Jersey

We spent a week in New Jersey visiting cousins of some sort. I asked my father recently about it and he told me they were from his side of the family. The house was out in the country. There was a train tracks in the back of the property - we would stand and watch the trains go by, which was a novelty for us. There were also barn owls and bats that invaded the night, also items of interest for us village-dwellers. We went to a public pool of sorts one day. I was relegated to the kiddy pool while everybody else had fun in the adjoining "adult" pool. The water over there, as I observed, was a wonderful color blue. It spilled over into the kiddy pool and I imagined the blue tint making the kiddy pool water blue-er. A kid's imagination.

The most meaningful memory I had of that trip was an evening when the older kids played records and danced in the enclosed patio. At one point someone played a slow song and everybody slow-danced except me because, as a little kid, I was way too short. I was sad until my brother Roger picked me up and slow-danced with me. I recall the kindness and affection to this day. I talked about this incident at his funeral.