The Way it was Then - Part #8

 

May 13, 1983

When it hits where you live

 The environment never was one of my causes.

In my younger, college-age years, I was a great civil rights advocate, complete with marches and candle-light vigils.

Once or twice since reaching staid adulthood, I’ve gotten wound up about a local issue and passed out leaflets, manned telephones, worked the polls and fought to win (or defeat) the question involved.

But the environment just hasn’t turned me on.

Granted, I don’t live next to Love Canal or even the GEMS landfill.

Maybe proximity might have moved me sooner to care about what is done with toxic or hazardous wastes. But I have to candidly confess I’ve not lost a great deal of sleep wondering where we’re disposing of the radioactive wastes from Salem I.

It sometimes takes just a little thing to stir the juices and make me wake up to an issue I’ve let slip by.

Like Tuesday night’s occurrence.

As anyone who knows me will attest, reading is my very favorite solitary pastime. I often get so lost in the story line (especially in an extremely well-written book) that I don’t hear the phone or doorbell. And whenever I’m not working, doing laundry, cleaning up, running errands or helping with homework, I’m reading.

So last Tuesday might, I had an hour… between nine and ten p.m. to catch up on some library books I’d been itching to get at.

With reading light turned to just the right brilliance, radio playing at just the right volume, dog walked and cats fed and satisfied, I curled up on the couch and opened the book. Immediate absorption.

At about 9:30, I noticed my eyes were tearing and beginning to smart. Looking up from the book, I caught the bitter odor of burning something-or-other in the air. Thinking the house was on fire, I went from room to room pretty rapidly, checking the temperature of the walls, looking for evidence of smoke. Nothing, thank goodness.

And still the smell worsened and my eyes burned badly.

Remembering that a friend had complained to me about a week earlier about a horrible odor ground her home one night, I opened the front door and was assailed by one of the worst smells I can recall. Even the cats, alarmed by the silent invader, leaped from their windowsill perches and ran into the basement.

Outside the house … it was awful. On such a clear, cloudless night, one could almost feel the stench. It was strong enough to have body and substance.

And then, minutes later, it was gone. It took about fifteen minutes for my eyes to stop smarting, though, and I don’t want to guess what inhaling it did to the lungs and genetic systems of those of us inadvertently exposed to it.

The Berlin police, summoned by central dispatch when I called to inquire about possible sources of the odor, said it might have come from one of the industrial operations nearby.

In conversations with friends since Thursday, I’ve learned it’s a common happening around these parts, but repeated attempts to uncover the source have failed.

Obviously, it’s not a healthy thing that is let loose in the air. If it were, it would be done in the daylight when monitoring devices would pick up the emission and record it. If it were, it wouldn’t make eyes tear and cats flee.

And that scares the dickens out of me.

I don’t live near any well-publicized source of pollution. On purpose.

Heaven knows we ingest enough of the junk that kills in our food, our air, our clothing, the substances around us everyday. We can’t help what we don’t recognize.

But an odor that seeps into the crevices of a pretty tight house, that brings tears to the eyes of a concentrating reader, that makes animals prick their ears and run in fear … that should be controllable.

Maybe if enough of us keep the EPA Hotline number (800-424-8802) by our telephones and dial it the minute we catch a whiff of something unusual, the surrounding industries will be monitored closely enough to scare them into stopping whatever it is they’re doing.

In the meantime, ask around. See if your neighbors or your families know about the awful smell. Write letters, if you’re so inclined, to the officials of the industries that surround us and let them know that living in a healthy environment means a lot to you.

Maybe it was nothing at all. Maybe not.

I’d rather be alert and try to put a stop to it than die prematurely from its possible carcinogenic effects.

The Way it was Then - Part #7

 

May 6, 1983

When Old is really Beautiful

 The older I get, the older young is.

Guess we can all say that … remembering especially how old our parents were when we were kids and they were, say thirty-five or some such ancient number.

Funny, those of us who have seen thirty-five come and go (or are on the sunny side of it … but just barely) think that thirty-five (or forty or fifty) is really very young.

My father is a young mid-seventies; some of my best friends are over sixty. To my children, I’m sure these people are near decrepit, but to me they are far from ready to throw in the towel.

People often become more beautiful (inside and out) the older they get. Sometimes, it’s because they’ve met and conquered the miseries of the world and have gained a serenity that comes from dealing with adversity. Sometimes it’s because they face less cares and woes than they had in their youth. Sometimes it’s a radiance that comes from having learned how to face life and find the best it has to offer.

Furniture often becomes more precious the older it gets.

I remember sharply the conversation I had with my mother about all of the old things she liked to collect. We were downstairs cleaning out the basement. I should say she was cleaning out the basement and I was fussing over all the “junk” she had saved.

“I hope you’re not going to leave me all this stuff someday,” I said sarcastically (as only a wise young know-it-all can).

Mom sighed and remarked that she’d better never die then, because she couldn’t bear to think of all this beauty being sold or going to waste because no one wanted it.

