Category Archives: South Jersey Pine BarrensNJ-1960-73

Raised on a lake in the woods

South Jersey Pine BarrensNJ-1960-73

Muckwalking

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As a Kid in South Jersey -1960’s

I grew up on a small lake gouged out of an old and shallower cranberry bog. There was a whole string of these lakes in South Jersey, with earthen dams and small swamps and creeks between them . Every spring, each of the lakes would be let down so people could access the shoreline and clean up beaches or build and repair their docks. One lake at a time would be lowered for a week or two each spring.As the upper lake would drain, it would refill the lake below it. There were wooden and concrete boxes built out in the water above the culvert pipes under each dam. The water level was regulated by either adding a 2 X 6 board, to raise it, or removing one from to lower it. It was easy to do but no one except the President of each lake association was allowed to do it. I remember my dad being in charge the years I was growing up there on Mimosa Lake.

Even though we knew we would be expected to help with all the springtime chores involving lake clean up, all us kids always looked forward to the lake coming down. It meant it was time for muckwalking all around the perimeter, finding small treasures dropped from boats and rescuing stranded fish from shallow pools. It was fun and everything looked different from that perspective, down in the muck.

My family kept a whole bunch of 20 gallon tanks in the basement to put rescued fish in as temporary holding pens and as entertainment while the lake filled back up. We found pickerel, and sunnies mostly, but also newts and snakes and turtles. The lake was never drained totally dry but sometimes higher sections were left pretty exposed. One year in particular, the lake was held down for longer than usual and much lower too. The channel was clearly exposed. I think they must have been doing some major dam repairs that year, or maybe it was because of the severe lakeweed problem the year before. Some people did not seem to understand that you should not fertilize grass right down to the waters edge because it ran off into the lake and caused severe over growth of what we called seaweed. It was so bad one year that I nearly drowned when I swam the length of the lake and got tangled in the long strands.

Originally, we kids all walked in the muck barefoot but after one kid got bit by a snapping turtle buried in the muck and several of us cut our feet on glass, we graduated to old sneakers. Sometime the mud was so sucky that it would pull our shoes off as we tried to extricate ourselves from the deeper spots.I am sure our mothers made us take our stinky clothes off outside before coming in to take a bath. There is nothing quite like the smell of lake muck and it took more than a few baths to wear off.

Some parents made use of their kids liking to explore in the muck. My dad would send us down with buckets to fill with heavy, goopy muck to use as fertilizer for his lawn. He had one of the thickest, greenest lawns around, with a thick, muck, topsoil layer above the white sand for the grass to grow in. He also ran plastic pipes down to a water pump in the cove below our house and irrigated the whole lawn with rich lake water. We had all these switches on the kitchen wall where he could turn on each zone as needed. During fire season, when the Pine Barrens were burning, he would aim a few at the roof to keep flying embers from catching the roof on fire.

One year we found a pure white clay bank exposed along the lake edge and we made pinch pots from it, firing them in a bonfire. We found bicycles, boats, fishing rods and lures, and once, the remains of a neighbors missing dog who had disappeared that winter when the ice was too thin to walk on. There was a reward for finding poor Max and Robert got a new bicycle for bringing him home. There were lots of turtles, both King and Snapper hiding in the muck. The turtles were always bad about eating the baby ducks so each spring we rounded up the mothers and ducklings and kept them in protective pens until they got bigger. There were quite a few kids living on each lake and we would wander in groups to muck-walk, traveling from lake to lake as the water levels changed. It would have been too dangerous to go alone as some of the mud was like quicksand and you needed help getting out of it. If you were gone all day and not bothering your parents you could get out of some boring chores, so we were pretty darn good at staying gone. We all had to be back home shortly after the 6 pm fire whistle though, or we could end up grounded the next day.

I have fond memories of exploring all the nooks and crannies of the shorelines with the other kids.  Sometimes I still enjoy squishing mud between my toes, but I am a lot more careful of putting my feet where I can’t see the bottom these days. I was braver back then.

-Edgewise Wendy

South Jersey Pine BarrensNJ-1960-73

Playing Records in the Car

The Record Player in the Car

Recently I asked my mother if she remembered the record player we had under the dash of the family car when I was little. The car was a fifty something model with two tone paint in turquoise and white. The record player hung  from the bottom side of the dash centered above the hump. We would stack 45 RPM records on the center turnstile shaft and they would automatically drop down as each record finished.
Mom did remember this and I was glad. Some people thought I had made it up. Mom said it would skip when we hit bumps too hard on our dirt road. It was one of 3 RCA prototypes at the time and since my dad was a model maker for RCA, we got to try it out. It was taken out of our car when the better model was lost in the mail on its’ way to an electronics show out in Ohio and RCA needed something for the show.

My dad brought other goodies home to try as well. More later.

-Wendy lee, writing at Edgewisewoods, Gardens and Critters

Critters, Homesteading, South Jersey Pine BarrensNJ-1960-73

Dear Gretchen, (the best Dachshund ever)

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Dear Gretchen, (the best Dachshund ever)
Do you remember the patchwork blanket Grandmom made for you? And the patchwork PJ’s she made for me out of little 4 inch squares of flannel? How about the time we got a blue ribbon at the county fair when I dressed you up homemade Thumbelina doll’s Santa Outfit ? You were an awful good sport about it. What about the little deerskin booties we made for you to swim in, to keep your nails from scratching us, with your flailing doggy paddle? And the time you ran through the screen door and tore your itchy stitches out and I had to sleep with you in that scary dog box to keep you from crying all night?   I couldn’t stand to hear you crying but we couldn’t let you jump up on the bed until you got healed.
And I know you remember that horrible day when you were hanging out under the kitchen stove and the hot bacon grease flashed on the stove and then spilled down onto your poor head. I had never heard anyone scream in that much pain before. It was awful. You ran,

Gretchen and Her Scar
Gretchen and Her Scar

yelping and screaming, all the way down the stairs into the basement and tried to hide under the couch. I had to drag you out so we could get you to the vet, you poor thing. After that you had an inch wide hairless, black skin, scar that ran from your left eye all the way to your right ear and you couldn’t see out of that eye anymore.

