Fifty years ago, I lived with some friends in a rented farmhouse on Cider Mill Road, in East Amwell Township, New Jersey. It’s still mostly farmland out there.
I was looking at the old place on Google Earth just now and saw this, just a mile or so away. (Click to enlarge.)
Warmed my heart.
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Took me a while, but I got it.
Cherished memories of that place:
– Mountain of garbage bags piled up in the basement stairway, just off the kitchen.
– Disassembled motorcycle in DoHo’s upstairs bedroom.
– “Rock-n-Bock” (Rolling Rock + Ringnes Bock)
Good Times
dbp,
Yep, among other things (including, but not limited to):
– no computers, cell-phones, or answering machine
– simple things
– fresh milk every morning from Pete the farmer’s dairy cows
– being awakened in the middle of the night by the aforementioned Pete to help breech-deliver a stillborn calf in the woods, a procedure that involved the two of us pulling on ropes with our feet braced against trees
– the boundless strength and exuberance of youthful virility
– long summer days in infinite farmland
– my dog Sundance, and four barn cats that we never bothered to give names to but referred to only by cardinal numbers
– a continuous party/soap-opera lasting four years, with an endless, revolving cast of characters
– bitter winter winds howling over miles of open fields, under bible-black night skies glittering with billions of stars
– making all the noise we wanted, day and night
– immeasurable quantities of cheap beer
– 145 acres of land, full of ring-necked pheasants, that felt like our own sovereign nation (some of which is now a public conservation area)
– having very little money
– the gigantic sow we called “Ma” almost flipping over one of our cars by scratching herself against it
– working for fifteen months as a laborer at the Central Railroad of New Jersey
– many friends now departed, especially the brilliant, incomparably idiosyncratic polymath Thomas “Toby” Sherwood, now 21 years gone, peace be upon him.
*Bouten Likker [liquor] though too you’ll be recalling Malcolm.
*Referenced here:
https://gypsyscholarship.blogspot.com/2009/01/cousin-bills-youthful-ozark-memories.html
(Maybe I just needed a general anesthetic to reset my tired ol’ worn out synaptic neurons.)
Thanks again Malcolm. It’s been a wondermus whirl!