on the ground on the way down.

Lately NASA and the Suomi National Polar Orbiting Partnership put together a project called "Into The Black" that illustrates it perfectly.  Be patient, the links load very slowly.

The idea was to throw a satellite up into orbit and turn it back at our shared globe and take nighttime pictures showing as much as could be seen.  There are some incredibly detailed pictures there that show cities, ships, offshore oil rigs, and many other items as evidenced by the lights that were used to mark their way.  Think of it as the negative image of the street maps that you see on any of the GPS applications on your favorite computer.  Like this one of the US, Canada, Bahamas, and Mexico.

I'll admit, I'm a sucker for this sort of thing.  I can sit entertained for hours skimming the globe looking at Google Earth and zooming in on street level at places I'll never have the pleasure of even driving through.  Give me a border city and I'll try to find the state or national border.  It shows some borders very sharply like that of North and South Korea, India and Pakistan, and others.  There's a sharp line of lights that marks the borders then a difference in color or intensity that shows the difference in societies priorities or wealth clearly. 

The links are notoriously slow but here's another annotated link of the picture of North and South Korea.

The Project also shows why I can never see the stars.  Even here in South Florida, I still look up for the buckle of Orion's Belt, but see very little else.  I'm smack dab in the middle of things again, and if I want to see differently I'll have to get out of town.

One trip down here, I took my motorcycle.  If you get a chance to do this you have to plan carefully.   Using a motorcycle or a convertible car, drive South out of Miami.  Do this before sunset so that you hit the Seven Mile Bridge just as the sun extinguishes itself into the Gulf of Mexico.  Night time falls quickly there and in three miles at average traffic speeds you will hit the top of that bridge at the right time.  The best way to describe it is that you're standing in a room and someone just threw glitter into the air, and some of that glitter will be the thing I didn't believe in - the Milky Way.

Hurricane Sandy's Gone, All's Quiet in Florida

The wind finally has stopped

After three weeks of rain, a near miss by Hurricane Sandy and the outer feeder bands, and just general blustery days, we're in winter.  Winter for us is a high in the 70s or the low 80s.

There's no wind.  No rain.  No clouds, OK maybe a few Simpsonian Clouds floating by in the distance but that's it.

Having gone out to unlock the fence and give the yard one last pass before the arborists arrive to repair the landscape after the storms, the overwhelming feeling here is nothing more than normal.  The strangest thing about the neighborhood today is that I roasted coffee earlier so my back yard has the smell of a fine Costa Rican roast on the general Floridian organic scent.  It's even cool enough to have had Iguanas falling from the tree, but none of those green monsters are around.

No complaints, Normal is good.  After all I could have been at the Jersey Shore or that neighborhood in Queens, NY that burnt to the ground due to the power station that went up in explosions and flames.  

For us, this was the storm that got away.  At least here, it's a good thing although Fort Lauderdale's Beach got chewed up and flooded which is very rare normally.  Having grown up in South Jersey, I know what a rogue storm like this would bring.  Neighbors of my old home in Philly said "meh. no big deal.  Let the roads drain and back to work".  I'm still waiting to hear how it went closer to the shore.

Here in Florida, we are used to a storm like Hurricane Sandy coming through and being annoying.   The soil is like sand in a colander.  It is actually hard to call it anything other than the Beach Sand it will be again.  Trees have evolved to let the wind flow through them.  When they let go of their foliage, they'll grow it back.  Trunks are in general softer wood so they'll bend before breaking.  In the Northeast, trees don't get storms like this often although the Nor'easters are getting more powerful each winter.   The Ice Belt has moved North and we were saying that winters were more like North Carolina than South Jersey.  I never saw an Ice Storm before the 90s, now you expect one or two a year at the beginning and the end of Winter. 

That Ice causes its own problems.   The Northern forests end right around Philadelphia.  50 miles North or South, the forests are a different mix of trees.  There is a blending there and you can actually still grow certain Palm Trees in sheltered conditions, although the only people who do are obsessed individuals who want something different.   Those hardwood trees like the Pin Oak and the softer trees like the White Pine tree would get glazed and snap under the weight of the winter coat.  Since it is warmer, once past the ice, the snow cover isn't quite as dry as before and there is more of it.

