Excerpt from THE KEEPER'S SECRET

I've visited many lighthouses, both here in NJ and elsewhere. Symbolically, lighthouses are a beacon of hope but until the advent of GPS, they were important navigational aids. In 1789, our Congress approved the Lighthouse Act, which was the first public works program in our country. 

When I wrote THE KEEPER'S SECRET, I intended for the lighthouse to be that symbolic beacon of hope for the hero and heroine. Below is a short excerpt from Chapter 7.

    Evie set the tray on a small table and poured the tea. After handing one mug to Bryce, she settled into the swing beside him.

    He rocked gently back and forth. "I’ll go slow so we won’t spill the tea," he reassured her.

    She closed her eyes, welcoming the warmth of the mug in her hands. The swing swayed rhythmically with the slight tap of Bryce’s feet. She sipped her tea, listened to the night sounds of the quiet street and tingled in awareness of the man beside her.

    "I’ll toss out some ideas." The rumble of his deep bass vibrated through her body.

    She assumed she would hear one of Bryce’s lectures. He harangued her on a regular basis during that last year of high school. A pang of regret pierced her. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t turn her from her wild ways.

    "Does the Lord test people?" he asked. "And if He does, am I getting an F?"

    Feeling uncertain and inadequate when it came to issues of faith, Evie wished Jessica hadn’t gone to sleep. "Life isn’t like school."

    "All right, let’s say it’s based on the point system and I’m getting close to the maximum number."

    "No. The Lord doesn’t hand out parking and speeding tickets. He doesn’t take away your license."

    "He puts you in everlasting pain."

    Evie winced. She’d questioned Jessica on almost that identical point. At least she knew the response to that one. "He loves you. He made you and wants you to spend eternity with Him. He’ll forgive you. He’ll never abandon you."

    "What if you lose your faith in Him?"

    "Because of your father?"

    "Not just my father." He put his feet down and stopped the swing. He lowered his head. "There’s more to it."

    She waited, but in the tense silence he didn’t seem to want to lay his soul bare. That might be a good thing because she didn’t know how she would handle it. Perhaps the tension of his job weighed on him.

    "Everyone doubts," she said after a few moments. "You must simply go on trusting the Lord and praying."

    "That doesn’t work." A touch of sorrow welled in his deep brown eyes as he leaned back, sliding one hand along the top edge of the swing. Warmth radiated off his skin, just inches from hers. "I thought, since I was a Christian, the Lord would make things easier for me. He hasn’t."

    "Sometimes the Lord has other plans. Better plans," Evie stumbled through an explanation.

    "I haven’t read the Bible in a long time, but last night I went through the Beatitudes. It didn’t help. ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’...I thought that’s what I was...but I’m not...not by any stretch of the imagination."

    "You’re trying to be a peacemaker. That’s what counts." Evie’s throat ached. In doing his job, he’d put her in jail. She swallowed hard, but though her eyes grew misty, she must be brave. "The whole point of the Beatitudes is that the Lord promises a great reward in heaven, even if we have a tough time here on earth." Evie wished Bryce took his problem to Pastor Strauss. The pastor knew so much more about being a Christian than she ever would. "The Lord never promised that everything would be easy, but He did promise to be with us, each one of us, all the time."

    "The Lord does not send replies," Bryce muttered.

    "He does, but you have to listen."

    "I’ve dealt with people who claim to hear the Lord. They are always mentally unstable."

    Evie’s courage failed her.

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Traveling A Cappella

     This is a very old photo of my siblings and I. I am the tall one with the striped shirt. My brother made a very awesome buggy out of scrap lumber, a discarded Christmas display, rope, and old wheels. The engine was environmentally friendly, but it had limits. It worked best going downhill. 😊
     The buggy was just for fun. For genuine transportation, my family used a Rambler station wagon, which is on the right in the photo. My father used that car to get to work and back everyday. We also went to the grocery store, the doctor, and into town. For us in those days, the town was Keyport, which wasn't a big town but it had a bakery, a Chinese restaurant, and a 5 & 10 cent store, Newberry's, which was our favorite store. 

     When Dad took a vacation, we piled into the Rambler and took a long trip out to visit my grandparents in western Pennsylvania and then went into Ohio to see my aunt and cousins. 

     The station wagon did not have air conditioning. My hair became impossibly tangled in the wind whipping through the windows. The car had an AM radio and it was difficult to pull in signals when driving through the mountains. Most often we sang our way to my grandparents' house. My mother led the singing. She liked to sing. Since she was in Marines during World War II, we always started off with the Marine's Hymn. They we sang the rest of the military songs, The Army Goes Rolling Along, as so forth. I always get teary-eyed when I hear those songs now. 

     Mom sang popular songs from her youth in the 1920s and the 1930s, too. I grew up knowing a lot of old songs. 

     One summer, I took accordion lessons. My parents rented a small twelve bass accordion and for ten weeks, they paid for me to learn music. When we went out to Pennsylvania that summer, the accordion went with us. I sat all the way in the back of the car with the luggage and played the accordion. That year, we all had accompaniment for our singing.

