Wednesday, October 9, 2019

As Time Flies By




It seems like time is flying by much too quickly.  It is interesting that it always seems like days go by faster when you really wish time would stand still. I knew I needed to make some decision as to move or not to move but somehow it seemed much better to stay so busy I didn't have time to think about it.

I actually had a plan that sounded logical some days and then the next day it did not sound so good. On my worst days I thought about just getting on a bus and disappearing thinking that the boys would be better off with their Dad.  Luckily that was in no way an option and would be discarded almost instantly.  I managed to keep going by knowing I had a Talent Show at the school to put together and the medical school test to take.  Major decisions had to wait.

The Riverton School had not had a talent show or plays for many years.  The Library plays got the children interested in performing so sending a call out for the Talent Show auditions brought many happy little faces.
I did worry some about too many children showing up as auditions was not really the right word to use.  After all, how could you tell those sweet little faces they were not good enough to participate.  Especially when my  five year old star softball catcher wanted to play a piano solo.

Forty-five children showed up to participate in the show.  Forty-five out of three hundred was pretty astounding considering some were not even sure what they were doing.  The most popular thing for the boys to do was break dancing.  I often wondered if break dancing was as popular every where as it was in Philadelphia.  Any evening of the week every corner on South Street in Philly was crowded with young boys and a few brave girls break dancing.

I tried to be very diplomatic about who would be the Master of Ceremonies.  I did hold an audition for that and three boys tried out.  Much to my slight dismay dear Wes got up there and wowed all the participants and they decided he needed to be the one.  Actually he was the best but then he was the biggest ham in the school. The only problem I had was with Wally.  All the other children came prepared even if they needed a little more practice.  All Wally said was that he was going to do a comedy routine.



The program was the second Thursday evening in May, naturally Dennis was not home.  I did my favorite pass time of typing up the program on the mimeograph machine and managed to get all twenty-two acts on one sheet of paper. There were five break dance groups with four boys in each, eight piano solos,  five dance routines, one guitar solo, two lip sync since this was long before karaoke and one comedy routine. 

Wes manged to be in one of the lip sync groups and they made guitars out of plywood and painted them up.  Then there was Wally.  I still had no idea of whether he was really going to do a comedy routine or not much less if he was even going to appear on the stage.  When it was his turn he appeared on stage in nice pants, a shirt and a vest and proceeded to do a five minute Bill Cosby routine he had memorized from an album.  Not too bad for a nine year old as it was absolutely flawless and he manged to do all the voices perfectly.  He did not just amaze the audience but me too.  After the show I asked him how he learned all that and he just shrugged his shoulders and said he listened to the record a bunch of times.  

The whole show was a nice success as everyone did very well.  The nice thing about Riverton was that almost everyone in town turned out for every event especially when it concerned the children.  With charging a dollar for admission to the show the Home and School Association had some money to begin the next school year with.

The next week I thought would be a quiet one before I had to take the MCAT test on Saturday.  It would pretty well consume eight hours on Saturday but Dennis would be home that weekend to take care of the boys.  There was not a lot that I hadn't studied between my Physics class and the Kaplan review course.  Too my surprise Barney called on Tuesday to say he was going to be giving a seminar in Atlantic City Thursday through Saturday and could I come meet him in Atlantic City on Thursday.  I asked why he didn't tell me before he was coming and he laughed and said he liked to surprise me and figured I would need some moral support before the test.  I still had not told him about the possible move to Michigan so that took a little of the excitement away from being able to spend the day with him.

Barney had never been to Atlantic City and I figured he would be in for a big surprise.  He was pleased that the seminar was fully booked with attendees but if he was expecting a Las Vegas it would not meet his expectations.  New Jersey  had voted in casino gambling in 1976 with the first casino opening in 1978.  To build a casino you also had to build a five hundred room hotel.  The thinking was that casino gambling would bring in more tourists and money to the once beautiful shore-side town.

Maybe it sounded logical, too bad it did not end up that way.  As more and more casinos were built lining the shore line two blocks behind the casinos ended up looking like Berlin after the war.  All the buildings were torn down as the land became too valuable for the businesses that once occupied the space.  It was rumored at one time the land was worth a million dollars a square foot.  Too bad there were no takers and it just  turned into a huge parking lot for the hundreds of buses that poured into the city everyday. By 1984 there were ten casinos lining the boardwalk and Atlantic City strip was doing well with all the bright lights and entertainment even if the rest of the city looked awful.

The only way to get to Atlantic City at that time was a two-lane road through the farmland of New Jersey - after all, it is called the Garden State.  Sis always said that south Jersey, from Trenton down to Maryland, was like a patch of the mid-west and there was always talk about seceding from the northern half. In a few months the roadside would be filled with little stands selling huge tomatoes, strawberries. blueberries, corn, cranberries, asparagus and almost everything else which had just been picked that morning.  As you got closer to the shore you came to what was known as the Pine Barrens. 

The Pine Barrens consists of  a heavily forested area that stretches across seven counties of New Jersey of sandy, acidic, nutrient-poor soil.
It covers 1.1 million acres and has hundred foot pine trees.  In 1978 it was designated as the Pinelands National Reserve to preserve the ecology as it sits on the 17 trillion gallon Kirkwood-Cohansey aquifer containing some of the purest water in the United States. It is just one of those beautiful secrets of New Jersey most people do not know about.

I tried very hard to just enjoy the drive on that beautiful spring morning. It was hard not to keep wondering if I should tell him we got transferred to Detroit.  Do I actually need to tell him I may not go and just wait and see what happens?  Do I just put on the old happy face and skip telling him anything about the move or is that unfair as he has always been honest and open about everything with me?

By the time I got the car parked and walked down the Boardwalk to Caesar's Palace I was a nervous wreck. As I approached Caesar's I had to stop and laugh.  The huge marquee had his name and seminar emblazoned on it and there he sat on a bench in front of it with a huge smile like the cat that ate the canary.






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