Fishing the Past Out of the Disposal

Nostalgia grows more bittersweet as you get older and the real bitch of it is less and less people remember those things because there are less and less of them every day.  I sometimes think about my childhood and the things that are not there anymore.  There was a TV show on PBS (channel 12) in my neck of the woods called "Things That Aren't There Anymore".  That show featured places in the Philadelphia area that had been lost to a little thing called progress.  Sometimes they would feature TV shows as well and now, if it still existed, and paradox aside, it could include itself.  But this is about things in South Jersey that aren't around any more.  Things like the Ellisburg, the Marlton, and the Berlin circles, all of which are now just memories but I can tell you I drove around all of them many times. In fact, I almost died on the Berlin Circle when I was dating a girl with a certain set of good skills but very bad timing.


 

 

Now the Marlton Circle is the location of the place where I got my first job. Wait, I’m getting a little ahead of myself. My “first” job was working at Big John’s Steaks but I’m not counting that as my first official job. Big John’s was on Route 70 in Cherry Hill I'm not really sure what is there today as I haven't passed by there recently.  As I understood it Big John lost the restaurant to a gambling debt and then he became sick and unfortunately died.  The last time I went there to get a cheese steak in my belly and some nostalgia in my eyes a woman who was a waitress when I worked there was still there. I had not seen her in at least twenty-five years but surprisingly enough, she remembered me. I guess I just have one of those faces. When I worked at Big John’s I was paid under the table and was 12 years old when I first started so I wasn’t on the books. That’s the reason I don’t count that as my first job. My first night working there was Christmas Eve -1980, and there I would work until the spring of 1985 when I would begin working at the Marlton Rustler. The building at the top of the picture on the right hand side is the Rustler I worked at. The picture was taken in 1974. At Rustler, not only did I collect my first ever “official” (as far as the IRS was concerned) paycheck, but I also met my first and long standing to this day best friend that I would ever have.

I grew up in a part of southern New Jersey back in the 70’s that at the time was a very rural area. Construction has changed that so much that I guess it would be considered more of a suburban area now. I grew up on a farm where we raised mostly “Joisey” tomatoes and sweet corn. We also had pigs and chickens and I worked my butt off in the “garden” which is what we called the fields where we grew our crops. For most of my childhood a great deal of time from March until October of every year was spent working and learning how to plow, cultivate, rake, hoe, seed, fertilize, and so many other things that are required to know in order to grow tomatoes, peas, beans, corn, et al.

 

 

On warm summer days when my aunt and uncle decided it was too hot to work in the fields, we would get our bicycles out of the garage and we would head up to the ice cream stand that was about a mile down route 73 towards Berlin. If I was really lucky, not only would we get ice cream but my aunt would spring for us to also play some miniature golf on the course that was connected to the ice cream stand. The ice cream stand and the miniature golf course are both just memories now. A small Mom and Pop garden center replaced it where you could get flowers for Easter and other holidays as well as buy your Christmas tree there. They would even flock one for you if you wanted that fake snow crap on it. The original Mom and Pop that ran it eventually left it to their son, they were old even when I wasn’t, and now even that is gone.

 

 

The Marlton Circle is where a long time ago, a girl named Leslie, who was my boss at Rustler drove around it going the WRONG way! Changed now are the buildings. Today, no longer is Olga’s Diner next to Fayva Shoes. Next to Fayva was Gino’s and then there was the Rustler. Right next to Rustler was Commerce Bank which is the first bank that I had an account with in my adult life. I had a savings account and Christmas Club that my grandmother had set up for me when I was younger at a Horizon bank which was later renamed Farmers and Mechanics and is now a Beneficial bank in Berlin, but Commerce is where I got my first bank account for myself. A woman that we all called “Pointy Tits” worked there. I guess you can figure out why we called her that, I think we worked with her son at Rustler, but I don‘t remember for sure. I do know she used to come in for lunch at Rustler a lot. Eventually, Fayva gave way to Colored Tile and Gino’s was replaced by Pizza Hut. All of those are gone and Barnes & Noble stands there now.

 

Long before I became a mall rat in my high school years, I used to go to the Echelon Mall with my grandmother and aunt. Occasionally after shopping we would stop off at the Cow Tail Bar which was a small restaurant that was attached to a dairy farm. The dairy farm is still there, as far as I can tell, but the restaurant is long gone. In it’s place is a Wawa which has one of the most frustrating parking lots I have ever had the displeasure of parking in. At every table at the Cow Tail Bar when you sat down was a small box of pretzels on the table for you to either enjoy right away or to save and have them with your ice cream. There was a box for everyone. The ice cream was the reason everyone came to the Cow Tail Bar. As it was attached to a dairy farm, the ice cream was therefore made on site and it was always so cold and so hard. It even had small pieces of ice still stuck right in the ice cream. It was some of the best ice cream around then and still to this day most of the ice cream I eat pales in comparison. I remember my regular treat was called The Clown. It consisted of two dips of chocolate ice cream (I had my choice on the flavor but they didn’t have a thousand flavors to choose from back then so it was an easy choice) some whip cream, the obligatory cherry, and a sugar cone stuck on top to make it look like a pointy clown hat. If I was feeling extra adventurous I would ask for some powdered malt topping as well. Not only is the Cow Tail Bar gone, but half of the Echelon Mall is as well!  I don't think it's even called the mall anymore, it's something like Voorhees Town Center or some such thing like that.

