How old am I?

I grew up in East Orange, NJ. At the turn of the 19th century one of the wealthiest cities in the US. Today it has an 18% poverty rate with median household income of $58,659, well below the $97,000 for the State.

Progress in the form of two major highways cut the city in quarters and destroyed many of the places of my youth, including a great park where I spent my summers and time after school.

Here is what I remember growing up:

• The milkman making his deliveries using a horse and wagon with blocks of ice to keep his products cold
• Trolly cars running on the Main Street through town
• A playground with all steel swings, a slide and merry go round
• My mother’s fear of polio and lining up for a shot and then a sugar cube
• The mailman walking his route lugging a heavy leather bag on his shoulder
• The doctor coming to the apartment when we were sick – and the needles in the butt that were not super thin
• A slice of pizza for a dime
• My weapon of choice was a pea shooter
• The really tough guys in high school had a switchblade
• Abe’s candy store by my grammar school where you could get candy for a penny or at least two cents – licorice pipes, button candy you pulled off paper, wax mini bottles filled with who knows what liquid and candy cigarettes so you could play grownup.
• Playing outside, just playing. No organized sports teams, no cost, no travel beyond where we could walk
• Walking to grammar, junior high and high school
• Snow storms that truly were blizzards and building proper snow forts
• The “I like Ike” campaign
• Pleading for, but never getting a two-wheel bicycle
• My mother lugging the wash to the apartment roof to hang it out to dry after she put the wash through the wringer
• A special Sunday lunch at White Castle for $0.12 burgers, fries and orange soda and I could eat a dozen
• My tanks of tropical fish
• Walking to the stores, including the supermarket
• My first electric train set – American Flyer. I can still smell the fake smoke
• The movies on Saturday for thirty-five cents – that’s two movies and cartoons
• Collecting soda bottles to return for two cents, if lucky five cents
• My vast army of green rubber soldiers, trucks, tanks and more and then attacking them with dirt bombs
• Fireworks actually held on the 4th of July
• Making a fort out of boxes from delivered refrigerators – we called them ice boxes
• Sitting on our apartment roof trying to spot Sputnik
• My two gun holster and cap guns, a gun that made a bang using just paper and another that shot ping pong balls.
• Sheltering under my desk in school
• My favorite junior high lunch – Swiss cheese on rye from home and a cafeteria order of mashed potatoes and gravy for $0.07.
• Driving a Mercedes 300SL in a Fourth of July parade with a young lady riding on the back – my father worked for a dealer
• A week in the summer in Atlantic City at the Morton Hotel on Virginia Ave when you dressed for dinner, couldn’t walk on the boardwalk in a bathing suit, but could ride bicycles from 6:00 am until 8:00 am
• My first car, a new 1963 VW Beatle that cost $1,895. My payment was $49 a month.