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FLYING THROUGH LIFE

FLIGHT

Boys had boats, their favorite toy

Not I -

When I was just a boy.

I dreamt of wings for soaring high

And cutting wakes in yonder sky.

And where my father’s footsteps went-

I’d follow,

Into the firmament

Gaula Wiedenheft, 1987

Three years after Hitler blew his brains out my family moved to Island Heights. Dad rented Mrs. Black’s summer cottage on the east end of the small town where my Mother had grown up and where my parents first met 30 years earlier. The house was a block from Barnegat Bay which is part of the inland waterway to Florida.

It is 2005 as I write these words and the world is in some ways pretty much the same as it was in 1950 - at least in the important things. The sun comes up, the rivers run, the moon is there and the poles haven’t yet switched, the oceans haven’t swallowed Florida, the Antarctic ice hasn’t flooded the east coast, polar bears aren’t yet using sun blockers and greenhouse gas and holes in the ozone haven’t killed anyone that I know of. I went back to visit Island Heights a few months ago and it also, thank God, hasn’t changed much.

I remember that first summer. I built a boat, Mom made the sail. I had to get in carefully or it would sink. At first, it went in small circles- this led to my discovery of the keel, two boards nailed to the sides. Necessity is indeed the mother of invention.

I registered at Island Height’s grade school, a wooden two story building constructed in 1889 - first through forth grades upstairs, fifth through eighth downstairs- each in a row. This was a two room school house and may have been one of the very last in America. It had a basement with a coal furnace- The eighth grade boys shoveled the coal.

Fayette Slimm, tall and thin, a life-long spinster, was in her sixties. She had been my Mother’s teacher thirty years earlier. We had square dancing every Thursday and opened each day with a song. Patsy Huhn played the piano and Ms. Slimm led us from the “Little Golden Book of Songs.” One of our songs had lyrics that went “ A Nigger Won’t Steal- way down yonder in the corn field, but I caught one the other night, way down yonder in the corn field” Imagine, singing that these days, positively boggles the mind. Times in some ways have certainly changed.

(On Fridays, Ms. Kier came in to teach art. There was a large galvanized pipe fastened to the second floor that had two little red doors with a brass rod over the doors. The idea was that the little guys upstairs would use this as a fire escape- Every week we got to ride the chute sitting on wax paper to keep it slippery. (photo Island Heights school right)

We had Palmer penmanship three times a week. This consisted of making small repetitive lines and circles like the letters “ R” and “S” over and over, on lined pages in little red books supplied by the Palmer pen company. Every year, Ms. Slimm would send the completed books off and every year nothing came back… turns out that the company had been out of business for years… was this some kind of cruel joke or what? We were supposed to get little medals or something…never got any….

The town was built alongside Toms River, which ran into Barnegat bay. They both froze solid every winter I lived there…Cars and trucks drove on the ice, going as fast as they could, slamming on the brakes… spinning around for miles…most of the drivers were drunk or drinking… nobody ever got hurt… as far as I know…this was a miracle. Once, riding with Russell Whitman in his 1956 two-seater T-Bird, we hit the brakes at over one hundred miles an hour, almost wiping out a bunch of Nuns from St Joe’s on ice skates. They scattered, looking more like a pack of penguins than real penguins.

When I was in the eighth grade, we took our shotguns to school and hunted ducks at lunch time… Imagine doing that today…! I had muskrat traps and had to get up in the cold dark mornings before school and go out into the swamp to tend the line. I took the “dead” rodents to school and hung them on the coat hooks in the cloak room. About ten o’clock, when they warmed up, some of them came “alive” and started thumping on the wall. Ms Slimm said, “ Robbbert better wack them kats” the girls would squeal and I had to thump the side of the gunny sack with a short Billy until the almost dead ones were really dead…

Going home in the afternoon, I would clean the snow off the picnic table in the side yard and skin the “critters.” By this time we had moved into the big house on the corner of Jaynes and Ocean Ave. The place had twenty-five rooms and a huge basement. Dad built a pine paneled game room. We had a pool table a bar, fireplace and a nickel slot machine. There was a dumbwaiter connecting the old kitchen in the basement to the dining room. What a great place to hide with a good book and a flashlight. (photo right)

School was different in those days. Billy was the only kid I knew who drove his own car to grade school. He was Fayette’s special pupil and she was determined not to let him out of the eighth grade until he could read, write and do his numbers. I think he was seventeen when he finally had enough “larnen” to satisfy her. Billy was well over six feet and graduated along with me. He sat in the front of the class and was head and shoulders taller than anyone else. Billy married Judy Eagar and, as far as I know, retired few years ago from the gas company and still lives in town. I heard he got up to about four hundred pounds and doesn’t do much of anything these days. For a guy who the world might judge as “slow,” Billy knew the names of every plant, flower, tree and all the birds and animals that lived in the woods, rivers, and swamps around Island Heights. So, I guess that shows you, don’t label people, he learned what he was interested in and Chaucer and Shakespeare just weren’t his bag.

