They were indeed the Greatest Generation.
I didn’t know it then. That comes as something of a surprise, because, of course, I knew everything then.
And nothing.
My parents were pretty plain folks. They grew up pretty hardscrabble, my father in southwest Philly and my mother in Darby Borough. Don’t ask me how, but somehow they managed to wind up in a tiny town out in the farthest corner of Chester County.
Our high school yearbook once said this about Oxford, Pa.: Live there for awhile and you get to know the place pretty well.
It was a different time, a different place. Indeed, a different world.
You literally knew everyone in town. Your car doors were never locked. The door to the house never closed from Memorial Day to Labor Day.
My father ran a store, two of them actually.
One in North East, Md. Then he opened a second in Oxford. They were basically sandwich shops that also sold patent drugs. I still remember how my father would wrap “women’s products” in white paper so a lady would not have to carry them out of the store. Like I said, it was a different time.
Both stores featured glorious, long counters, behind which sat the secret to their success - the soda fountain.
It was there, in both North East and Oxford, that I discovered the magic of the fountain soda. How to make any number of extravagant concoctions with basic Coke syrup. I quickly mastered the Cherry Coke, Lemon Coke, yes, even Chocolate Coke.
All while dad perused the important news of the day. That, of course, would be the entries and results from the local horse tracks.
Yes, dad loved the ponies. I always thought he was a very popular guy in town. Every Saturday morning, a line of gentlemen would arrive at the house to kibitz with dad. It was only later that mom informed me they were there to find out who he “liked” that day at the track.
I learned how to read the Racing Form from my dad.
I learned pretty much everything else from mom.
While dad was camped south of the Mason-Dixon line in North East, mom held forth at the store in Oxford.
Heron’s was right down the street from the high school. And it quickly became a popular local hangout.
It was where kids would gather every day after school, where guys would meet up to settle their differences, sometimes with their fists. When a guy sneered at you in the school hallway, “Meet me after school at Heron’s,” you pretty much knew what it meant.
Of course, I arrived to work at the store after school for a few years not in the dungarees, sneakers and casual shirts sported by my peers. I instead drew daily gawking at why I wore dress blue pants, a starched white shirt and blue tie to school. The ABVM logo should have been a giveaway. I rode a bus 10 miles to school every day to St. Mary’s, or Assumption BVM School, in the next town down, West Grove. For years, I was always different. How I yearned to be just like every other kid in town.
I think kids back then used to think our family had money because we owned a store. The truth is, my parents, like so many others at that time, very likely lived week to week.
Like I said, I didn’t know it then. I do now. There’s a lot of things I was sure I knew then.
I was sure my mother ran the ship in our house. She ruled with a firm hand, and she wasn’t shy about using it. I think she learned that form the same place I got it. Yes, she was the product of an education imparted - sometimes with a brass ruler - of nuns. My mom and dad were not exactly savvy business persons. But they were part of the fabric of a small town, and an attitude that is long gone - and missed.
Every day after school, kids who took part in sports or other after-school activities would walk to my mother’s store and do something unheard of today. They would use the phone - the business phone - to call home to alert their parents they could pick them up. At Heron’s, of course.
Today I think mom and dad could have retired if they had only had the foresight to put in a pay phone. But that wasn’t their way. It wasn’t a lot of people’s way back then.
After awhile, the writing was on the wall for tiny little mom and pop stores like Heron’s. The geniuses who ran companies that delivered the ice cream that made those divine sundaes and the meats that went into those hoagies decided little operations like Heron’s weren’t worth their while. They started insisting on minimum orders. Mom had the answer to that. She partnered with several other similar stores in town to place orders, then split them up among them.
Maybe she was more savvy than I thought.
More than anything else, mom loved the kids and the other loyal customers who came into that little store every day. She knew them all by name. She knew their parents. She even knew which parents did not especially care for their kids going into Heron’s, because of its reputation as a teen hangout.
My mother would have been 102 today.
She was the first thing I thought of when I woke up. The truth is I think about her - and that generation - more and more all the time.
I wonder at how they lived, and how they worked. They did not have many of the things I now take for granted. The truth is as I look back on it I am sure they often wondered how they were going to pay the bills.
They raised five children, and I think they enjoyed every minute. They lived with a confidence, a zest that often seem lacking now. I think some of that comes from where they lived, in a small town, with relatives and family close by, where everybody knew your name.
They laughed - often. And I suppose they sometimes cried, but they never showed that to their children. They loved a party, but somehow managed to get up and go to work the next day. That is what they did. I guess living through the Great Depression, when they literally had nothing, steels you somewhat to the other aggravations of life. All I know is this. I find myself more and more longing for that life, that simplicity, that time when things seemed more, for want of any other word, normal.
They were the Greatest Generation. For a lot of reasons.
For a guy who knew it all, it took me a long time to realize that.
Happy Birthday, mom.
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