A BUGGY SPRING

The Spring is early this year and flowers are blooming everywhere and then I am sitting in Biology class…50+ years ago.

Miss “Buggy” Ayers is explaining our final project in her warbling tones – Miss Ayers was ancient, nervous and a fixture at Millville High for decades – and dreaded by the college prep students because she was an “old school task master” who gave a lot of homework and really hard quizzes.”  We all believed she was born old.

I was tuned out thinking about the afternoon baseball game at Atlantic City and happy to get out of class early for the bus ride to the shore – Spring fever had its magical hold on me.

I tuned back in…”A  herbarium, plural herbaria is a collection of preserved plant specimens and associated data used for scientific study.  And this assignment will determine 50% of your FINAL grade…please copy down these requirements:  Each project shall contain a minimum of ten wild flower specimens that you will dry for presentation; you will classify the plants with their scientific names and their  common name for instance – the Rubus argutu is known as the common Sawtooth Blackberry…" and this list of requirements went on for 15 minutes.  

My hair started to hurt.

Buggy finished with, "Lastly I have an arrangement with the Greenwood Press Stationary to carry the required black binders and black sleeves that you MUST purchase, see me if this is a problem,  to present you specimens.  Any questions?”

I had one but didn't ask - What am I doing here!!!!

Buggy was quivering with excitement after explaining this monumental task!  There were no questions just groans from our sophomore class of future biologists.  

Ten specimen’s – I thought this is worse than a term paper.  

This is going to be a real drag and I conjured up the horror of getting poison ivy traipsing in the woods looking for weeds – then an interesting thought hit me; roses were a weeds once too - maybe this would be fun after all?

At the next class Miss A gave us a lesson in pressing and drying blooms and a pamphlet from the Department of Agriculture – “Wild Flora and Fauna of the Garden State”.  

Where would I find ten blooming wild flowers?  

Luckily we had a month to complete the quest.  And so my first botany expedition began on Saturday.

I ventured into the pine woods that began at the end of my street as our street turned into an ancient sandy path.  And not five steps in I found my first wild flower.  Our perception is so tricky.  (One rarely notices something until looking for it and then we discover that it was always there all around us!) 

That day I found five different flowers in full bloom after only walking about 50 yards into the woods.

After several treks I had 20 different Spring flowers in a wide array of colors and I decided to do more than the minimum - matter of fact, being the "artist" that I was touted as, I decided to draw a detail of the flower on an opposite page of the pressed specimen and would add the scientific names of the flower's parts that I found in a dusty tome at the Millville Library.  

I even visited Miss Ayers after school one day to seek her help in identifying a plant that I couldn't find with my research (no google in my day) - she was beside herself that I was asking for help.  Most students avoided her.

I had to admit that I enjoyed this task and handed it in early.  

One of my friends reported that Miss Ayers was showing my flowers to all of her class as an "example of diligent scholarship".  A fact that my friends would not let me forget for several years.

On our last day of class Miss A returned the graded herbariums - but I didn't get mine back.  After class I asked about my grade and for once, I really wanted to keep this assignment thinking it might be good for my art portfolio that I was building for college admissions applications.  

Miss Ayers reported, "Your work was the best I have ever seen and I am sure it will turn up.  Probably was just mixed in with another class when I graded them. 

You received an A+ which is one of the few I have ever given.  Congratulations Calvin."

I was stunned but very pleased to score a guaranteed A in her very tough class.

She said for me to stop by on the last day of school and she would have it for me.  I did but to no avail and resigned myself that it was "lost" forever.

Years afterward chatting at my 10th year reunion with friends Miss Ayers came up to moans of remembered pain and I bemoaned about my lost masterpiece. 

Mary J. then reported the following:

"As you may know Miss Ayers finally retired a few years ago and she advertised in our church bulletin that she had many books she was giving away for free on a Saturday morning at an open house.  I went and found I was the only person there at the time.  Miss Ayers invited me for tea and we sat in her dark, book filled, living room which had stuffed birds everywhere.  As I passed some time with this lonely soul I saw your herbarium on her coffee table. She told me it was one of her best memories from her 49 years of teaching."

