MARGARET'S SONG

     My Mother would have been 100 years old yesterday...she passed 16 years ago but I still remember her at least once a day.  Here's some of my Millville Memories of my Mom.

    I thought she was the prettiest person in the whole world.  She worked her from graduating high school in 1942 till she "retired" and had a few years of rest - many too much idelness?  When my stepfather Tom retire he actually quit everthing.  Sold his tools.  And devoted hours on his telegraph clicking his words around the world.  This was indeed amazing to me because he only went to school until the fourth grade.  And my mother sat and drummed her finges on the arm of her chair...thinking about what was, what would come...and what could have been.

    She was a basketball player and almost proudly displayed her deformed finger that she got playing against our arch-enemies the Vineland Poultry Clan (the worst team name every devised).  She told me about this at least 10,000 times over the years alway closing with "thank God it wasn't my ring finger!"  She, the Captain of the Millville Thunderbolts (there's another story about our team's name that is to come).  And she remembered the cheer she wrote that was still being yelled 20 years after.  With her orange and blue knitted hat and scarf she attend most of the games in her adult life - unless it rained.  And would cheer along with the "girls" throughout the games and each time her cheer was made she would tell "I made that cheer up".  "What askee botin notin, what askee fight...!" (The forties were known for lyrics that didn't make sense but sound like they did.  She was of the "Jitter-Bug" era).

    In here Junior year she fell in love with one of the prize guys in Millville, my Dad.  He was an "OlderMan" she said.  A post grad student who in those days could return to public school and take course they needed to be accepted in certain colleges.  He was going to preparing to go to a pharmacy training school and needed a year of chemistry which was one of the required electives that he didn't choose.   Calvin Sr. spent his time as a "soda jerk" in local parmacy which in those days many had a long marble bar with stools that spun and featured ice cream sodas (check one out in the film "It's a Wonderful Life".)  Those days are long gone - now CVS is a convenience store that also sell drugs.  He did go to school but his higher education was unexpectedly interrupted by a World War.  He joined the Navy as a Pharmacist's Mate and was in the hottest battles waged in the Pacific.

    He came home for a long weekend and Mom and he were married in Boston befor his ship set out for the other side of the world.  A whirlwind romance.  I was concieved their wedding night.