Dreamtime- April 29, 2012- Family and John Taylor

                                                                                                              

Mom, Mike, and I were visiting Aunt Ann and Cousin Missy. Our other cousins, Jen and her daughters Terry and Mandy, were also there. We all looked as we did in the early 1990s.

   In this reality, our small town was pretty close to her house, about a 15 minute walk. It is really an hour’s drive away. When I was a kid, I used to wish that we could visit her more. Dad didn’t seem to like taking us there.

   Mike and I were playing Clue with Missy, Terry, and Mandy in the dining room. Mom, Aunt Ann, and Jen were in the kitchen talking about crafts.

   When I looked out the glass sliding doors in the rec room, I saw a man who looked like John Taylor in the backyard. His appearance was circa 1987. He knocked on the door. I ran over to it and let him in.

   He asked me where he was and said that he had been in NYC only 30 seconds earlier. At first, I was kind of afraid to tell him that he was in a holodeck program. Maybe he would even think that I was crazy.

   Surprisingly, he wasn’t too freaked out when I told him this. Would the real JT be this calm about being abducted?  He asked me how long he would be here. I said that I wasn’t sure but that once he was returned to Earth it would be as if no time had gone by.

   I said that I would tell my family that he was a friend of mine. None of them knew who he really was anyhow.

   He sat next to me at the table. Mandy started talking about her favorite group, New Kids on the Block. Mike said “My sister really loves Duran Duran”. I was pretty embarrassed about that.

   A little later, Terry whispered to me “He’s cute” about John. I smiled and was laughing a bit on the inside too.  

  John went with me when I drove to Rosarios to pick up our pizzas. After that meal, I asked him if he wanted to take a walk to my town. He said yes. My brother and cousins were watching a movie then.

   Once there, I noticed that an ice skating rink had been set up by the store. It was late May and the temps were in the high 60s so this was very odd.

   I told him that I used to love watching figure skating from the late 70s to the early 90s. I also said that I had the Dorothy Hamill hairstyle in the late 70s.

   We stayed there watching a couple of people skating for a few minutes then continued our walk. At one point, I tripped over a crack in the pavement. John caught me before I could fall. I thanked him for this.

    That’s how this strange storyline ended, unfortunately. It would have been nice if I could have shown him my music collection at my apartment. Also, maybe one or more of my doggies would have been there which would have made me even happier than I already was.

Duran Duran- JT- top, center

New Kids on the Block

Rosarios' Pizza

Dorothy Hamill

December 12- Childhood Food Memories-Part 1

-Fast Food/Chain Restaurants– Roy Rogers, Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Wendy’s, White Castle, Stewart’s (good root beer), Chick Fil-A; Bonanza, Ponderosa, The Rustler, and Ground Round (near Aunt Ann’s house).

-Restaurant– Alipertis’, Spiritos, Big Stash’s, Coach and Four, Cock n’ Bull at Peddler’s Village, P.A. and the Smithville Inn. JFK Airport had a good buffet style one that Mom, Mike, Pat and I went to before my trip to Germany in 1989.

-Diners – The Rustic Mill, Parsonage Road, The Cavalier, Galaxy, Westfield,  Mastoris, Sleepy Hollow Inn, Woodbridge, Reo, Mark Twain, St. George, Betty Lind, GM, Scotchwood, and Macedonia (now Wisdom).

-Mastoris –They have delicious sweet cheese and cinnamon breads. The pancakes with strawberries and whipped cream are yummy. We used to go there sometimes when visiting Aunt Ann and Uncle Joe.

-Mom and I would sometimes split our meals at diners. We liked getting liver and onions. Mom enjoyed the chopped liver at their salad bars too.

-Special birthdays -13^th and 16^th – Our parents took us out to the diner or restaurant of our choice. I picked a seafood place down the shore but I forget the name of it or even where it was for my 13^th. I was wearing a white hand-me-down dress from Fran.

  We went to the Fulton Restaurant in Rahway for my sweet 16. Mike chose the Sleepy Hollow Inn for his 13^th but I don’t even remember where we went for his 16^th- maybe nowhere.

-Alligator Bread – Mom went to The Three Little Bakers Dinner Theater in Delaware with her friends/co-workers in the mid-1980s and brought back a bread shaped like and alligator. I took a picture of it before we ate this. It was so cool.