Of course that's all a falsehood since, as the Republican Party says, Global Warming doesn't exist.  It's "Climate Change" now.

Whatever it is, things are a changin'.

Bats in the Morning Walk

I had a long conversation last week.  One of those "Catch Up With Good Friends" conversations that covers some of the bases, and you only realize that you wanted to share more once it was over.  Joe was my programmer when I worked at Temple University, but he and his family are family to me, even now after being away for 6 years.

He was talking about his love of Astronomy and how he was looking into hooking up a video camera to his telescope.  Nice hack turning your telescope into a TV camera.   Since there were few stars in the Suburban South Jersey skies that I grew up in, Astronomy was one of those things that was rumored and never quite seen.  Sure people in other parts of the world got to look up and see the Milky Way but it was something I only experienced when I took my Jeep out to Apple Pie Hill, climbed the fire tower on a clear night and looked up while my jaw dropped to catch mosquitoes.

This is a view from the top of the tower on a clear morning.  I need to drag my sister out there some day...





I was thinking about this conversation when I walked outside today.   Waking up well before the dawn at 5AM, I stepped outside and let Lettie water the lawn.  Feeding her, we went out to greet the morning.  There were about 5 stars out at that time of the morning.  I'm sure there are more at other times of the day, but for the most part, there are few.   After all, Wilton Manors, FL, is pretty close to the Geographic Center of the South Florida Sprawl.

Walking around my neighborhood listening to the story of how Martin Frobisher discovered Iron Pyrite for Queen Elizabeth I in Northern Canada while looking for the Northwest Passage, I watched the skies as my dog watched the ground for interesting smells.

Hearing the Posh British Accent in my ears, I noticed a dark flash and an odd sound to the Audio program(me).  At that point I got to see the Batman Signal framed by a pair of palm trees when I scanned toward where I had just come.  There were two large bats fluttering around hunting for their morning meal.  These were the size of a medium song bird, but clearly bats as the supersonic "Nick! Nick!" sonar sound was bouncing off of objects in the skies.

Martin Frobisher had reached Baffin Island and flying Bats had found their meal.  Neither were common sights in South Florida.  Luckily the Bats are healthy, there certainly are enough flying around the morning skies for them to eat. 

James Candy Barrel Bank

Oh hi, Pat!  Haven't heard from you in a while, how are you?

Yep, Kevin got back fine, no problem.  He took the Auto Train and slept in a tiny room that was 4 by 8 feet.  My closet is longer and a little bit wider in the big bedroom.

It was a lot better trip than we had when you and I were kids trying to sleep in one of those silly airplane style semi-reclining seats. 

Right, well he went up to visit his mom for her birthday and spend some time with her.  Longwood Gardens, a couple nice restaurants, and made it all the way to Cape May just like the song.

He sure did bring back that Salt Water Taffy!  In fact he brought back a barrel bank just like we had every year when Dad would take us down to Atlantic City for the day before the Casinos moved in and wrecked the boardwalk.  That's why when I went for a day trip, I'd go to Ocean City, NJ.  Yes, the Methodists have kept it fairly old school and you can still get a good funnel cake or fresh peanuts - or at least you could back in 2005 when I was there last.

That bank?   I'm going to keep mine!  It turns out that James Candy and Fralingers are the same company although I think we knew that.  They're discontinuing the banks so if you want a little piece of our childhood, you had better get Down-a-Shore and pretend to be a Shoobie for a day.  Pick one up and enjoy, they're not expensive, after all they're made out of Papier Mache. 

Sure, you know the salt water taffy at the Jersey Shore blows away any other kind!  The stuff just over on the other side of the Delaware River in Rehoboth or in Ocean City MD just doesn't taste right and they don't make it soft like James Candy does.  I had some in Cape Cod Mass that was just horrible, like old tub caulk!

No I'm not in the habit of chewing that stuff, silly!

But the neatest thing is that they're still making those weird old flavors like they used to!  Anise, Molasses, Teaberry... yeah!  I mean where else but the Jersey Shore!  Just like old times walking down the Boardwalk and biting into one of those wonderful Lemon Salt Water Taffys and you had to be careful because you would have sand on your fingers.

