CHAPTER 70
In August of 1957 something happened that never had before, besides the launching of Sputnik. My parents took me along on a vacation trip. There had been a number of day trips during my youth. My mother and grandmother had taken me to the big department stores in Philadelphia every Christmas and to the city’s museums on my yearly birthday.
My folks took me to Dutch Country a few times over the years. It wasn’t overgrown with tourist traps yet. There was an Amish
Homestead you could tour and learn about that sect, but mostly you rode around the beautiful farmland and saw the real Amish at work in the fields. Traffic wasn’t congesting Route 30 and the side roads. The only thing that slowed you up was an occasional horse and buggy.
There were only a couple restaurants specializing in Pennsylvania Dutch menus where you could get some real Shoofly pie for desert. Miller’s Smorgasbord existed going back to 1929, but such famous restaurants as Plain & Fancy and Good ‘n’ Plenty didn’t exist yet. We went on Saturdays. Nothing was open on Sunday, and still isn’t, out of respect for the Mennonite and Amish beliefs.
Of course today where you had open farm country you have strings of motels and restaurants, several homesteads giving tours, light shows and musical theater and a big amusement park called Dutch Wonderland. Once it was a land of unique people that drew your curiosity. Now merchants, cashing in on the Amish theme, have overrun the place with malls, outlet stores and phony tourist traps. They are driving the real Amish away.
There was the Strasburg Railroad in that area even back then. You could ride a steam train to Paradise and back. I was more comfortable with steam trains by the time I was sixteen, although I still gave the steam-hissing engines a wide berth.
Paradise wasn’t, but it did play well into all those suggestive
names of Pennsylvania Dutch Country. You could always go from Bird in Hand to Intercourse, which lay between Blue Ball and Paradise, not far from Leacock and Lititz.
You know, that brings back something else I do remember from Miss Hurlock’s class and I think she got a perverse pleasure out of it. It was a sexual reference that seemed out of place for the time and the place. We were reading some classic literature out loud in class and the author talked about his intercourse with a certain lady. Somebody giggled. Miss Hurlock got this smirk on her face and said, “At that time intercourse meant correspondence and correspondence meant intercourse.” At the time it was another of those things people said I didn’t understand, but it stuck in my mind until I did understand it and has never left.
My family took me to some amusement parks, such as Hershey, Dorney Park and Rocky Springs. Rocky Springs was my favorite. It wasn’t as large or splashy as Hershey or even Dorney Park, but much larger than Lenape. My grandfather took me there for the Downingtown Iron Works company picnic when he was still around. It was wonderful. They gave us little brown buttons to pin on our shirts as we entered. That pin meant we were with the Iron Works and it allowed us to ride all the rides as many times as we wished.
The ride I rode the most was The Whip. You sat in a car attached to a chain that wrapped about a center oval. The car whipped you around the corners at great speed (Pictured right).
They had a funhouse. It was the first one I ever saw where you
rode through. There was a penny arcade, too. At the time Rocky Springs boasted the largest wooden roller coaster in the country. It was The Wildcat. When my parents took me to Rocky Springs a couple of times, my dad ruined it for me by threatening to make me go on the huge Ferris wheel with him.
I had never been on an overnight trip with them, though, until that August, excluding the run I took with dad to Pittsburgh. We were going to Wildwood in New Jersey for a whole week. Not only were they taking me, Rich Wilson was invited along to keep me company.
My dad rented an apartment in one of those little boarding houses that fill the shore towns. Rich and I had a room and my parents had a room. We hardly saw my folks except when we’d all have dinner in one of the eateries. Otherwise, they went their way and we went ours. We preferred it that way. We were usually up early and back late.
Rich and I would head out to the Boardwalk by midmorning, and
then we would go and spend an afternoon on the beach or in the ocean. Rich would fling his shirt off as soon as we hit the sand. He wore a tight fitting swimsuit, something like a brief. I generally kept my shirt on, except when I went into the water. I wore boxer-style, less revealing swim trunks.
The first day on the beach Rich excused himself. He came back a few minutes later with two girls, one on his arm and the other riding on his shoulders.. They were the Siravo Sisters, Jeannette and Marilyn. Jeannette was the older and the one Rich had chatted up. Marilyn, the younger sister, tagged along.
