(58 Weeks)
When I think of all the decades I can recall, I know deep down, despite some more recent challenges, I’ve lived a charmed life. My childhood was idyllic.
I grew up in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey. Long before the Real Housewives of New Jersey. When my parents bought property there in the mid-1950s, 208 only went as far as Maple Avenue in Glen Rock. Going up to Franklin Lakes was a drive into the country. And people who did drive out that way would have driven through farmland and might have stopped for lunch at the Blue Bird Inn and Tea Room. My parent’s place.
The Blue Bird sat on close to four acres at the intersection of Franklin and Circle Avenues. Included on the property was a Victorian home built in 1897 which initially held their gift shop, the Williamsburg House. If you’ve ever been to Colonial Williamsburg, they modelled it after the Craft House. When I first arrived, we lived in a 2-bedroom, 1 bath apartment on the 2nd floor. In early 1968, we moved into a brand-new house my parents had built next door.
Our property was my playground. The restaurant grounds had perfectly manicured gardens by a gardener named Pasquale. There was a gravel parking lot between the restaurant and the gift shop, often filled with potholes and puddles. The large grassy field behind the gift shop was separated from the parking lot by an old post and rail fence. Beyond that was an old red barn that housed a whole assortment of junk, even some antiques, including a vintage sleigh right out of Jingle Bells once powered by a horse. Every Thanksgiving weekend, with my dad in the roll of the horse, I got a brief ride as the sleigh was moved to decorate the restaurant’s front lawn.
Garbage dumpsters were behind the barn. Generations of feral cats found food and shelter there, while I gained some playmates in the friendlier ones. Groundhogs, racoons, and the occasional skunk found their way to this free buffet as well. One unfortunate skunk got his head stuck in a cocoa can and after animal control was called, became a resident at the County’s Wildlife Center (we even went to visit!).
Bordering the property line were woods; what seemed to me as a child as a lot of woods. This was my “playground equipment” and the place of many hours of unsupervised play building campgrounds, climbing trees, investigating all the corners of the barn. Often by myself. Sometimes with the boys who lived at adjacent properties who had their own forts in the woods.
Sometimes it was my school friends who would join me for this adventure not available at their home. While Franklin Lakes was a town with mostly one acre zoning, no one I knew had as unique a home as we had. At lunch time, it wasn’t sandwiches, but a full meal at the counter in the Blue Bird’s kitchen.
It was the early 70s. Most Franklin Lakes moms I knew still didn’t work. Mine did. By 5 or 6, I was a basically a latchkey kid, although my parents were still somewhere on the property. I came and went from the house (with only the instruction to not touch the stove), checking in occasionally with my parents.
Childhood, and today’s parents, are a lot different, but I think it was all this independence, the ability to work through my own solutions and make own decisions, that fed my natural curiosity, made me more creative and confident, fostered a trust in my own intuition, and ultimately helped me when it came time for “adulting.”
Did you really think this wasn’t going to include a fundraiser? It’s me. Of course it is! Over the course of these 60 weeks, I am hoping to raise $6000 for the children of Mercy Home for Boys & Girls (that’s just $100 a week!). To learn more about Mercy Home and my why, please visit my fundraising page. Thank you.