Yes, Atlantic City is the real Boardwalk, the rest are just imitations but even that has changed since they blew up all those wonderful old resort hotels.  The city itself is a bit scary but the tourist trap, er tourist areas are safe. 

Sure, I had what they call Salt Water Taffy here in Florida.  Hard as a rock and salty as a pretzel.  Scary stuff right?

At least they still make it like they used to at the Jersey Shore.  "Cut to fit the mouth" like they say!

Oh that bank?  Did I tell you some clown running an auction house wanted $50 for a barrel bank and the box with it?  Yeah isn't that a riot?  You can still get them for now for $12 so move fast.  Oh and have some vanilla custard for me while you're at it - you know, from the stand at 9th street in Ocean City!  Watch for the Sea Gulls if you're going to have fries, those birds are fierce!

Old Italian's Tomato Garden - Humor

Being an "old" Italian who once lived in New Jersey and who is alone in the house at the moment, I can post this joke without any fear of offending anyone but myself.


Now if you really want to know where the bodies are buried...


Old Italian's Tomato Garden

An old Italian lived alone in New Jersey. He wanted to plant his annual tomato garden, but it was very difficult work, as the ground was hard.

His only son, Vincent, who used to help him, was in prison. The old man wrote a letter to his son and described his predicament:

Dear Vincent,

I am feeling pretty sad because it looks like I won't be able to plant my tomato garden this year. I'm just getting too old to be digging up a garden plot. I know if you were here my troubles would be over. I know you would be happy to dig the plot for me, like in the old days.

Love,
Papa

A few days later he received a letter from his son.

Dear Papa,

Don't dig up that garden. That's where the bodies are buried.

Love,
Vinnie

At 4 a.m. the next morning, FBI agents and local police arrived and dug up the entire area without finding any bodies. They apologized to the old man and left.
That same day the old man received another letter from his son.

Dear Papa,


Go ahead and plant the tomatoes now. That's the best I could do under the circumstances.

Love,
Vinnie

Wet Memories of Ponds Gone By

Today I woke up and managed to get the dog walk in before the weather changed.  Three hours later, it is 5 degrees colder at 51, still raining, and windy.  The skies are grey and the wind is coming in off the front that is settling in.

Sunny Florida indeed.

It's winter and there's always tomorrow.  It will be cool and sunny at least.  It got me thinking that this is the kind of weather that we would have when I was growing up in Cherry Hill, NJ in April instead of Wilton Manors, FL at what is statistically the coldest week of the year.

Much to the parent's annoyance, it would be days like this that Pat and I would get on our jacket and our old clothes and go out to play in the yard.   In the rain, we'd have big puddles that would drain to the Cooper Creek behind the house.  We called it The Crick in the South Jersey accent of the day and it was a draw.  Just like any children of any era, they'd be drawn to the edges of the body of water and go searching, coming back covered with mud but happy with the latest adventure.

Over the years, we explored The Field until it became covered with baseball diamonds, and the gently descending prairie there of tall weeds.  In summer there were Blackberries to be picked and we could hide among the tall grasses until the afternoon wore down until dinner and the mosquitoes chased us away.

Toward the bottom of the field was a spring.  It was reliable and there was never a time that it had dried up.  Feeding The Crick, it was a source of entertainment for all the children of the little suburban neighborhood.  Winter it would freeze solid enough for us to go out with our shoes and skate across it.  One kid or another would be brave enough after testing it for strength, and that would be all it took, we'd all be out there sliding across with our smooth bottomed shoes until tired.  There were always one or more felled trees to use as a bench to rest, and many afternoons would be spent there sliding around until it thawed.

Once the Spring season finally arrived, the tadpoles would begin to hatch and that brought more entertainment.   We had the chance to watch the little things grow and catch them so we could see them closely.  What we would do with them was to look at them, marvel at the speckles on the tail that would be "eaten" away as they grew, look for legs to let us know that they were developing into a mature frog.  Our little pond full of tadpoles would become full of frogs that would be again caught and looked over.  We wondered whether that frog had been caught months before as a tadpole and if it remembered us.