We spend a good bit of our time that week with Jeannette and Marilyn. We met them on the beach every day and then after dinner we spent the evenings on the Boardwalk with them. We went to the amusement piers, played the games of chance or just walked in the moonlight holding hands. (In the photo with me is Marilyn on the left and Jeannette on the right, closest to me.) As it happened, much to my surprise and delight, Jeannette preferred me to Richard so she became my girl for the week. Unfortunately, Rich wouldn’t accept her choice. He wasn’t use to girl’s rejecting his advances and he kept pushing himself upon her. She wrote about it later:
“How thoughtless he was, even at the dance that’s all he did was to kiss me all the time. I got pretty tired of it. All it was he had to have this dance. Remember the last night we were together, well, he made me cry a couple of times because I told him I liked you better than him.”
Dick Clark held one of his record hops in Wildwood at the
Starlight Ballroom, which was the dance she was referring to. . We took the girls and spent the night dancing. As we walked in we were given these small autographed photos, sort of like Baseball Bubblegum Cards, one of Dick Clark and one of Pat Boone. I’m not sure why Pat Boone, he didn’t appear at the dance. Dick Clark always had a couple guest stars appear and perform at his dances. I say perform, but they only lip-synced to their recording. I don’t know whom he had that night. They were a couple of wanna-bes who later became never-weres.
What I remember best was dancing cheek to cheek with Jeannette, smelling her perfume and almost winning the Spotlight Dance. That was a feature of Clark’s hops. Everyone would dance and a spotlight swept the floor. If it came to a stop upon you, you had to leave the floor. The last couple remaining won some kind of prize. Jeannette and I came in third, which was as good as last since we got nothing. It was still fun to remain that long.
I really liked Jeannette. She was very cute, especially when she
smiled and these little dimples formed beneath her brown eyes. She did not like her dimples for some reason, but I guess my words to her about them began to change her opinion. In one of the letters she wrote me, she said:
“I’m beginning to like my dimples, but do they have to be in such a place?”
After the vacation we corresponded by mail for the next year. I even visited her in Langhorne where she lived. My parents were not so happy about this puppy love. After all, Jeannette was not only an Italian, but a Roman Catholic.
For some reason Ronald asked if he could write to her. Ronald was very big on Pen Pals, so I assume he wanted to add her to his collection. However, what he wrote her was a bit convoluted and not very well put:
“Larry’s is always raving and ranting about you. What is so attractive about you anyway?”
(I don’t think he meant it in the way it sounds.)
“You can also tell me what happen (sic) in the park one nite when you and Larry, a couple of friends, were there one nite this past summer. He also said something that happen (sic) at school having something to do about biology room or teacher. I don’t know exactly what the circumstances were. I hope you understand what I’m talking about because I don’t!”
Well, I don’t know what he was talking about either and neither did Jeannette, but she did say she wasn’t going to write to Ronald anymore.
He finished up his letter by trying to get her to be a Pen Pal to some girl living in Brooklyn.
After a year or so it dissolved into just another summer romance memory for each of us. She did send me her senior photo a couple of years later. I wonder where she is today? I hope she had a nice life.
TO J.S.: ONCE OF LANGHORNE AND WILDWOOD
Gusty strokes of wind
Bring thoughts to mind,
Things that might have been.
Whom do I mean?
Her name was Jean.
Sunshine through the storm
Takes me from one dream
To find I dream of
Another sea scene.
Thinking you loved me.
Your Roman face and
Dimpled eyes I see
On the beach we met.
Your name was Jeannette.
No ghost or shadow
Will make this less true;
Yes, she was the first
Back when I was new.
Whom do I mean?
Her name was Jean.
1958
That was the one and only vacation trip I ever shared with my parents.
My car gave me the freedom to do other activities. My friends and I took up bowling, which had become a big fad around that time. A decade earlier Bowling Alleys were considered somewhat less than respectable places, on the same level as pool halls. They were places
for hard men of corse behavior. Now bowling alleys were springing up all over the place, large brightly lit caverns with snack bars and groups of young people. There was also the appearing of a number of miniature golfing ranges. The best of the lot was just outside of Reading. It wasn’t the usual flat, side-boarded holes with windmill and clown obstacles. It was build up, over and around these rocks and it had waterfalls and sand traps, rather than those mechanical devises.
