Snippet 9
Weekly the iceman came to put a block of ice in our basement refrigerator better known as an ice box. The panel truck was laden with straw on which the ice blocks sat. He would split the block in two, grab one with his black metal tongs, similar to those long-shore men carried on their shoulders in the movie, On the Waterfront. As soon as the iceman disappeared into a home, we neighborhood kids would climb into the truck and steal pieces of ice to suck on during those hot summer days. The iceman was as popular as the ice cream truck. We were sure to hide when he came out of any one of the Victorian houses, making our plans for his return visit.
It was the early fifties when my parents and grandparents bought a home in Long Branch, at the New Jersey shore, a summer camp substitute my parents planned for us as they commuted to Jersey City to work during the week and returned to the shore on weekends. My brother and I stayed there with my paternal grandparents and my maternal grandmother for the entire summer. Our skin turned bronzed after the first horrific sunburn of the season. We didn’t have sunblock and wearing a tee shirt in the swimming pool was not an option for me. Burn, blister, and soothing creams started me off onto a dark tan and shore living.
Our Victorian home had a wraparound porch lined with tall back wooden rockers, as many as six. Our immigrant family enjoyed the home’s many features: a central heating system with a large grate in the center hall, four spacious bedrooms on the second floor, two additional rooms my parents finished in the attic, and a stained-glass window that brought a rainbow of colors into the center hall. In the basement was a second kitchen that held a wooden icebox with several doors, two rectangular small compartments on the left and a single long compartment on the right. The handles and hinges were impressive, black and large.
The iceman placed the ice in the two small compartments. Under the box was a pan to collect the water as the ice melted. Our refrigerator upstairs served our needs, but the ice box below was for relatives who came to visit for days or weeks and used the spacious basement kitchen. The home was indeed an upstairs/downstairs society for its early owners, but that system was still a mystery for my elementary school understanding.
The two most vivid flowers I can recall from those days were hydrangeas, which we called the snowball bush, and petunias. Our home faced the water. The setback of our house may have been fifty feet at the end of which was a two-lane north and south road call Ocean Avenue. The lanes were divided by a five-foot grassy median with a center bed of petunias in white, pink, and purple. Similar petunias lined our walkway to the sidewalk. Our neighbor in the rear faced the side street, Morris Avenue. Separating us was a tall living fence. In the front of their home were a number of snowball bushes in white and dark blue. They stood like outposts on the lawn.
It wasn’t until years later that I read Teddy Roosevelt had come to Long Branch as a child to get relief from his asthma attacks. The town, specifically the Elberson section, was a popular shore point for a number of presidents. President Garfield was brought there on a specially constructed rail line after he’d been seriously wounded in an assassination attempt in a Baltimore train station. I have no illusions that any of these noted people lived in our summer home in the early twentieth century, but surely our former owners were far wealthier than we.
My Long Branch may have been in decline for some members of society, but for me it was a step up from our apartment in a two-family home in an Italian section of downtown Jersey City. It brought the ocean to my front door where diamonds sparkled on sunny days and white caps jumped on gray ones. The iceman brought shard of refreshing fun and excitement as we climbed into his truck to steal and run. The vast ocean introduced me to the horizon as I let the life-sustaining frozen water seep onto my tongue.