The baseball fields got built and since they need a flat layer of ground, the big trucks came in and leveled the place so the little leagues could move in.  This was all before we realized how productive a marsh could be, nurturing the natural and the minds of children to find out the life cycles of the creatures within.  The fields got built and table flat, but they also left a bit of a cliff to climb.  We now had to get around the cyclone fence to get to The Pond and up to the table of land that was the parking lot that overlooked the left over bit of wetland.

What Man builds, Mother Nature will wear down.  Sometimes over long stretches of time, other times in an eye blink.  The fields were built in Spring, and by Summer, the edges which were not planted with any retaining grass, had silted up most of our precious pond.  By the time that the silting had stopped,  the wetlands were much more dry, the pond had shrunk to a sliver that was maybe a tenth of its former self

Over the years, we stopped going to The Pond.  It wasn't really enough area for us to skate, the kids who were all within a year or three of each other were now into their teens, and it ceased to be a draw.  I remember that our little group of children now would instead of hovering over the natural, went up to the hill that overlooked the little league fields and watch over it for a while like a bleacher.   This hill was the berm that was built up when the State of New Jersey built I-295 from Delaware to its then end at Moorestown, three or four miles North.  We knew that we were 32 miles from Delaware because the mile marker on the southbound side of The 295 was in our own little world, overlooking our homes and what was once the prairie.  We still could use the hill for sliding down it on sheets of cardboard as if they were toboggans, but the area just wasn't as fun now that it was a managed baseball park.

Luckily that kind of construction would be less likely.  A habitat that was left over would be called a Preserve and left to be natural.  The pond would be a protected area so that slivers of the endangered natural New Jersey would not be swallowed up.  The entire neighborhood was once a farm and that little area was left alone because it just wasn't dry enough to be farmed.  So when the homes were built there, fill was trucked in and we had a time where we could enjoy what was left for children to explore.

Even on the cold raw rainy days of April, New Jersey has a lot of land that were left as a preserve.  When I got too old to explore the pond, I started driving.  After a series of cars, I got my first Jeep and did what every Jeep driver tried to do, I went off road.  New Jersey is a beginner's paradise of off roading.  You don't have to go and destroy the natural habitat in New Jersey because the Pine Barrens are set aside for you to enjoy and are laced with fire trails.  There's a large network of abandoned roads, railroads and sugar sand fire trails to drive over and I was able to sate my needs for visiting the natural by not destroying the lands.

When ever I had someone from out of state make their predictably tired New Jersey Jokes, I would insist that those places that everyone cringes over are "Up North" and in the New York Suburbs "North of Exit 9" on the turnpike.  Next weekend, I'd drag them kicking and screaming out to The Pines where we'd invariably explore until we'd come across a "Cedar Water Creek" and marvel that there were fish, frogs and fowl in this place that was special and set aside from such things as a developer's plow and baseball diamonds.

The thing that is so special about the New Jersey Pine Barrens that was unintentional is that it is so accessible.  You could go off road in a Cadillac Sedan deVille if you wanted to in New Jersey, I know that because I took Mom's Caddy back there.  You didn't have to shred the land, someone already graded the roads and you could get in and see what it looked like before we got there simply by looking out the window and away from the trails.

Without major equipment you can't drive across the Everglades.  It's more heavily protected, but airboats go through it every day.  I can't imagine driving through the Everglades, but I have driven through the Pine Barrens to get home when the Atlantic City Expressway was jammed simply by getting off at one of the exits, driving through Hammonton to get to the custard stand and going That Way to Atsion Lake and through Medford home.  Each time I did that, I'd have another person with me saying they never knew how beautiful New Jersey could be.

It is all in the view.  Sometimes the best view is out the window of a Jeep Wrangler going up a trail at 30MPH.

Garbage Poinsettias

When I was growing up, Mom used to give away Poinsettias for the holidays.  It was a promotional give away that she'd do to keep her name in with potential customers as a part of her real estate business.

The holiday season would approach and one night we would get a delivery of around 100 poinsettia plants, wrapped in brown craft paper.  Our living room would be stuffed with these brown cylinders, each of which contained a flowering plant that would be given to a prospective client. 

My sister and I were allowed to keep one, and I managed to keep mine living for a while.   Eventually it would turn green, slowly it would lose leaves and then would end up being put outside to add soil to the gardens.  