Anyway, back to the swamp rodents. After skinning them, I put their little hides on metal stretchers and hung them on the basement water pipes… when they were semi-cured I‘d pack them up and mail them off to “Monkey Wards” who paid $1.50 each and used them for God knows what… maybe liners for Gloves? Hey, come to think of it, Billy taught me how to trap and skin the Muskrats in the first place. Billy would trade me a shotgun shell for every skinned muskrat, he called them swamp chickens and swore they were good to eat………I never tried.

ISLAND HEIGHTS STORIES

THE POINTED END

I was reminded of the story of, well let’s just say a boy I once knew, who became the only person I ever heard of to shoot himself in the head with a bow and arrow...a remarkable feat when you think about it. Many years later I did know a night guard who was working for me in Nigeria…this fine gentleman in fact did shoot himself in his foot with a crossbow… so, I guess such things are not so terribly rare after all. … I doubt that they were related but, one never knows… the universal human gene pool being so remarkably diverse… but, I digress.

Our young genius lived in the small house just to the south of ‘Bogger Ayer's’ General store (on the corner of Ocean and Central.. During his twelfth year, one clear summer day, he was in his back yard with his Dad’s deer hunting bow... thinking naturally of where to shoot it... the yard is today as small as it was then and, opting for maximum distance, he decided to shoot straight up and see how far it would go....

This was a classic mistake as even he soon realized ... the arrow streaked into the hot blue sky, higher and higher, until he almost lost sight of it...then, as he had belatedly figured out, it slowly reversed direction and came earthward faster and faster, pointed end down. Joey, panicked, running in small circles trying to hide. He was hugging a large tree whimpering like a kitten when the arrow entered the branches...thankfully somewhat slowed, implanting itself directly in the top of Joey's crew cut blond head.....

He ran screaming to the back door and his mother, seeing the arrow protruding like a TV antenna, screamed and fainted... ....Now, in a complete panic.... figuring he had likely killed himself the clever lad ran to Booger Ayer's store... Booger who had polished off his usual bottle of Old Grand Dad before noon was behind the counter when Joey ran in crying with the arrow sticking insanely out of the top of his head.....

Booger just reached over the counter and pulled it out... The Genius ran home where his Mom had recovered...and never went to the doctor... his Mom put a patch over the hole and his life went on.. like before... That's one of the old Island Heights stories.... I thought you might like to know .. in case you ever drive through the town it’s something to remember.

SUMMER DEATH

It was on that day in 1954 just before school got out for the summer.. always the first day of June and we were free for three whole months…but, this was a school day… albeit the last one and we were standing around outside for lunch break…when…

The old Ford station wagon that had been turned into a makeshift ambulance by the Island Heights First Aid Squad, pulled up in front of the tiny green cottage across the street from the school. My best friend’s Mom and her neighbor got out wearing white painters coveralls with a red cross sewn on the back and carried a black bag up the stairs…

Miss Slimm, our teacher and sixty-five year old spinster “schoolmarm”, had called them because the beagle had been howling all morning. The dog belonged to the old man who had lived in the little house for many, many years… We all knew him, just to say hello… the way the very young know the very old... casually, if at all.

Standing there, under the clear early summer sun, with the tall oaks shading half the street, the kids of the last one room school house in America bought ice cream from the truck that jingled to a stop…and we waited… not knowing for what…and certainly not for death…

We all were oddly silent… hearing the “ thumping,,, bumping , thumping” .. as “something” was being dragged down the narrow stairs The door opened and the ladies came out with dust masks over their noses, dragging a long black bag…and, backing the station wagon that passed as an ambulance and in this case a hearse, under the stairs wrestled the bag into the back and drove off… We knew.. this was how death visited us at the start of that summer…..

Licking Popsicles under the tall oaks and blue skies, we watched the wagon disappear around the corner…silently ,strangely, we all understood and the beagle, who had always known, stopped barking … looking at us and back at the empty, open door…I don’t know who took care of the beagle… That was my last year at grade school - after that day I didn’t return for many years… The little house is still there but the old school building has been replaced…you really can’t go back, can you?

Why they call it “Island Heights”

Once, long ago, the town really was an island. My Grandfather used to say so at least. He said that the river ran through the part of town that is today and has been in all of my memory, just called “long Swamp.” And in fact, was and still is today, a swampy wetlands.

THE RACING TURTLE

Gilford Park, the next small town to the north was separated by a shallow warm stream that emptied the swamp into the bay. I was to get to know a strange guy named Ed Feaster who lived in that town but, at that time, that summer, I had never heard of him. Later, years later, in high school, we met. Ed became locally famous for owning a real “racing turtle” Ed’s racing turtle once set the speed record for land based turtles.