(Note:  Miss Ayers died alone several weeks after her open house.)

MY EASTER PEEPS

Every Easter I can’t help but think of the one when I was a kid and received some yellow peeps that weren’t made of marshmallow…

And then I back in Millville and its Good Friday and I'm shooting basketballs in the backyard when Pop pulls in the driveway in his Wheaton Company truck.  Instead of checking in with Nanny as is his customer when he comes home he immediately carries a cardboard box and hands it to me.  “Happy Easter son,” he says with a big smile.

The box is “peeping!”

“Be careful opening it,” he warns, as I carefully set it down, as if it were loaded with nitro.  I peek in and see a half dozen, yellow, fuzzy, frightened baby chicks.  “Oh pop, this is great.  Real Easter chicks.  Pop, thanks a lot,” I say, not imagining that in a few months I would be a day I would rue for a very long time.

Nanny had heard my squeals of delight and now was on the scene.  “Herb…what in the world are we going to do with these?”  Pop replied, “I’ll make a coop, don’t worry.”

And so, we spent Easter weekend with these yellow balls of fluff chirping day and night from there box in the shed.  (I wanted to have them sleep with me in my room but was out voted on this – mom said, they would stink up the house.

This tradition for my friends was to visit each other to “see and sample” our Easter baskets and everyone was so surprised when I showed them my peeps – they were the hit of the holiday.

After Easter dinner Pop and I started our chicken pen.  Pop made a small area of chicken wire and on Monday brought home a wooden box he made in work and our coop was ready for our chicks.  

We had no idea if we had hens or roosters.

In several weeks, the yellow fuzz was gone and feathers started to appear.  Pop said we had 4 hens and 2 roosters – a perfect number.  By now I had learned that Pop had found these chicks when he was taking a load of junk from the plant to the dump on the outskirts of town – some farmer had too many and dumped these poor guys along with a load of chicken manure.  

I was so glad Pop had saved them.

The spring vacation ended too soon and when I returned to school I found a book in the library that explained a lot about my new “pets”:

Some chickens are bred for meat production and lay few eggs; some are bred for egg production and can lay as often as once a day…Most hens will start laying between 5-7 months of age…Pet chickens that are properly cared for can live a relatively long time--longer than dogs, sometimes.

So, we would have to wait to find out if we would have eggs…as the mild days of spring turned to summer – the chicks grew and were no longer cute.  

I named my favorite and the biggest hen – Henny Penny. (Not very original I must admit) The roosters were Max and Marvin.   The rest of them were just “the hens”.

The novelty wore off as quickly as the chickens grew up. Cleaning out their coop became a hated chore - it was a very smelly job.  I rarely fed them as the long summer days turned to fall and I returned to school.

And still no eggs – just fat chickens and I could tell  Nanny was getting tired of taking care of them.

  

One Saturday Nanny declared, “We are having a roast chicken for Sunday dinner – Calvin go pick one for us!”  I was mortified and couldn’t do it, so she went to the coop with a hatchet in hand as I hid in my room.  I heard the loud hysterical cackling of the hens as Nanny selected her victim – this was a terrible sound.  I had to stop this murder and I raced out the door just in time…TO HEAR THE WACK OF THE HACKET!

And then I saw the most horrible scene I had ever seen in my young life.  It was Henny running across the back yard at full speed – running around like a chicken with its head cut off.  This old saying that Nanny used many time was true.  

I felt like I was going to faint.

I tried not to think of this scene but it was very hard to erase the horror from my mind.  For the first time after eating chicken for years I now knew how they became our dinner – plus to make matters worse - Nanny had chosen my favorite.

Sunday dinner arrived and we all sat down to the table after Sunday school.  The once mouthwatering aroma of roasted chicken now hung like a shroud in the air as Nanny brought my Henny to the table.

Mom, Pop, Nanny and Me just sat there and looked it.  