This being New Jersey, poinsettias simply didn't have a chance to survive the winter.

Here, people actually have them growing outdoors.  They can grow to be a pleasant looking shrub, and add a bit of color to the yard.   Every one I have been given in the four years I have lived here are on the property still in some form, either in pots or in the ground. 

After the season is over, the businesses in the area have a habit of throwing theirs out. The holidays are over, you need to make room for the next shopping season.  I haven't seen valentine hearts yet, but the poinsettias are long gone. 

I have picked up some of them and put them in pots after they have been cast off.  Mostly they're missing leaves and are just the crown of bright leaves and a scrawny stalk, but after being outside on the drip feed irrigation, they fill in quite nicely.  I don't have to worry about the plants because in Wilton Manors, a poinsettia is pretty much about as carefree a plant as I can hope for. 

Despite the reputation, they're not actually poisonous according to most websites that I've come across, and as everyone knows, "the internet would never lie to you, would it?"...

The picture above is a three year garbage poinsettia.  It was on death's door when it was found, put into a big pot in the back yard on the drip feed irrigation line, and it's thriving.  When I look out my window at dawn, I am treated to a shock of red and pink just like you see here.   It is joined by two poinsettias that were given to me over the last two years from my godmother and her husband, Kathie and Larry.  This year's poinsettia is front and center in the garden in front of the house.

In the clean green land of Florida, as the state used to bill itself on the maps, a little shock of color is a nice thing, even in a place named after flowers.

Happy Independence Day

It is early when I write this.  Not yet 8:30 in the morning, and I'm wondering when the celebrations will start.

I remember the celebrations when I was growing up.  The Alderfers next door would have a cookout and invite their friends and the neighbors.  We'd make burgers, hot dogs, get stuffed on sugary punch and crash out after the sugar high.   This being the plains of New Jersey, we'd get sparklers and light them off on the cooling coals of the fires and wish that we could have more.  If we were lucky we'd go to one of the nearby towns for a firework show.  For a while, the Garden State Park would have fireworks display until the big fire burned down the grandstands.  There's a big box mall there now that is more popular than the old horse track ever was, but you don't get excited when you're a kid going to a big box store and the fireworks were more fun.

Later we realized that the park in Cherry Hill was a good place to see the professional fireworks shows from Haddonfield and Pennsauken.  If we put ourselves in the right spot you'd get to see some of the show from Philadelphia down the Cooper Creek past Camden.  We would load up the cars with supplies, go sit out in the grass and "Ooh and Aah" at the displays while slathering bug repellent and swatting those brown mosquitoes.  This was New Jersey after all, and its a very green and lush place.

Through the years I moved out of South Jersey, ended up in Philadelphia but never lost the love of fireworks.  It wasn't really possible to get fireworks in the Philadelphia Area without driving out of state, and the trouble never seemed worth it.  One year I drove down to Hilton Head, South Carolina with my sister and my mom and we made it a point to stop off at one of those roadside fireworks stands in SC or NC and get a big bag full of Roman Candles and Bottle Rockets that we took to the Barclay Homestead in Cherry Hill and fired them all off.   Much more exciting!

Here in South Florida there seems to be an interesting quirk in the law.  From what I have been able to tell, there are no restrictions on fireworks on the water.  There are large barns of buildings with fireworks for sale and they make you sign a waiver explaining the law, but I can't say for sure that I am right about that law since I am going on someone else's memory of it.  From what I've been able to tell it would be legal for me to buy high explosives, float them on a plank in the New River around the city of Wilton Manors and blow them all up but have that plank on land and I've got to be careful.

Not to worry, I didn't get any this year.  My neighbors will all be having fun so I can watch and be safe.  Where in New Jersey kids were running around with sparklers, here just about every block has someone firing off rockets that burst in mid air.  Mrs Dog will be a wreck with all that racket, but she doesn't like Thunderstorms either.

The beginning of all of this was from a comment made by John Adams, who would later become the Second President of the United States.  From Wikipedia:

The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.



^{If you don't care for fireworks, Blame him!  For me, I'll be enjoying the show!}

The Automotive Equivalent of a Burqa

A car tends to be a choice here.  A very complicated choice.  You weigh your life priorities, what you intend to do with the thing, narrow it down to some  few models, and then make a choice from that.  If you are lucky you can walk onto a lot and just get what you want and not get robbed too badly.

