Going to the Country
Things were looking up when Dad purchased our new model “T” Ford truck for delivering groceries. As children, we went with Dad to the surrounding farms and houses, selling Stilwell bakery bread that we carried on a rack in the back of the truck, as well as kerosene for stoves and lights. Dad would deliver an order from our store and take another order for the next time around. He would write a grocery order on a pad, bring the orders to the store where Uncle Joel – would place the items in a wooden box – deliver the foods the next around. The whole system was rather clever, and it worked.
We were not the richest family on earth but we always had food – even tho we had to consume all those foods that were over ripe or not sellable. The bakery bread was a revelation – no longer did our grandmother or others have to make that big loaf of bread, that we loved.
On a Sunday afternoon, we would travel in Dad’s truck to Carr’s Tavern Road, Holmeson, NJ, to visit our grand folks. Mother sat in the front, with Dad, we all sat in the back of the truck on two long benches, made of wood. Just before the road on which we had to turn, there was a barber shop, on a medium size incline. Our truck wen up this hill slowly, when we reached the top, we all go out of the auto and took a long breath of relief. Then we continued onward to the Brown Homestead, with our usual bag of flow and sugar. They lived down an old sandy, rutted road, did not really have to use the steering wheel, our truck knew the way.
Grandmother, Hannah Anna Cottrell Brown, was on hard working lady. She would say, “I will weed the strawberry patch near the kitchen window, if I die someone will find me.” She worked on the farm as well as going to Freehold, NJ, to work at the Cannery, shelling peas and beans, for canning. With other woman, she would travel, each day, during summer and fall months, with a horse and wagon.
Years ago, our great grandparents, Joel and Nancy Francis Brown, 1850, decided to purchase this farm land in the country, since they worried about losing their sons out to sea. They did not know about farm land since our Brown’s were always located along the waters edge, from Woodbridge, NJ, 1685 to Navesink, NJ, then on to Brielle, NJ, where they built sixty foot schooners. One sailboat names PRUDENCE, sank in the Navesink River, 1811, with our great-great Grandfather William Brown aboard, his body was never found.
When they moved to the country and owned a small farm of five acres, the did not know about growing foods, they purchased a piece of land which was sand, a lot of white sand, they only could grow corn, sweet potatoes, and berries. There was a crab apple tree for making Apple Jack, growing in the front yard, this was good. Grandfather, Charles Brown, made his own brew, each year from the fallen apples, extracted the juice, after fermentation poured the alcohol into earthen jugs which were placed all along Grandmother’s English flower garden, graced with petunias, zinnias, fox combs and straw – a tube for sucking the Apple Jack. In the winter months, the frozen particles would rise, and the alcohol would remain on the bottom of the jug, all Grandfather had to do was insert a piece of straw in the jug and drink the liquid from the bottom. Needless to say, our Brown’s had a great time celebrating the holidays. Grandmother, Ana, had a music box with playing records and a large resounding horn, that Uncle Joel had given his Mother, as a gift.
Grandmother would dance holding her black skirt and six woolen petticoats high to the yodeling and march type music. Grandfather, Charlie, sat there with his glass of Apple Jack stomping his one leg, up and down to the turn. This all took place in front of their iron burning stove, “let the heat take over.”