The poor critter, which had probably been the biggest snapping turtle in the swamp, was imprisoned in Ed’s garage for weeks. Ed had forgotten about it. The starving beast had eaten every mouse and insect in its prison. When he finally remembered it was down to a trim shadow of its former glory.

Red-eyed and starving, the rabid turtle came hissing and charging out into the sunlight looking for 15 year old boys for lunch…We tossed a garbage can over it and managed to move it to the paint shop in preparation for its racing debut.

With a green stripe and the number 10, which had no significance whatsoever, painted on its black shell, we were ready for the tortoise land speed record. The problem was how to get it to run in a more or less straight line and not to have it chasing us for dinner.

The schoolyard on this cold November Saturday morning was perfect. The beast was red eyed, hugely pissed off and properly motivated… Ed had glued a ten inch length of balsa wood from his model plane kit onto the turtles shell so that it extended just out of reach of his extended neck with its sharp killer beak. He tied a small green frog to the stick and holding the turtle back against his straining legs, we counted down and let him GO!

After weeks of starvation and at his prime all time running weight, the racing turtle took off like a rocket… straining with every fiber of its short powerful legs, to reach the succulent green frog dancing just out of reach of his ferocious snapping beak.

Running flat out for several minutes along our measured course, with our stop watch, we estimated his speed at least at fifteen mph. After exhausting himself and thoroughly disheartened, the crazed critter had an epiphany of sorts and headed for a concrete wall at flat out full speed. The stick splintered and the frog was snapped up in a flash… We had witnessed a stunning performance, the world’s all-time fastest turtle! We left the turtle to wander back into the swamp where stories and sightings of a huge snapper with the faded number 10 painted on his shell became another one of the local legends.

After graduating from Ms. Slimm’s school, I went to Toms River High… the years there were predictable…I played a little football, ran track and learned about girls. I won every race that I entered, being big, fast and strong for my age. I was just shy of six feet and weighed a hundred and seventy five in the ninth grade and could run the one hundred yard dash in a little under ten seconds, which is a respectful time even today. I tossed the Javelin two hundred and twenty feet standing still and ran the hurdles fast enough to win all the track meets for four straight years. I beat every one in arm wrestling and still can…Just a trick of nature…My grandfather was the same- in his seventies he could pin my arm like butter- amazing how strong he was. (ISLAND HEIGHTS YACHT CLUB above)

While still in High School, I started my second company, repairing bulkheads and docks along the river. Before that, I ran a clamming company, hiring 18 or so of the Island Heights kids too young to drive, buying them state clamming licenses and taking them 30 miles south to Tuckerton where we had four rowboats…and one outboard motor. (photo of clammer’s shack on the marsh)

We, the “Clam Commissioners,” me and my pals, would put the kids in the water and not let them out for lunch until they filled a bushel basket. The baskets were stuck inside automotive inner-tubes. Cars don’t have inner-tubes these days but back then they all did- by the way, gas in those days was twenty five cents a gallon.

So how do your catch a clam? First you tie a pair of old socks on your feet then you feel for the shells and duck down in waist deep water for each one. After you put about two to four hundred clams in your basket it’s time for lunch. We paid the kids one and a third cents per clam and sold them for five cents…some days we had eighteen thousand clams so, you do the math…we made good money for not dong much.. Huge hungry horse flies bit the kids drawing blood and they had to pull wet t-shirts over their heads for some kind of protection. The crabs and “oyster crackers,” ugly little fish with immense jaws, would try to bite your feet and the occasional shark would swim around the shallow lagoon so, the work had some hazards. We wouldn’t let any of the “worker-bees” in the boat for lunch until they all had filled their baskets. Around noon, the faster kids had to help the slower ones and the same in the afternoon- we would stay there until the last basket was filled- cooperate and graduate.

We took our girl friends from the Island Heights yacht Club with us, water skied, snorkeled and had one of the kids who didn’t like the mud, toss clay pigeons for us to shoot at… nice days.. playing on the bay…nicer to be a clam commissioner…

Over dark winter nights, I went fishing for stripped bass with gill nets on the river rowing a fifteen foot boat through skim ice … cold north west winds blowing down the dark river, ice freezing on the oars,,, waves lapping over the boat filled with four hundred pounds lbs of fish, hands, feet and noses frozen. George Washington didn’t have anything on us. The buyers were waiting for us at three am, parked near the beach with scales hanging from their trucks. We made a dollar a pound when the stripped bass were running… my share was a hundred a night- not bad for a fourteen year old, then or now!

As kids, one of our principal things was shooting ducks. We shot ducks almost every weekend during the season and sometimes out of season. I had a Remington pump with a 32” barrel and still have it today. That gun chambers three inch magnum twelve gauge shells and reaches out a hundred yards easy. I must have fired ten thousand shells through that gun and it never jammed, not once. Oh yes, we ate the ducks. Island Heights was the best place for a kid to grow up - not so good if you were a duck.