20 March 2020
I grew up in a small town. Was taught the fear of Jesus in a small town, at the First Baptist Church in particular. I can still hear the choir in their red robes singing. John Mellencamp’s song Small Town resonated with me. The former Johnny Cougar may have grown up in Seymour, IN, but his small-town experience was not that different than mine growing up in Pedricktown, NJ. Farms, dirt and people who knew your business and who all supported the team.
Pedricktown had open fields and stake trucks hauling produce. We had produce warehouses. We had one cross road with stop signs on the east/west axis. We had an old classic Army Corps of Engineers bridge that rattles and shook when you went across it. We had migrant camps for Puerto Ricans who picked the peppers, tomatoes and asparagus. Still have an asparagus knife with its well-worn wooden handle and v shaped blade out in my garage. Got some crab traps, too.
In our small town we all went to the same grammar school with the same kids that would be with from kindergarten to 8th grade. We had some kids from the army base that would be there a year or two and then move on. But for the most part we knew each other well. We all knew who was related to who. In a small-town chances were your grandmother and an aunt or two, maybe an uncle or a cousin lived nearby. You went to church with your family each Sunday and many Sundays you had dinner with a whole passel of cousins, aunts, uncles and hanger on types at your grandmother’s place.
On a typical day Pedricktown’s grammar school got out at about 3:30 pm. I remember watching those big round clocks up on the wall with their black hands, white faces and brown rims. The innards of the clock would tick and the hands of the clock would twitch down to the moment the agony of school would be over.
You could feel the energy pulsing with kids who had one desire, to be out of the building and out in the sunlight. My house was six buildings away from school and pushing and shoving everyone would ignore the safety patrols yelling go slow down the stairwells. Once out the doors I would fly home. My mother who taught at a different building, because the kindergarten and one first grade section were located a couple of miles away from the big grammar school building, would get home a few minutes after I did.
By the time my mom got home I had gotten the mail from our small-town mailbox, Box 48 and I still remember the old combination. When she walked through the side door into the house, I had already scrounged around and eaten something. I often had a piece of bogus white bread (just one) with a slice of white American cheese and a slice of Lebanon bologna. Might have had a little bit of a Pennsylvania Dutch birch beer. Used to love that stuff. And if there were any Tastykakes, well, just one wouldn’t hurt. Trust me I was a large child.
When Mom got in, she was beat. Teaching first graders sucked the essence of life right out of her. Almost instantly she was on the couch and watching The Edge of Night. God, soap operas with the exception of Dark Shadows drove me up the wall. Watching is a euphemism, it didn’t talk long for Mom’s snoring to start. But a ½ hour later when the closing music would play, she would wake up and begin dinner.
Invariably shortly after the soap started, I would bail out of my house and head down West Mill Street to my grandmother’s house. I can list the houses I passed although my spelling may suck. There was the Post Office, the Bishops, the Niebuhr’s, the Johnson’s, Mr. Johnson’s workshop, the Grey’s, I don’t know, the Groff’s, the Wilson’s, the Lindell’s, a field, the Pedrick’s, the Schiffer’s, Pedrick’s Seed House, Jack Bouvier’s, Hazel’s house (she did not like me one bit-“Get off my lawn you little monster”) and then my Grandmother’s place. The sidewalk alternated between dirt, concrete and stones. Once you got into April the air was warm and the grass was so bright green. A walk on a sunny spring day was pure joy.
At the very start of my walk I would stope at the post office and empty my grandmother’s mailbox. Taking the mail down the street to grand mom was a my little job. I was her home delivery service. Then as now, most jobs required payment and this one was no different. Despite already eating at home I knew there would be a snack to be had at grand mom’s. Put it this way, when I got to grand mom’s I knew there would always be a treat awaiting.
My grandmother and my Aunt Popsie were often cooking things. Cookies were created on a regular basis. When you entered the kitchen, if my memory serves me correctly there was some kind of cabinet to the right-hand side of the room. The sink was on the left near the steps to the basement. Under it resided the rock and rye and a gallon jug of King’s wine. Got under there one day but that is a whole different story. You could smell the baking that happened in this room.
Well, on the counter to the left, near the door that led to the back porch, was a ceramic container. I am not sure know if it was supposed to look like a barn or a Dutch house but when you pulled the roof off there were usually golden brown, perfectly baked, one inch tall and three inches wide cookies. Great, wonderful cookies that smelled of honest work, love and heaven.
Over the years I have read many stories where a dying character remembers a particular food and describes it in the precious moments right before the end. In English novels they talk of trifles and puddings. In southern novels they talk about smoked meats and side boards groaning with yams, greens and pecan pies. When they describe the food, it is with great detail given about the smell and the texture and the setting in which the food was prepared and eaten. Food it seems, especially those foods we really loved in our lives, stay in our memories right up to the end.
Truth be told I don’t know what went into those cookies. Some had currants or raisins and some had chocolate chips and nuts. Chocolate chips and nuts have always been my favorite. I do remember the cookies' taste as amazing and I do remember the experience of eating the cookies. In the kitchen I would get a couple cookies out and have them with a glass of whole milk at the Formica topped kitchen table. At some point after I was done, I would ask or be cajoled into taking Rusty, my grand mom’s wiener dog, out for a walk. When I got back my Aunt Popsie would often shuffle off to her house across the street.
If my grandmother was in a good mood, she might let me watch cartoons. Watching cartoons at her house was a big deal because her kids had bought her a color TV. We did not have one at my house. There was nothing as great as watching Tom Slick, Super Chicken and Roger Ramjet on the Captain Philadelphia show (Stu Nahan starring) in color. Channel 48 Kaiser broadcasting. Color made the super chicken intro so much better.
This ritual lasted for a number of years. It lingered on even into my high school days. In high school I fear I may have drifted a bit from the shore. It was the 1970s you know and when you got off the school bus from high school there was the temptation of the dread marijuana. So, maybe I inhaled once or twice behind the produce house with a friend or two, and then went and got my grandmother’s mail.
I may have lingered a bit in my travels down that path staring at odds and ends along the way. The chrome on Hazel’s DeSoto’s fins was pretty eye catching. The one real issue of smoking pot was that my cookie consumption went way up. My guess is that while emptying grand mom’s cookie jar to satisfy the munchies somebody noticed. So, it goes.
There are moments in our lives that are like bubbles blown on a spring day. These bubbles of time are gossamer thin and they last only a very short while. But when you are captured within those bubbles you think they could go on forever. Those walks to my grandmother’s, stoned or not, are experiences that can no longer exists in the real world, but which in my mind will exist until I cease to be.
In my middle American novel the smell of those cookies while be part of the final paragraphs. The cookies will be center but there will also be the smell of the growing green peppers in the fields. And there will be the scent and taste of South Jersey dirt, the stuff that has always grown great tomatoes. The soundtrack will probably be the congregation at the First Baptist Church singing “How Great Thou Art” with Mrs. Siegrist playing piano and Mrs. Trostle and Charlotte Carty singing out from the choir in their red robes. But the smell of the cookies will be primary as will the taste they had when consumed with a big gulp of cold rich milk.
I am the once and future cookie monster.
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