here is a list of special things
that were a part of my life in Newark....
they are no longer on the shelves...
the drug store is not there...
the shoe store is gone...
but now someone will read about them...
and they will last a little longer.......
............I loved to buy halo shampoo at Kayes in a spiral bottle...
and white rain shampoo...
the fragrance of flamingo perfume...I will never smell it again...
and command performance...the most beautiful fragrance in the world....gone
forever.....
I loved to see beautiful breck girls in magazines I bought at the
candy store...
Katy Keene comics, especially the novelty page with lots of wonderful
trick toys...
like pepper chewing gum and hand buzzers and gum slices that clipped
your finger...
and sea monkeys and plastic ice cubes with flies in them....
...I loved multi-shoes...they had beautiful colors... but who knows
what they are anymore...
...Davy Crockett caps...I wanted one and never got it...
Cinderella watches with pale blue bands...I wanted one and my cousin
got it....
full sets of the Bobbsey twins and the little peppers...my cousin
got that also...
...a strange and now vanished storybook called miss Pickett from
the library on Osborne Terrace..
...the taste of Bonomo's vanilla taffy....
............bright orange lifebuoy soap...Camay and cashmere bouquet
and Lux....
they had wonderful , delicate pink wrappers...
and Palmolive soap wrapped in strange green paper....harsh!
.....the universal market...was that its name? on Bergen Street
near the firehouse....
I remember going there with my mother after she closed her store
at night...
also, an honest to goodness little Chinese laundry around the corner
from there...
a Saturday stop with my uncle....
frozen dough cookies from the Bergen bake shop....
the Dalmatian at the firehouse on Bergen Street and the brass pole....
the smell of the shoe repair shop right near there...with its dark
and wooden stalls...
I remember the serious, tall man who worked there...
Dugan's cupcakes from the truck...
...the diamond dust glittering sidewalk in front of the Berkeley
Savings on Lyons...
I never saw anything like that when I was little..
...reading Luella Parsons in the movie magazines and everything
in the world
written about Sandra Dee and Elizabeth Taylor...
.....looking at the beautiful hats in nettie's millinery shop on
Bergen St....
and the lady, Mildred...
who worked there....she had a very sweet laugh...(I can still hear
it)
....listening to the ladies gossip in Elsie Stone's beautiful dress
shop on Bergen Street...
the amazing, large windows filled with mannequins at Gertrude's
dress shop on Bergen St...
toni permanents and Betsy McCall cutout dolls...
....the sweeping entrance to the Normandy apartments on Chancellor
Ave...so majestic...
......Revlon's fire and ice lipstick...raspberry sherbet lipstick....
.....and I loved the blue and purple hair on grandmothers...
now grandmothers get botox and do not have lavender hair....
........the smell of brand new crayola crayons...
......I used to wish I was part of the family of Dick, Jane and
Sally and their pastel world....
.....dotted Swiss dresses and capezio shoes with straps and tiny
buttons in pink leather...
....Maryjane shoes in black patent leather from brody's shoe store....
...making George Washington silhouettes on black paper at Maple
Ave. School....
...making valentines at Maple Ave. with red paper and doilies....the
most fun imaginable...
most scary things....the men with costumes and giant masks walking
in the thanksgiving parade
on Elizabeth Ave....
and my piano recital at Lauter's downtown....
thank you for sharing my memories...
fragile and insignificant perhaps....
but they were the scattered jewels in a simple Newark childhood........
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