Beauty?

All I ever saw was old.

Old furniture. Old bottles. Old knick-knacks. Old pots and pans. Old needlework. Old dolls. Old pictures. Old, old, old.

At that stage in my life, I dreamed of the magazine-perfect plastic, glass and chrome that my home would look like. All modernistic paintings on the wall and nary a trace of anything old.

Fortunately for my mother (and definitely for me) my appreciation of age changed before it was time to find a home for my mother’s things. Now, I am proud to polish all those relics of former time that grace my home, keeping in mind that nothing like them will ever be made again.

Houses, too, have a certain character that often becomes more interesting with age.

This month, the Camden County Cultural and Heritage Commission will honor some local people for the work they’ve done to restore and preserve the beautiful houses we see in our travels around the county.

Next time you’re driving on Tansboro Road toward the Acme shopping center, take a gander at the old Wooster farm on your left, just after McDonald’s. The owners of that gem could easily have razed it and started again … to build a modern two-story Colonial with center hall and the other commonplace things we put in our houses these days.

Instead, the first thing that happened was the restoration of the turret room that was originally a part of the house. In the weeks that I’ve been watching the beautiful old home being carefully restored, it’s been like seeing something reborn. It’s almost like being able to witness the metamorphosis of a crumbling ruin into the image of its once glorious past.

In a way, it’ll be a shame to see it completed. The process will be over and the house will be someone’s home, not a project that we passersby can continually share.

In a time when it’s easier to tear something down than to preserve it, how wonderful that some people like the owners of that house, developers like Bob Scarborough, entrepreneurs like those who rescued Philadelphia’s Bourse and those who have decided to keep the old Lit Brothers building from destruction, are financially able and emotionally capable of deciding to preserve history.

But for them, our country would lose much of its heritage and we would be without a great deal of beauty.

The Way it was Then - Part #6

 

April 13, 1983

They’re Still the “Girls.”

The Girls’ Club.

Sounds like something from a junior high class, doesn’t it?

Maybe it’s peculiar to women, since I seldom hear of men who think of themselves as “boys” (except for the famous “night out with the…”)

But The Girls’ Club is a pleasant memory of mine that dates back to my early teen years, when Mom and a group of her women friends started meeting at one another’s homes for “Club” once a month.

There were eight of them… and their gatherings were strictly for them. Men and children pursued other interests and got out of the way so they could have their social time.

Club night wasn’t anything fancy. Just snacks, maybe a special dessert, a drink or two and coffee. No one really fussed over it.

What they ate didn’t really matter.

It was the chance to get together, away from the pressures of home, husband, kids, work, all the mundane things that went on for twenty-nine or thirty other days of the month.

That one day belonged to them.

My mother was an ardent member of The Girls’ Club. So was her sister, my aunt Mary. All the other women were dear friends, all from the same town, all in the same basic age category … a kind of early support group, before the term was even used.

After Mom died, the group didn’t meet for a long time.

Understandably there was a void there with Mom gone that they would have to overcome before they could get on with their own lives.

But something else may have happened too.

As they grew older, perhaps the pressures lessened somewhat. As their children gained independence, as their husbands’ careers became steadier and more predictable, as they gradually moved from the bottom of their own professions to positions of stability, perhaps they didn‘t need each other as much.

Whatever the reason, the Girls’ Club didn’t meet for many years until two years ago, when one of them remembered the warmth of an evening together and called the others with the “I’ll have Club this Thursday” that usually kicked off the reminder that this was the week.

Something jogged Jean’s memory last week.

Jean Thoms was probably my mother’s closest friend and she is now one of mine. When I talked with her last weekend, she happily announced that she was “having Club” at her house on Thursday.

She said how pleased the girls had been when she called with her invitation. One, she said, cried with happiness at the idea of seeing everyone again.

I was flattered that she had entertained the idea of inviting me to the get-together, but I hastened to agree with her decision not to.

After all, no kids were ever included in the Club nights in the old days.

And my presence, looking for all the world like my mother did when they were all my age, might possibly have made the evening more of a trip down memory lane than it should have been.

So, I sat this Thursday’s Club night out, some twenty miles from the girls, sort of like I had twenty-five years ago when I stayed in my room and listened to the laughter coming from the kitchen.

I sat it out with most of them not even aware that I knew they were together.

They also didn’t know I was remembering the other night so long ago … the way Mom hurried through her workday with a lighter heart than usual because “the girls” were coming over … the way the house had a spit and polish shine on it that was definitely unusual, because “the girls” were coming over … the way Dad and I were on our own for supper so Mom could get ready to go to Rita’s, or Mina’s or Sis’s or Lois’s or Mary Emma’s or Jean’s or Mary’s … the way they thought of each other at the right times, always there to lend a hand when they were needed or to call just when a friendly word counted for a lot.

It was always a big night for Mom … that once a month treat of theirs.

No doubt this meeting was the same for those who stayed behind.