The other thing we got into was roller-skating. There was a skating rink in Exton we went to a lot. Sometimes they held sock hops there and we went to those as well. There was another skating rink in Berwyn that also held Saturday Night sock hops. We did both there, too, skate and dance. Dick Clark hosted some of the sock hops at Berwyn. Clark got around; he had his hops at Sunnybrook Ballroom in Pottstown, at the Starlight in Wildwood and at the Berwyn Skating Rink (left). He probably had others as well. I remember one of his musical acts at
Berwyn, Danny and the Juniors (pictured right). Their recording of “At the Hop” was moving up the charts at the time.
The lead vocalist, Danny Rapp died in 1983 at the age of 42, apparently a suicide. Two of the other founding members of the group died in 2019, DaveWhite was 79 and Joe Terry was 78. The remaining members, Frank and Bobby Maffel carried on for a number of years, at least until 2011 with a final concert on London’s Covert Garden Radio.
Ronald and I bowled often; I think Stuart joined us. Ronald may have gone miniature golfing with me. I think Ronald and I use to go to this Chip ‘n’ Putt south of West Chester along Route 202. It was a nice facility. Chip ‘n’ Putts had eighteen holes, but short fairways. You only used two clubs to play, a chipping iron and a putter, thus the name.
We would ride out to the course and stop at Jimmy John’s for hot dogs and fries. Jimmy John’s had been built in 1940, two years later than Dick Thomas’s Brick Over. There were pictures on the walls of the original Jimmy John with celebrities. I remember Tom Mix in those photos. The restaurant also had these electric trains that ran along shelves on the walls and on a platform in the center.
In 2010 Jimmy Johns was going to have a big 70th Anniversary
celebration. They had hired Duff to do the cake on his TV show “Ace of Cakes”. On the eve of the celebration there was a fire in the kitchen and the restaurant burned down. Duff donated the cake to the firemen who put out the flames. Happily, they were able to rebuild and Jimmy Johns is in business still today.
My mother took a job with Valley Maid Potato Chips in
Phoenixville. You will find many people who agree that Valley Maid made the best potato chips ever. My mom liked working there except when they put her on the barbecue chip line. The seasonings played havoc with her lungs and she picked up a cough from the process.
The problem with my mom going to work was now my Grandmother was home all the time. She didn’t drive and with my mom working their visiting friends and relatives came to a stop. On Saturday nights when my parents went on those toots with their pals my grandmother was home with me. Granted, I was often out on those nights too, either driving to Downingtown to see Ronald or going up the road to Richard’s. Still, I wanted some alone time.
I got some alone time in October, when my grandmother had a
heart attack on the 16th. I guess all the activity and stress after my grandfather died finally caught up to her. She had been through a lot, having to sell all her furniture and household goods and then moving in with us. She remained in the hospital until November 10. You can see she looked well by Christmas. She was 59 years old.
A partial solution to getting some alone time came from church. I had stewed about going to church every Sunday with the family since we moved to Bucktown. When I got the car, I made a deal with them. I would go to Sunday School, but not church. Sunday School was first, so I would drive to it and come home while they attended church service.
Sunday School was incredibly boring. Our teacher was a man with a monotone way of speaking. It was worth it to me enduring this because it gave me an hour with no one else home. That gave me enough time to get out my stash of naughty magazines and bring my fantasies to a conclusion before they came home.
In may have been an omen that what I was doing wasn’t right with God the first Sunday this began. I had just gotten home and was digging in my treasure trove when there was a knock at the front door. It had to be a stranger. I went out to see and there were two ladies standing on the porch. I opened the door.
It cost me a dollar to buy the Jehovah Witness book called, “From Paradise Lost to Paradise Regained” just to get rid of them. Once they left I tossed their orange book aside for another of quite ungodly content and sought to gain my own temporary paradise.
No comments:
Post a Comment