25 May 2020
Like so many Americans I am celebrating Memorial Day in isolation. First thing today I went and had the folks at Home Depot deliver to my trunk pipe insulation. I keep a service contract on the AC and my furnace, because the furnace has died twice over the Christmas holidays. Trust me, I made a blood oath with myself that I am never paying golden time on those repairs again. Also, stopped at Gordon Food Service and picked up a variety of dry goods. Came home.
After bringing the groceries in I stripped my AC insulation to and from my house and reinstalled the new insulation. My service tech said he would do it for 263 dollars. He suggested DIY might be a little less expensive. The pipe insulation cost less than six dollars. The time involved was 15 minutes. I have to say I appreciate the tip I received.
Sitting here listening to Bowie and Queen I am missing the old time Pedricktown Memorial Day parade. All the firetrucks, the old cars, the scout troops, the local band, the horses and the kids with bunting trough their bike wheels bringing up the rear dodging the horse dung. It was a moment when the ideas of hometown and America seemed to be aligned. I am also missing the shore, Ocean City to be more specific.
Somewhere I wrote a whole story about the Pedricktown parade, but after a diligent search I cannot find it. In that it is a holiday, and in that I should reference the old hometown and some aspect of life there, I will include a portion of a story I did 10 years back about the road from Pedricktown to Ocean City. The story is set in July, but the road is the same one we would all crowd as our parents headed for America’s Family Vacation Destination on a Memorial Day Weekend.
Since I started this, I have done more work. I have assisted my wife in planting the herbs in an old fire pit. Had to drill some holes in the bottom of the pit to allow for drainage. Also, I needed to dig out a hose that did not have a hole in it. Both tasks were completed successfully.
This is the story of a ride on the backroads to the Jersey Shore contrasting what I saw as a kid and what I saw on a then recent visit where I retraced my parents route down to the Atlantic Ocean.
Then: For the most part the road is a treat to open eyes. These eyes are bright and dart fast from side to side trying to take it all in. These eyes are looking at it with a focus not as yet jaded by life and its lessons or the inevitable cynicism which will come as the years pass.
Two lanes wind through the cultivation past farm markets, clapboard towns and cross roads that have been here for a hundred and fifty years or more. The fields and orchards are verdant and there is the smell of raw stuff of real life in the air. Big machinery unique to packing peaches, apples or other fruit stands there like an enigma for the little engineers in the back of cars whizzing by to dream about late at night when they have reached their beach side resting places.
Now: The old packing houses are folding they couldn't compete with foreign competition. Conveyor belts and other packing machines are rusting. Their orange and pitted forms remain an enigma, a very different enigma.
When you have passed through fields of South Jersey on the way to the beach you smell life. It is almost sexual the aroma. All these many years later when I smell a real tomato not one of those plastic things you find in the hypermarket (you know the ones they won't bruise if you bounce them off the floor) I am right back to a stretch of road somewhere near Bridgeton, NJ looking at those tomato plants that are everywhere.
Then: It is a hot July day and I am pulling my legs over the vinyl seats just to hear the sucking sound that follows. Leg farts. I glance out the window, open to let the air in and there is a color to the sun that is over powering. It is a yellow dusty sun that is hot and growing hotter. The road winds and I whine "How much longer till we get there?" Getting no real answer, I look around and the comics of the Philadelphia Inquirer are shoved down onto the backseat floorboard. Maybe I will read "Dondi" again or "Steve Canyon" to kill another minute.
This ride is an explosion of sensual experience. There is the smell of the old gasoline mix, it is intoxicating. You don't smell that blend anymore do you? The heat comes from the engine and the sun and the blacktop road. A three-inch speaker on the front dash is blasting out "Nowhere to Run" and it sounds good. But why is the old man letting Motown play? He doesn't like their music. And then I lie down and stare up at an angle and we hit that canopy of trees.
Green and going on for 10 or 20 miles I am not sure how long it will be but eventually we will pass the old church. Maybe we will stop and I will get to look at the old cast iron headstones. What a weird thing those are. But the Green part of the ride it is cooling and it is not long until I will be at the beach. Looking up at the trees in memory as I whiz by in Ford Galaxy 500, a long-gone ghost, I am deep into the green world.
Two lanes wind through the cultivation past farm markets, clapboard towns and cross roads that have been here for a hundred and fifty years or more. The fields and orchards are verdant and there is the smell of raw stuff of real life in the air. Big machinery unique to packing peaches, apples or other fruit stands there like an enigma for the little engineers in the back of cars whizzing by to dream about late at night when they have reached their beach side resting places.
Now: The old packing houses are folding they couldn't compete with foreign competition. Conveyor belts and other packing machines are rusting. Their orange and pitted forms remain an enigma, a very different enigma.
When you have passed through fields of South Jersey on the way to the beach you smell life. It is almost sexual the aroma. All these many years later when I smell a real tomato not one of those plastic things you find in the hypermarket (you know the ones they won't bruise if you bounce them off the floor) I am right back to a stretch of road somewhere near Bridgeton, NJ looking at those tomato plants that are everywhere.
Then: It is a hot July day and I am pulling my legs over the vinyl seats just to hear the sucking sound that follows. Leg farts. I glance out the window, open to let the air in and there is a color to the sun that is over powering. It is a yellow dusty sun that is hot and growing hotter. The road winds and I whine "How much longer till we get there?" Getting no real answer, I look around and the comics of the Philadelphia Inquirer are shoved down onto the backseat floorboard. Maybe I will read "Dondi" again or "Steve Canyon" to kill another minute.
This ride is an explosion of sensual experience. There is the smell of the old gasoline mix, it is intoxicating. You don't smell that blend anymore do you? The heat comes from the engine and the sun and the blacktop road. A three-inch speaker on the front dash is blasting out "Nowhere to Run" and it sounds good. But why is the old man letting Motown play? He doesn't like their music. And then I lie down and stare up at an angle and we hit that canopy of trees.
Green and going on for 10 or 20 miles I am not sure how long it will be but eventually we will pass the old church. Maybe we will stop and I will get to look at the old cast iron headstones. What a weird thing those are. But the Green part of the ride it is cooling and it is not long until I will be at the beach. Looking up at the trees in memory as I whiz by in Ford Galaxy 500, a long-gone ghost, I am deep into the green world.
If you want to read more about my car memories here is a link, https://onetruenorthspace.blogspot.com/2014/07/tinny-speaker.html
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