On the right is the gate that my Father went though, on his way to work, for 35 years.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bivalve, NJ

Image
When I was living in Philly in 1999, I visited my hometown, Millville, NJ, a  few times to do research at the local library about the oyster industry and the lives of black oyster shuckers in South Jersey. Most of the shuckers migrated up from Virginia and Maryland in the nineteen twenties when the shucking houses opened in Bivalve and Shellpile. It has always been a very segregated scene, occupationally and socially, from what I can tell. Previous to this, there were hundreds of oyster schooners based out of the Maurice River Cove. With the modernization of the fleet, the days of oyster schooners were gone, sails were replaced with diesel engines and dredging was mechanized. Many (mostly white) workers lost their jobs at the same time that the oyster packing industry grew, requiring shuckers to prepare the oysters for packing. From what I have read this contributed to racial tension, and the Klan was supposedly quite active in South Jersey in the 20's and 30's, allegedly dona...
Read more
Image
Delaware Bay Norbury’s landing: horseshoe crabs fill the beach, red knots run in the surf snatching up  the protein rich  crab eggs (fuel for their flight, from the the arctic circle to Tierra del Fuego), as the blue-green waves  gently lap  the shore. Expansive estuaries team with life, amber waves of phragmites  with their tassled tops dancing in the breeze.. In the deep black mud  of the marsh, fiddler crabs  scurry into their burrows, along the inlet at Turkey Point  Where we catch blue-claws  in cubical crab traps  baited with menhaden, which leaves an iridescent oil slick floating on the dark water, where once running down a trail a razor blade of a marsh grass sliced my leg open. Rickety fishing shacks rest on stilts above the browninish-green water around Money Island. The bait and snack shop with it’s weather worn,  ...
Read more

MIllville, NJ

Image
I grew up in Millville, NJ, and I'll probably be writing more about that later, but probably not as eloquently as Carl Sandburg wrote about it in the early 1900's. Even a century later, it reminds me of the working class kids I grew up with. This is from "In Reckless Ecstasy", published in 1904 by Asgard Press, Galesburg, IL. It is public domain. Millville Down in southern New Jersey, they make glass. By day and by night, the fires burn on in Millville and bid the sand let in the light. Millville by night would have delighted Whistler, who loved gloom and mist and wild shadows. Great rafts of wood and big, brick hulks, dotted with a myriad of lights, glowing and twinkling every shade of red. Big, black flumes shooting out smoke and sparks; bottles, bottles, bottles, of every tint and hue, from a brilliant crimson to the dull green that marks the death of sand and the birth of glass. From each fire, the white-heat radiates on the "blowers," the ...
Read more