Jersey bound!

The latter part of the 1960’s, we made our move back to Swainsboro, our hometown. The boys were in elementary school, grades two and four and our baby girl was a cute little toddler who captured the hearts of everyone she met. She charmed us all with her cute little mispronounced words. I had control over her attire then and she was dressed in leotards and smocks and bows in her hair when I could get them to stay there. The crotch of the leotards hung somewhere around her knees. She would later rebel and to this day, would rather be hog tied, than to wear leggings, panty hose, or bows.

When I started working, I enrolled Teresa in Mrs. Canady’s Day Care, the most sought-after place for day care in the whole town. Mrs. Canady ran her little day care school out of her home on South Green Street, and she ran a tight ship. A staunch Christian woman, with short hair and coal black eyes, she had two black eyed little girls and a little boy of her own that mixed right in with the others. Sometimes, Mr. Canady was there to help with the “herd.” All children were taught table manners, respect, sharing, and courtesy. She would gather them all around her kitchen table for nutritious snacks and meals, which she prepared herself. Each meal began by blessing the food and she often told Bible stories during this quiet time around the table. When my daughter was just four years old, in her own version of English, she could recite the entire books of the Bible. Oh, how the parents and the children loved this woman!

Jim and Tim were part of the transitional years of desegregating all schools. It was a very diffi-cult time for all families making the adjustments of changing school locations, particularly when it meant children were being moved from the schools that probably their parents had at-tended, and in their comfort zone. I remember that schools actually closed for a while to transi-tion the children from buildings to buildings. To say it was chaotic, would be an understate-ment. It was new territory and the air was tense.

One day, I received a call at work from the school that Tim was missing.! WHAT? Of course, I was frantic and jumped in the car to rush over to the new school location across town. Tim was nowhere to be found. We lived miles from the school location and the Administration was very upset about a child “escaping” from school, but they were not nearly as upset as I was for them letting him “escape.” An “APB” went out at school for Tim searching every nook and cranny of the building. I started to drive slowly along the route from school toward our home taking the logical route and that of the school bus. About halfway home, I spotted my sweaty, dusty, and dirty little boy with his ever-present shirttail flagging in the wind, hustling his way down the road toward home. I didn’t know whether to kiss him or kill him! He allowed as to how “the desk stunk!” Oh Lord!

These two little guys knew no fear other than their Momma. Jim managed to slice open his fin-ger while whittling a golf ball and tried unsuccessfully to hide the bloody wound from me. (Guess he figured he didn’t want to hurt in too many places.) Other than his OCD about his “stuff,” he was very neat and marched to his own drum. I could count on him coming home from school looking fairly close to the way he did when I sent him to school. Tim, not so much. Curious to see what would happen, they once doused a frog with gasoline (which we thought was carefully stored) and lit a match (which I have no idea from whence it came) watching the helpless frog jump across the road. Not sure if this was the day that the broom sage caught fire, but a good neighbor helped me put out the flames with the garden hose be-fore the whole neighborhood was in on the action and the fire department showed up. I re-member crying buckets of tears over this one, ’cause I just knew I was raising a couple of mon-sters.

Sol worked for a new local manufacturing company that made webbing for folding lawn chairs, a popular item during that era. Plastic was an upcoming new medium, and this com-pany has quite a large factory with new equipment made in Germany. The process is called “extrusion” – meaning that the machine took in the raw material on one end and extruded it the other end. Sounds simple but actually is a very complex process and requires a lot of mechani-cal and technical ability and expertise. The average person has no idea how most of the items made of plastic are produced and the precision required to produce it. Some of those ma-chines could fill a house!

Reifenhauser US Sales Company, a fairly new company, had offices in downtown New York City. They sold the equipment made by the parent company in Germany, and their personnel installed and initiated the start-up operation for their customers throughout the United States and Canada. They knew a good thing when they saw it. Sol had all the qualifications they wanted, and they offered him his dream job. This was the beginning of a career in the plastic industry offering him new opportunities, rare experiences, dreams, headaches, and heart-aches. In January 1970, United Van Lines packed us up and moved us to our new home in a small town that seemed like the end of the earth. Mendham, New Jersey.

Somewhere along the way, we decided that maybe we might do like the Yankee’s and get our-selves some snow chains. We stopped at some little town along the way, got those ugly things put on our tires, and off we go again, just like we belonged there and knew what we were do-ing. When we arrived at our motel in Parsippany, we were beat, but the kids were wired. I sat in the Howard Johnson’s Restaurant watching the millions of people and thought to myself, “what in the world have we done?” I just knew every one of those cars carried Mafia bosses and we were in big trouble living in a place way out of our comfort zone.

Sollie and I had found a four-bedroom apartment in the Borough of Mendham when we went up for his interview. It was in a beautiful old home on the Main Street, with a couple of acres of ground with a barn, a wraparound porch, and huge trees. Our apartment was located on the second and third floors. It was plenty big enough for us, clean, and the owners, Honey and Rog Belton, were wonderfully cordial. Their family would become our family, away from home. We remain our friends to this day. They retired many years ago to Naples, FL.

I enrolled the boys in school at Hilltop School, a large old brick school building within walking distance for all the town kids. Teresa would start Kindergarten the next fall there. In the mean-time, we settled down in our new home and waited for spring.

Sollie got himself all dressed up in his fancy suit and tie and his nice leather briefcase, which we had purchased for him, and set out to learn to be a “commuter.” He had to drive to Morris-town, get on the Erie Lackawanna train to Hoboken, change trains, get on a subway, and then walk to his office on 42nd Street. He was picked up for a week or so by his boss who lived in Chester, a few miles up the road, so he didn’t really have to worry about getting lost. Then came the day when he had to go alone.

That night, it got dark, the peas had turned to bullets, (something that happened for many years to come) and I finally put the kids to bed. I had no way of finding out where he was and I was getting mighty worried. I stood at the window and watched the snowy street below, worried that he’d had an accident or gotten mugged. Finally, I saw him pull into our driveway and I’ve never been so glad to see him in all my life! He’d had a few problems finding the right subway, a few problems finding the right trains, and yep, he’d missed the station call for Mor-ristown and had to ride the train to the end of the line and back. His new shoes were stiff as boards, and his toes were actually bleeding! I don’t think he ever missed another train or sta-tion again.

On Easter Sunday, I had all our spring clothes, and my new straw hat laid out for Church and the kids Easter baskets filled with candy. I guess I figured some magic weatherman would change the weather overnight to spring. It was late March, but it was Easter, for goodness sakes. We got up to find 10″ of snow had fallen overnight. Have you ever tried to hide Easter eggs in a four-bedroom apartment on the second and third floors of anywhere? Well, we did. We were bona fide Yankee’s now!