 

 

During the summers I got to spend weekdays with my grandmother while my aunt and uncle were at work. One of our favorite places to go was to Grants in Clementon. Grants was a bargain store not unlike the Wal-Marts and Targets of today. We would go shopping and we would stop off at the Grants Luncheonette which was a small restaurant inside of the store. I remember having breakfast with Santa there at Christmas time and we would have a stack of pancakes with the Easter Bunny in the spring. My favorite lunch was the grilled cheese sandwich with fries and a Coke. My grandmother was a big fan of the chicken (or maybe it was turkey) club sandwich. Speaking of food and places you can go to get something to eat inside of a store, I remember getting a box of Super Pretzels (you could get like five for two bucks back then) and a blue raspberry Icee at the K-Mart snack bar. That was one of the best Saturday snacks a kid could have after watching cartoons and wrestling all morning and Dr. Shock all afternoon! I do remember the K-Mart having a small restaurant, however I don’t remember ever having actually gotten anything to eat there myself. Doesn’t matter anyway, for you see, you can’t get anything to eat inside of a K-Mart anymore.  I'm not sure where you would have to go to get to a K-Mart these days. Grants was eventually bought by Woolworths and Wilcos and although they left the store almost the same way it was when it was Grants, the food didn’t seem the same. I don’t remember the name of the lady that my grandmother and I always thought of as our “usual” waitress but she didn’t make the change from Grants to Woolworths either. Below is an actual picture of the Grants in Clementon that we shopped at circa 1976.



 

 

 

Another spot that my family and I would frequent when I was a wee lad was the Berlin Farmers Market. Sister to the Pennsauken Mart, it is still open for business, unlike the Pennsauken Mart. It was a Sunday outing for all of us when we would pile into my uncles pick up truck and my aunts green Maverick, (the truck was in case we got anything too big to cart home in the car) and “walk out back of the sale”. There was the outdoor flea market (like one big yard sale) that we would check out first and then we made our way inside. The barber shop in the market was where I got most of my haircuts during my childhood. I remember vividly how my uncle and grandmother complained when the price of a haircut went up from $4.50 to $5.00. The fifty cent difference was, of course, taken out of the barbers' tip, because "five dollars for a haircut was a rip off", and they both felt very strongly about this. I think my uncle would eventually pay double for a hair cut, and yes, he went “to the sale” for them up until he died in 2013. Ya know, old habits and all.

 

Some other things that are gone are Richmond’s Ice Cream Parlor, Nichol's Department Store, Crazy Eddie’s, J.M. Fields, Two Guys, Jefferson Ward, Bradlees, and the $.99 movie theater that was next to the Echelon Mall. While I’m talking about movie theaters, I want to talk about the Atco Drive-In for a minute. It was in every way the classic drive-in that you have seen in movies. Of course in order for you to have seen one of them in a movie, the movie would have had to take place prior to the 1990’s for the most part because most of the drive-ins were gone by then. Atco was a two screen drive-in so you would have your back facing the opposite screen when you parked to watch whatever movie you came to see. My uncle and his girlfriend (whoever she was at the time) would take us to see The Apple Dumpling Gang, or whatever other kiddies’ movie was showing that week. That alone was a pretty cool experience seeing Don Knotts on that huge screen, but it was always the other screen I was interested in. On the screen behind me they were usually playing the scary pictures. Of course they were also usually rated "R" and there was noting like watching Bambi trying to stand up on his shaky legs for the first time and being able to turn around and seeing some naked girls boobs get splashed with blood in Satan’s Cheerleaders which was playing right behind me. Good times!

I don’t play with Shrinky Dinks anymore, but it’s good to know they still make them if I really wanted to. I don’t raise Sea Monkeys anymore either but it’s good to know I could if I ever got the urge to. I do still read comics and watch wrestling on TV (there's some version of it on TV just about every weeknight now instead of Saturday mornings) like I did when I was ten years old. I don’t play with Hot Wheels nor do I collect Matchbox cars but I could if I wanted to because they still make them. Not everything from my childhood still exists.  Everyone is in the same boat and probably miss something they wish was still around.  But not everything is.  It can't but we don't know that at the time and no matter how much we are told that it is all going to change as we grow up, you don't appreciate it until it's too late. I can’t go to Grants to get a Grilled Cheese sandwich anymore and who knows, it might not be as good of a grilled cheese sandwich as I remember. I did learn how to make a pretty mean grilled cheese myself in my adult years. I haven’t been able to get a grilled cheese at Grants for over forty years, but it would be nice to. Just one more time. And it would be nice if I got to take my grandmother with me. My treat this time.