-Pizza – This was a Friday or Saturday night treat for us (and sometimes our friend Kelly) in the late 70s – mid 80s. We’d get it from Venice in Linden. Other places we liked over the years were Tony’s, Two Tony’s and Rosario’s, which is near our Aunt Ann’s house.

-The Butcher Block –We used to go there a lot in the 1980s for our lunchmeats, some meats, rolls, rye bread, bagels, potato salad, and coleslaw. We’d also sometimes get sub sandwiches and party platters.

1974- Roy Rogers

 

1978- Betty Lind

My 13th Birthday

Mike's 13th Birthday

Sleepy Hollow Inn

 

 

My 16th Birthday- 1985-Fulton Restaurant

Mastoris

Mastoris' Cinnamon Bread

Mastoris' Cheese Bread

 

Peddler's Village- Cock 'n Bull

 

Spiritos-Elizabeth

 

 

 

2013

 

Reo- Woodbridge

 

Scotchwood

 

Parsonage Diner

 

 

Rustic Mill-Cranford

Coach and Four- 1980s

 

alligator bread-Three Little Bakers

Three Little Bakers-Delaware

 

 

1977

White Castle-Rahway- 1973

 

 

Rosario's Pizza- Bordentown

 

Venice Pizza

 

The Butcher Block

 

 

Note-some photos are from the internet- pizza places,The Butcher Block; fast food except for Roy Rogers; Diners and Restaurants except for our 4 family photos, Sleepy Hollow postcard, Three Little Bakers, and Coach and Four

                                     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                  

 

 

 

Another Nice Daydream-2012

Mike mentioned that Kelly sometimes would come over to our house and have breakfast like Pillsbury biscuits before we went to school. This really wasn’t bringing such a memory back to my mind. I wish that it had.

   I do remember her and her mom coming over for pizza of Friday night’s sometimes. We would always order it from Venice in Linden.

   I’m almost positive that this pizza place is still on Wood Ave. I didn’t notice this the last time that I took the bus to the train station which was only 8 days ago. It seems like even longer ago than this though.

   I was having a little daydream about the Wood Avenue of our childhood. I was on a bus ride to downtown Linden in the alien holodeck. I got off by the municipal building and walked around town.

    I went into some of the stores that are no longer there like BZ Fashions (where I worked for 4 or 5 months), the Hallmark store (where 2 of Mike’s classmates moms worked), Shor’s Drugstore (where we’d sometimes buy Russell Stover candies at Christmas and Easter time), and CVS in its old location. It might be a $1.00 store now. I also looked in Woolworths (now CVS); both of our grandmothers loved this store.

   I had lunch in Gus’s, the small diner next to the theater. I saw a couple of movies for free when my brother worked there in the mid-1980s. They knocked these 2 places down 2 or 3 years ago, maybe even longer. Our former eye doctor’s office was on the same block; it might still even be there.

   Further down the avenue is Pulaski’s Deli which has been around for a very long time. I love the smells in there. It was smaller back then. We will actually be going to this place in a couple of weeks to purchase kielbasa, babka, and farmer’s cheese for our Easter meal.

   I’m pretty sure that there was an A&P in the spot that CVS once was. Mike would know for sure. There was a children’s clothing store called Raiffe’s (misspell?) and a ladies clothing shop (or was it just nightgowns, undergarments, and housecoats) called Mae Moons. Grandma was an occasional customer there. She might have also been an employee. I should ask my cousin Tony about this.

    Mom told me that she had worked in Grants. I thought that it was just Grandma at-the-Farm that did so. They were employed at different locations. I think that Mom said the former was in the Elizabeth store and the latter in the Roselle Shopping Center one, not in Clark as I had always thought had been the case. Maybe my recollection of it being there before Bradlees was is incorrect.

   I got to spend a few hours in this holodeck program which was so nice. Well, I don’t really have dreams at night anymore that I remember so I’m letting my imagination take control during the day occasionally to make up for that.

1980s

2 Grants- somewhere in NJ

Venice Pizza 1995

The Woolworth and Venice photos are from my scrapbook, and the others are from the internet.