Let’s take a walk today. I don’t think Whee-Zee will come along, she’s not feeling too good lately, so she’ll stay at home. We’ll go down Walnut Avenue past the Olsens and through Mrs. Price’s Sleepy Hollow. I know most of the people on the street, or at the very least I know the names of most of the families. We go by the Lucas house; its yard littered with parts of old cars. Burgess, Oglesby, Handts and the German Lady’s house. We only know her as the German Lady. She is from Germany and she married an American, and their house is very well-kept. The German Lady likes to tell people like Mom that she had nothing to do with the Nazis during the war, even though no one even accuses her of anything. Us kids just think of her as a weirdo, so we don’t pay her any mind.
We’re at the lake now, passing by the White family and then the Fleisch’s house. Nancy is in my class at school, and I know her older sister Maggie as well.
Trackie’s store is next as Walnut curves around the lake. Trackie’s is a general store in an old wooden building that used to be a lumber mill many years ago. You can smell the water from the creek below as you enter through the wooden screen door. It’s always dark inside, with that familiar odor of old wood and water. Trackie’s is our nickname for the Trackemas family who own it. I know their son Walter, who is what people call “slow.” He couldn’t pronounce his name right when he was young, so he was known by most of us as Wo-Wo. I don’t know him very well right now, but that will change as the years go by.
We’re at the dam wall of the lake, standing on the grate watching the water fall through on its way under Walnut and into the creek on the other side where it flows past Trackie’s store.
I don’t know anything much about the history of Woodbury Heights. I do know we’re officially called a borough, not a town, but I don’t know what that means. The county seat of Woodbury is right next to us, but we’re not a part of Woodbury at all.
There’s a reason we’re the Heights. Almost every street in town is either going uphill or down, rising and falling; hardly any of them are level. We’ve got Chestnut Hill and Freund’s Cliff, and when you ride your bike you notice that this part of South Jersey isn’t as flat as people say it is.
From my house to Lake Avenue you go downhill. You’re going up Lake to Glassboro Road. Glassboro Road climbs steadily towards Deptford and Wenonah and Sewell. Just outside of Wenonah there’s a steep drop in Glassboro Road, and if you get up enough speed on your bike the momentum almost carries you up the other side.
Mantua Metals, where they make the TYCO model trains, is on the highest point in town, and you can climb Freund’s Cliff, go through the woods and you’re at the back of the factory. This is where they throw out all the rejects before they destroy them. Keith Madden and I will take advantage of this knowledge in the future.
Mantua Metals is the biggest business in town. Bell Telephone has a place for its repair trucks, and across from that is another small store called Kat-Taffy’s. They have two gas pumps, but I go there for strawberry cream soda. The Pioneer Store is closed now. It was a small grocery store on Glassboro Road and most of us kids would go there for penny candy. I think it couldn’t compete with the new 7-11 store over on Elm Avenue, so the elderly couple who ran it closed down and moved away.
We’ve got D’Arpino’s Luncheonette and the beauty shop next door, and the hardware store next to that. Just down the street is a diner owned by Mr. Moran and his wife, and there’s an Atlantic-Richfield gas station on Elm next to the 7-ll. If you walk up Elm and down to Route 45 there’s another gas station, and then the Steer-Inn hamburger stand. There’s Pinsky’s Furniture and the bowling alley too, but I think they’re really on the Woodbury side.
The Southwoods housing developments are growing, and the new St. Margaret’s Catholic church is done too. Lots of new kids; fresh faces in town.
Besides the Catholic church there’s the Presbyterian one that Mom tried her best to get me to go to, and the Episcopal church on Lake Avenue over by the school. I heard that my classmate John Marvin, whose father is the Episcopal priest, will be moving this summer, and that the new priest will be coming from Canada.
My friend Robbie McWilliams is moving too, and Billy Hills will move from Lake Avenue and across the railroad tracks and over to Poplar Avenue.
I’ll be walking and riding all over town now that I’m ten years old. I won’t get to the lake as much since my mom is pregnant. Carl and I will have to wait and go with Mrs. Avis when we can.
We’ll head back to my house for now. It’s getting hot, so I’ll make us some Kool-Aid and we can sit at the picnic table under the old maple tree.
Soon it will be the Fourth of July, and Carl’s birthday party and another family cook-out in our yard. After that, a new baby brother or sister will be coming along, and Carl and I will stay at Aunt Bette and Uncle Everett’s farm while Mom is in the hospital.
Until then let’s play with my soldiers in the sand and enjoy the first hot days of summer.
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