TYPINK
Bob Smith was dubbed, “The Light House Keeper of -TYPINK.” Bob’s sister Dorothy Smith McCoach was the baby sitter for Harrison and I.
1-2-3 Who are we – we are the kids of TYPINK SEA:
Several boys made a hut in the TYPINK woods where they cooked over an open fire, or boiled eggs that they stole from Mr. Barrel’s chicken yard, using an old tin can. We were invited to attend a stage play given by these older boys, in the woods, all they did was climb the trees and act like drunken monkeys. They extended a wooden ladder from tree to tree and crossed over by using their hands, dangling in mid air – guess they thought they were the circus.
Charles Norcross had a CHEER that he yelled at the ball field:
‘Chew Tobacco Chew Tobacco Spit Spit Spit
TYPINK TYPINK Knit Knit Knit’
The circumference of TYPINK is 871’ x 2000’ or 40 acres, 3 acres flooded, 2 acres wooded, 4 acres open land – some wooded. Collection of water was run off water from rain storms. TYPINK was no more than a depression in the earth but it held the world together. Bounded by East 5th (then known as Jersey Avenue) – Manetta Avenue, South St & Ridge Avenue.
A bond dated, May 25, 1898, says the sales of the POND FIELDS to Elizabeth Skidmore, her sons, Jacob, William, and Benjamin Skidmore and grandson Edward Hayes to Charles B. LeCompte, approx. eight acres for $250. This meadow was a popular place to ice skate and row a boat. The ball field had a high wooden fence surrounding it, Jacob Skidmore had refreshment stand there, selling soft drinks, candy, etc. the grand stand faced where the Ella Clark School is presently located.
TYPINK where the children played and gathered acorns for the barn yard animals, bay berries for making jam, huckleberries, bunchberries (ink berries), wild strawberries, wild cherries for making wine, sassafras leaves to eat and stems with bark to make whistles, garlic buds for cookies, mushrooms, cat tails for burning to keep the mosquitos away, chicory roots for making coffee, clove blossoms, dandelion greens for cooking and wine making, cranberries for sauce, mulberries fro jam, New Jersey tea (tanze) which Grandmother Margerum made tea, fiddleheads for eating, pine needles for stomach upset, wild raspberries, & blackberries, rose pedals, etc. Flowers of the field and swamp by the hundreds – lady slippers, Indian pipe, black eyed Susies and magnolia trees, in our meadow and along side of the running waters.
The Hunt Circus arrived each year, in our TYPINK, stayed but a couple days. Ku Klux Klan, also burned a cross here, at one time.
In the summer months, we would gather tad pole eggs and dig clay to make dishes. The older girls, on the Avenue, would present a stage play in the woods – something that they thought was classical, charged a penny or two for us to attend. Grandfather William Alexander Margerum would give us enough money to see the presentation and may times went with us, to this play.
No one that I knew of lived in the woods at TYPINK – but several families did live among the pine trees, over near our UNITED GROCERY STORE which was on East 7th Street, before the entirety of the road was cut thru. There were many homeless people living in the woods near Iz Robertson’s cranberry bog, where we skated in the winter months on that frozen water. They lived among the pine trees with an old rug for a floor and another rug for the roof, with pine trees and boughs for the side wall. Cooked over a bond fire and ate the wild berries, made tea out of tea berry leaves, cooked rabbits and squirrels, birds, etc. I do not know where these people were from, but they seemed to be of foreign extraction. They would come into our grocery store and purchase TWINKIES, this is their first American word, that they learned.
The streets in our town were not scrapped of ice and snow because it was a winter resort for the city folks. Across the street from our home there was the Clayton stales. They had hacks that were driven by horses to take people about town, sleighs in the winter months for sight seeing or inhaling the healthy pine air. This horse stable was really an experience, the drivers became drunk and laid in the woods, date and nite, among the fallen leaves and short standing pine, they were completely harmless, most likely the fathers of our neighborhood families. There were some men that did not have a home and lived there, also.
Working people lived on the East Side of Lakewood, NJ. Their homes were small, three or four rooms, thoroughly scrubbed, woman stayed at home caring for there large family, most took in clothes washing to supplement the earnings. They were proud people and many, descendants of the early American Wars. They did not want a hand out of food or clothing, altho, they would accept an extra dollar that Ma would give them. Families could manage well in the summer months by working in berry fields and other garden work, at their home.
At times a neighbor would come into our store and tell Dad that they had no money to feed their children, Dad would give them dried white beans, as a gift. Dad had a long heavy wire nailed to the cellar wooden bean, on which he strung the “I Owe You”, pick slips. Since no monthly billing was sent out, as years passed and the wire became rusted, Dad burned up all these pink slips. It has been said that Harry Brown, as stern as he was, kept the whole East Side of Lakewood, NJ, during the depression.