I drive a Jeep Wrangler.   Not a very efficient vehicle, but fun to drive.   I don't have children, I rarely take anyone anywhere other than my dog.   I got it because I had a friend who had one back in the 80s and really enjoyed the times I shared in it.  So I bought my first and since I would take public transportation I would shrug off the 18 Miles To The Gallon it got, and drove it to places like the New Jersey Pine Barrens, Apple Pie Hill, Atsion Lake, and the "back way" to the Jersey Shore.

That Back Way could save hours and was an almost straight as an arrow shot through some thick forests of pine, on a Fire Trail that was unpaved at about 40 miles to the hour.

I don't drive much now, and I don't intend to.   It does drink gas rather quickly by today's standards, but when I commuted it wasn't so expensive that it felt like the relative cost to the environment of buying new and efficient outweighed the fact that I have a nine year old car with 42,000 miles on it and can get at least another 10 years at this rate.  

I just don't drive much.

Cars do tend to fit your personality though.  I could have driven a long list of off road cars and for the little bit that I would go to the top of that Fire Tower at Apple Pie Hill so I could look at Atlantic City, see Philadelphia, and the lights of New York City from the same spot, all would have worked.  The trails in New Jersey are very easy to drive and I did it once in Mom's old Cadillac Sedan De Ville.

There are some cars that blend into the background.  The Automotive Equivalent of a Burqa.  These cars tend toward the appliance mindset.  I have to go somewhere, I need the room, and I'm going to do it while I cart about my stuff.   Stuff could be the two-point-three children, the Car Pool, or just the little old man with a Fedora driving 45 in the fast lane on the interstate.

When I first learned to drive, we would be on the lookout for a "Hat Car".  That would almost invariably be a Chevrolet Nova or Dodge Dart or similar.   A Sedan car driven by that old man with a Fedora, or a little old lady who you would see the top of some blue hair and perhaps white gloves.  Always driven way too slowly for traffic, and something to get around. 

I don't really drive enough to see that sort of thing.  I would notice that if you had an old Camry here, they almost invariably had a Haitian flag or a sticker from a small Caribbean or Latin American nation on it.  Driving 35 in a 45 zone on Powerline Road in the Fast Lane and choking traffic back.   The Modern Hat drives a 10 year old Toyota Camry or a similar Ford Taurus.

They can be boring but not really anonymous.

I have a neighbor about three houses down.  I truly enjoy them, their children, and the times I've spent chatting with them were truly times well spent.   They're wonderful people... they also drive a Burqa.

One of their vehicles are a Burqa.  They also have a big Dodge Ram Pickup, a real "Cowboy Cadillac" of a thing to haul their Air Boat.   It is Friday Morning and if they've got the day off, they'll be driving down the block shortly with the Air Boat in tow to go west to Weston and launch for a day of Fishing.

I'm jealous but I can't picture myself doing that.  I'd be miserable slapping Mosquitos and getting everyone annoyed as I turn brown then red.  Rehydrating yourself with Bud Ice can be fun though...

So what is this Automotive Burqa and why do I call it that?

They also have a Navy Blue Chrysler Grand Caravan. The Penultimate Minivan.  It has a "Salt Life" sticker on the back and I have yet to figure out what that means.  There are the stickers for each of the kids, a soccer ball sticker has been on it and a university logo from some local university that slips my mind.

Now, Mind You, I am sitting in my house low in the living room and while windows are open I can not see the street or their car down the block.   I have a very vivid memory of that Burqa, er, car, and I also have a mental block.

You see every time it drives past me, I realize that some person in that car is waving at me.  I can never put to mind who that person is.   It always happens once they have completely passed me.   I think it is the fact that the minivan is so much of the background of culture that this, the only one within blocks, just immediately falls into a black hole of my mind and I simply don't see it.

They're great people and I truly enjoy having them and their kids as neighbors but pile them in that big blue black hole and they're invisible!

I laugh at myself and am embarrassed to say, I just don't see them.   Nice people though, and I'll have to tell them this story once I get past my own shyness...