One of the men I remember in elementary school is Mike Meinsinger. He and his father farmed the farm adjacent to the school. This is one of the farms where we got our drinking water. Often we would see Mike coming toward us and we know that he had something important to tell us. He would often stop his tractor to talk to us about something. Once he said, “Did you know that there are still some Indians around here? Only yesterday I saw one in the woods with his bow and arrows, all painted in his war-paint.” We would hurry home hoping we would escape that terrible Indian. On another occasion he said, “There’s a wild cat loose. He just escaped from a circus as it was passing through Point Pleasant.” It happened that we were on the cross road, there sat a big black cat by Mr. Sheridan Warner’s driveway. My brother John and I wouldn’t pass and that cat wouldn’t move, so we went to Mr. Warner’s place and told him about the wild cat that escaped from the circus. I guess Mr. Warner knew Mike well enough because he walked right past the cat as he was still sitting there. Mr. Warner pointed out that this was really someone’s tame house cat.
Another time Mike told us that the house across the road was really empty because it was a haunted house with a ghost in it. He and Harold Hvezda, an older boy at the school planned for us to cut across the fields on the way home. Harold told us to look into the house. As we did we heard a loud laugh and an old rocking chair rocking away. It didn’t take us long to get away from that house that day.
I remember the time when I was about ten years old, a Jewish man came to the farm with his friend. He came regularly to buy livestock, chickens, eggs and the like. He would sell them in Trenton, the place where he lived. As Mom was giving him his change, she dropped a ten dollar bill, so he stepped on it. He told his friend in Yiddish that he was standing on the ten dollar bill and that he should pick it up as he was leaving for the truck. Mom understood and said to him in Yiddish, “Please move your foot so I can pick up that ten dollar bill. I dropped it when giving you change and you are standing on it!” He looked at her and said surprised, “Are you Jewish?” She answered, “No, but I understand and can speak the language.” I think that was the last time he stopped to buy anything from my Mom, as the incident left him quite embarrassed.
As children we used to swim in the Lockatong Creek which was about a half to three quarters of a mile from our house[1]. On Sunday afternoon the four Piell boys and other acquaintances would be found swimming at High Falls or hiking in the woods. When we boys swam it was usually naked, with a boy on the path above to warn us of any intruders. We did much hiking and there was hardly any woods that we did not know.[2]
[1] Editor’s Note: Stephen said there was once a contest on who would go swimming first for that year. He went to the creek with an ax and broke the ice, to be the first in the water.
[2] Editor’s Note: Much of the woods was seen from 20ft up in the trees. A popular competition was to try to cross a section of woods without touching the foot to ground. The method of locomotion consisted of climbing a young sapling. When at a suitable height, the young boy would begin to sway the tree back and forth in ever increasing arc until one could reach out and grab and transfer oneself to another sapling. The good news is that we lost no young boys in this activity.
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