When I was young - Part 2

As I attended elementary school in the 40s, there wasn't much in the way of communcation except by telephone...land lines to you techies. And, some people didn't even have them. Bergers had the first one on the street & their's was a party-line where two or more families shared the same phone. Once in a great while, Mr. Berger would come over & tell mom/dad that they had a call. We finally got one & it was a two-party line. You could tell by the sound of the ring if it was yours or someone else. Eventually, we got a private line. At school, we would make arrangements to visit each other or make plans for the weekend. We walked everywhere even to Clementon Park in the summer. There was a trolley line that came right through town but we didn't have any money so we walked...sometimes on the railroad tracks. There was always 6-8 of us both boys & girls. It was about three miles to the park. In winter, we ice-skated in the cow pasture. There were always holes that were never deep so didn't matter if the ice broke. My friend, Mary lived in Stratford across the cow pasture that separated the towns so we cut across that rather than walk all around. If the cows were present, that's what we had to do. The farmer's last name was Rexon. He owned all the land that is now Kennedy Hospital on Laurel Road. During the summer, we used to go to the farm & pick potatoes. He paid us ten cents a basket. If I made forty cents, I was in heaven. Jeannette & I had a terrible time learning math. In those days, you learned by rote so the math problems were always a bummer. Mom would always help us & she had just a Ninth grade education. My basic skills were okay but give me a problem & I would freak out. As I mentioned earlier, being in school during the 40s was also during WW11. We had air raid drills & had to sit under our desks. At home, we had rationing with rationing books so could only buy things at certain times. We didn't have a car so gas wasn't a problem. A lot of families had "Victory Gardens" & we had one also. Dad had gotten laid off from his job so worked for the WPA for awhile & then got hired at Sun Shipyard in Delaware to make ships for the war. At the shipyard, he worked as a welder. On his off time, he made steel bracelets for the three of us.