No one move to carve her for what seemed like hours, then Pop broke the silence.  “Come on, we are going out to eat now!”  And we all left quickly for the Peter Pan Diner.

On Monday evening Pop took all my chickens to a “farmer friend” – with my quick goodbye and blessing.

And I couldn’t eat a piece of chicken for months. 

TO ETHEL WITH LOVE

The last time I drove to Millville I visited Mount Pleasant Cemetery.  I read the carved name on her stone - Ethel May Watson and 1 thought about my grandmother and the good times...

And I couldn't get over the fact that I have no bad memories of my Nanny.

My first memory. . . Nanny in her big black coat hanging white sheets that instantly froze on the lines as she and I would walk and hide between the hard frozen rows. Nanny was very clean.  She "kept house" every week day.

But on Saturdays Nanny and I loved to go downtown. 

We walked sidewalks where everyone knew each other. Nanny showed me off I suspect. She was proud.  After some shopping we would take in an early Saturday movie, and then walk to the "Ladies Lounge" in the Eagles Fraternal  Aerie building and wait for "Pop Pop". 

Usually after what seemed like hours to me, a man would always come, peep out of a small door in the locked entry way and say "Herb will be down in five minutes, he's got a real hot hand Ethel!" (This was repeated by different messengers each week.) The they would disappear behind the locked door labeled "Members Only. " 

Some smoke would escape, some harsh laughter of workingmen relaxing. And sometimes the sound of chips being stacked or coins tumbling into a metal tray below a very illegal machine.

 Nanny was always patient.

We waited. This night there was only one old Life magazine in the waiting room to look at. The next revelers would come and go.  Then eventually, Haley as his brother birds called him would come and drive us home in the big Buick. 

We sometimes would stop at the ice cream pallor off Smith street.  It had wire chairs at small white tables and a jukebox that cost 5 cents.  Attached to the music machine on a shelf above was a miniature bandstand with a lame' curtain which would open when a song played to reveal animated wooden musicians weaving to the melodies.   

Nanny and I would do the 2-step she taught me.  

(This ice cream store was just like the one on the way to Ocean City.  Same white wire furniture.  And always on a trip there with Pop, after a sign from me, Nanny would be afflicted with a serious cough. "Herb, I've got a tickle, " and  he would be compelled to stop as only a drink at this store would cure this. Besides the Soda pop remedy, I would usually add a "novelty" toy from the big glass case filled with balsa wood guilders, rubber knives, wax bottles filled sweet colored liquid and an ice cream cone of course - Nanny was a natural actress.)

But I digress - On occasion, back to the Eagles Lodge.  Once the big guarded door was wide open and we could go that night into a large smoky taproom through for a "Ladies Night".  

My grandmother was not opposed to "having one" as she always told me . (I never saw any effect on her from an adult drink!) She particularly enjoyed a "highball".  I got to taste beer and learned the two - practice the 2-step on these regular Ladies Night. Nanny was a 2-stepper.   It remains today the only dance I really can do.

For a large person Nanny was light on her feet.  We walked a lot.

When I started school Nanny walked with me, first to see that I made it safely, later to make sure I stayed. One time she left me at the kindergarten only to find me home waiting for her when she go home. Walking me more than twice one day was pushing it. She said the dreaded "I'm going to tell your mother when she gets home.  (She rarely did tell. .. but this was important. I had to go to school and stay. And I knew she would tell - so I did go back that day -  and didn't miss another day for years except when I was down with every kid disease then known.  

But staying with Nanny was more fun.

Nanny only went to the eighth grade. She left to work as a "bobbin—girl" at the Millville's mill,  Her family which included eight brothers - needed what she could earn.  Later in life she worked in a sewing factory.  I never thought of her as dumb because of her lack of high school education. She read well, remember what she read, and knew more about book keeping, cooking, sewing, medicine and current events than most. 

She really listened to the news   (I watch television like I listen to elevator music... on the surface. ) Nanny was pretty smart.  My Grandmother had an opinion on most every subject. 