You used to dig up all the mole tunnels in the yard and turn them into Dachshund sized ditches instead. And you brought home antlers bigger than you and chewed on them for ages. And there was that time you killed a mama bunny and brought home all her babies and nursed them with your precocious milk. You must have wanted your own puppies pretty bad to go through those false pregnancies, even getting milk and then to steal baby bunnies. It was cute though. And we had to blast you with a soapy water pistol to try and break you from chasing cars down the road after they paved it. You were way too small to be chasing cars, you know. It was really dangerous. You liked to ride out in front on the sailboat and your ears would flap in the wind. You kept me warm at night, sleeping under the covers and letting me use you as a knee pillow. Even your head was under the covers.

Gretchen gnawing on antlers
Gretchen gnawing on antlers

It was hard to leave you behind when I left home but I couldn’t take you to West Virginia when I moved. You were old and half blind and mostly deaf by then. I was afraid you would follow a ground hog down its hole like it was just a little mole and get all torn up.

Dad brought you home for me when I was eight years old, after Aunt Peg came back from Tripoli and wanted her Dachshund Shotzi back.  We had kept him for more than six months and I had fallen in love with him . I had to give him back and could not bear to be alone again. There is nothing else like having a best-friend dog who loves you no matter what. I really appreciated Mom and Dad allowing me to have you since you were not exactly a hunting dog like the Irish Setters they raised.

You lived to be thirteen years old, which is pretty good for a Dachshund. I was not there for your last two years and I feel I let you down in the end. I wish Mom had let me know when she decided to put you down. I didn’t even know until months later. I wouldn’t never have wanted you to suffer though, and I have to trust that Mom did the right thing for you. You were in pain and unable to function anymore. You were my closest friend and such a good dog. Thanks for being you.

Written by Wendy lee, blogging at https://www.edgewisewoods.com

 

South Jersey Pine BarrensNJ-1960-73

Riding Road Graders and Sleds

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Riding Road Graders and Sleds- Mimosa Lake, NJ, 1960’s

When I was little, we lived on a one lane, white sandy road in the Pine Barrens named for my family as Watson’s Way. It looped around the back side of our small lake, through the Piney woods and scrub oaks, eventually joining with another road to form a figure eight around two lakes. Towards the end of summer each year, the little one lane track would get all humped up with sand in the middle, with the wheel tracks lower on each side. It had to be scraped down and leveled or the cars would drag bottom and get stuck in the soft sand. The curves were especially tricky to maneuver when the sand got deep.  Flooring the gas was not at all helpful, it just dug you in deeper. For some reason, the Mayor of the township was the guy who would come out to grade it. I have never known why it was him that came out, as he didn’t live nearby. Maybe he was a land owner or something. He lived way off in town in a huge old farm house and held a big community Easter Egg Hunt there each year.

We learned to ride our bikes on that sandy road, which wasn’t easy, but the falling wasn’t too bad in the soft sand. Way better than falling on gravel or black top. We played Wiffle ball in the middle of the road too, as there was hardly ever any cars besides ours on it. Our bikes had fat tires and no gears back then, with the old style back pedaling brakes. After it rained, the sand was firmer, darker colored and easier to ride on. When the weather had been really dry for a while though, it was almost impossible to pedal fast enough to stay upright. My mom had to carry a shovel in the back of the car in case we needed to dig ourselves out. Old floor mats came in handy too.

So, when the center hump got to too high, Eeph (short for Ephraim) would come out on his old tractor pulling a box grader/ scraper. This was not like a highway department grader blade but more like a giant box type cheese grater. The blade on the bottom would scrape up the sand and it would rise up in the open topped box, the pile growing higher and higher, as he traveled on down the road. When it would get so high it started spilling, he would drive it to some low area or a washed out place nearby and tip it out. It was fascinating to watch but the best times were when he let us sit on top of the pile as it grew. I don’t think this was something I ever mentioned to my parents, and I can’t imagine they would have approved, but it sure was fun.

Another dubiously safe pastime was when Dad would hook the toboggan up to the back of the station wagon and pull all four of us kids down the road in the snow. He’d be fishtailing and we’d be yelling for him to go faster and slinging ourselves off on purpose. It was a blast. Come to think of it, Jeff was game for this kind of thing back in the 90’s when he pulled about twelve of us uphill on sleds behind his Isuzu. It was our annual Presidents Day weekend caving trip out in Franklin, WV. There was a good snow on the ground so we had all brought our sleds. The first sled in line was tied to the car with a rope, and the rest were all holding on to the bent up legs of the person in front of us. We whip snaked up that forest service road way faster than we ever slid down it. He’d pull us up, we’d sled down, he’d pull us back up again. That was even more fun than the toboggan and we were mostly all in our thirty’s and forties then. Well, except for Ackie, who was probably in his sixties at least. He rode his sled down the hill sitting upright like the Norelco shaver commercial on TV at Christmas. You have to be ready to enjoy whatever fun comes along.

Wendy lee, writing at edgewisewoods.com