And late in her life she'd repeated her opinions between related facts about the  maladies of old age. Nanny suffered from the generic South Jersey disease "Artherrightis and gall. (And if she actually had all the diseases she thought she had she wouldn't have rnade 60 let alone 83.) 

Nanny had a very strong sense of right and wrong.  And she instilled a true philosophy that has remained important to me for 60 years or so. 

She had a code of common respect for others and self.  And She would quoted "Bible" verses that probably never existed. 

"Man will only know the seasons by the turning of the trees" meant the end was coming if Spring was late or Winter early on any given year. "The seas will claim their own" indicated that the erosion of beach in Ocean City meant the end was coming  also. 1 wondered for years if all Bible verses foretold the coming of the end or just the ones Nanny remembered.

Nanny watched nearly every episode of the soap opera,  Search for Tomorrow for over twenty years !    I didn't miss many either. I used to come home from school for lunch in time to see this daily 15 minutes and the never ending problems of the Tate TV family.   Each episode always ended on a question.  "Will Dr. Bill find happiness?  Tune into Search for Tomorrow...at noon Monday through Fridays...brought to you by DUZ, laundry detergent....(organ music theme up and fade to black)

A real treat for lunch was "homemade" pea soap - warm milk, potatoes, bread and margarine. It always seemed to me to be potato soup with peas, but I didn't argue.  Nanny also made meat cakes, potato cakes, salmon cakes. (In those days a fried "cake" didn't seem like leftovers as it does today. ) My kids would throw  things out before reheating anything. 

Nanny would tie my scarf when I left. She was there when I got home. She was always there .

She watched me I practiced my trumpet (worse then dancing), baseball, a minister in a Christmas play, a snowman in a winter play, a violet in a spring play. Endless innings, quarters, halves. She stood on the sidelines, waited in hospital halls. 

Nanny was my best fan.

Now, mother was there too. But my Mom had to work. in fact, many thought Nanny was my mom and my mom was my sister or my date later on, but that's another story! 

I had two mothers. A day one and an evening one.  Round the clock mother-ing. 

Nanny waved good—bye on my first trip away from home. The patrol boys go to Washington. She pretended that the cedar box souvenir I brought back was just what she needed. I think she knew that once I left, like walking to school, there was no turning back in growing up. 

I got older, so did Nanny. She took a back seat to cars, girls, home runs, colleges, brides, divorce, jobs, operations, moves. But she didn't stop loving me. 

Time skips and Nanny is now "Ethel!

I loved to say "Well Ethel" and she would look at me and say "Now Calvin" in a mock threatening tone. This was our secret code from teens to middle age. It was shorthand for I 'm here, how are you, sorry its been so long, got anything good to eat, got to go soon, bye .

I once appeared on television everyday, five times a day. 4 shows were repeats of the same program. She watched them all. I said "Ethel, if you just watch the first one then you don't have to set your watch by the other repeats. She said, "I like watching them all. . . its like having you in the home again! 

Nanny waited for me to come. I didn't come often enough,

Oh, the power this grandson had. The power to brighten. Just by being.  Power to make her proud, happy. What an undeserved power.

She came to stay with us for the last time. She beamed when she saw me .1 must admit we talked all to seldom toward the end. Like grief. . . failing is something you try to not to see.  Nanny'a wearing out made me angry. If I didn't see her; see Millville...see my friends...1 didn't see me growing older with them.  So I stayed away.

Even when she was sick in the hospital that last time, she seemed happy, smiling, enjoying the attention. She came home for Easter. But returned the next day to the ICU.  After several days not conscious, on her last day I am sure she waited for me... I came and whispered "Ethel you can go now."  She couldn't reply. . . but I believe she heard.  Then quietly, alone she left us that night. 

Hopefully, we shall walk again someday between frozen sheets and I can tell her a simple thank you.  If there is a place for her where conversation is possible...I know she is very happy telling a whole new world about me.. . her grandson Calvin and remembering the good times. . . waiting for us all to come home and visit again.

But for me a big part of  Millville was Nanny.  And Nanny was home.