     The accordion lessons didn't last past the ten weeks. After that, the accordion school insisted my parents had to buy a huge 120 bass accordion for me. It was very expensive and also very heavy. My parents could not afford it. Also, my father took one look at the accordion and did not believe skinny little me could ever manage it. 

     So the next trip out to Pennsylvania was again a cappella, which was fine. We sang all of Mom's favorites and learned them by heart. 

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Health Care in the Old Days

      That’s my brother in front with the airplane and the cowboy boots. I’m right behind him with similar cowboy boots. This photo was taken in Jersey City—before we moved to Cliffwood Beach. It was also taken before my brother, at the age of 5,  jumped off the porch one day imitating Superman. He didn't fly. He broke his arm. My family had hospital insurance, so the broken arm was fixed. However, back in the old days, the only health insurance we had was for a visit to the hospital. Any visits to the doctor for illnesses or well check-ups were not covered. 

     The pediatrician who cared for me and my siblings charged $3 for an office visit and $5 for a house visit. Once I heard him compliment our family by calling us "God-fearing" people. As I child, I wasn't quite sure about that term but I knew we had to behave ourselves. 

     The pediatrician was a good diagnostician, too. When one of our neighbor's daughters became very ill, my mom told the family to take the child to our pediatrician. He knew what the problem was. While the young girl went through a long recovery, she did get better. Of course, Mom made cream puffs for the family so I'm sure that cheered them up. At least, a bit. 

     For the most part, we didn't see the doctor unless we were quite sick. Three dollars doesn't sound like a lot nowadays, but it was a lot in the 1950s. (You can see a list of the cost of other items here.) Of course, salaries were far less back then, too)

     Mom always had clean rags and oatmeal poultices to cure cuts and scrapes. Most of the time my siblings and I had the usual childhood diseases. We also had our tonsils removed. On some occasions we needed antibiotics and then we had to see the doctor. But our pediatrician was a kind and understanding man. When my youngest sister developed pneumonia from the measles, he did not recommend the hospital for her since he knew it would be a traumatic experience for one so young. She was a sensitive child. The doctor had a nurse come to the house and care for my sister. I have no idea how much that cost. But my poor mother needed some sleep, so it actually helped the entire family.  

    That pediatrician was a real hero, in my point of view. Our family was very blessed to have such a wonderful doctor caring for us.

     ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

    

In The Old Days

     There are people who believe the old days were the best. Since I am now 75, I look back at growing up in the 1950s and remember not everything was rosy in those days. Some aspects were positive, especially since it was a relatively peaceful time in the world, but there were still difficulties, especially for women.      

     My mother and father were married in 1947. My brother was born in 1948. A year and ten days later, I was born. My mother had Rh negative blood. My blood was Rh positive, so I’m lucky I’m here. Nowadays, there is an injection (RhoGAM) available to women who are Rh negative so that their antibodies do not attack the Rh positive baby in their womb. My mother gave birth to another little girl in 1952, but that baby died only a few days afterward. 

Polio was a terrible scourge at the time. At the age of three, I was suddenly unable to walk. My parents took me to the hospital where I was put into isolation, since the doctors thought I might have polio. Being in a large empty room, in a crib, is one of my first memories. Fortunately, whatever I had vanished with the aid of antibiotics. 

Mom gave birth to another girl in 1954. She was healthy. 

My brother and I started school and proceeded to be sick much of the time with measles, chicken pox, and other diseases. Fortunately, the polio vaccine became available and we were spared from getting that horrible disease.

Mom and Dad bought a very unfinished house. It was what they could afford on a journalist’s salary. It needed interior walls, insulation, and sheetrock to make it livable. Dad took my brother with him on weekends for assistance. My brother was seven, but he could hand Dad nails and such. We moved into the house in 1955. 

Mom became pregnant again. This time she started bleeding and the doctor feared she would lose the baby due to a miscarriage. My mother spent the rest of that pregnancy sitting down with her feet elevated. It was at that time my mom taught me to embroider and crochet. Mom was an artist and she liked being busy. She decided on a taking a mail order course to become an interior decorator. She finished the course. My youngest sister was born in 1958. 

By that time, I was eight years old and my poor mother was worn out. I was old enough to reach the knobs on the stove, to hang out the laundry on the line to dry, to change my sister’s diapers, and do a myriad of other household chores. 

Meanwhile, my maternal grandfather came for a visit and encouraged my father to dig out a basement under the house. That project lasted for many years. Obviously, my father still had a full time job at the newspaper, but on weekends he used a pick ax to dig through the solid clay under the house. Often, my brother helped Dad by taking wheelbarrows full of clay out of the basement and dumping it on the hill. I helped by bringing Dad large mugs of coffee. Sometimes, I played with the clay as did my sisters.

This division of labor worked quite well. Now and then my brother and I would get some time off to go on adventures. We considered our younger sisters “the kids.” My brother built a small go cart, which we called a buggy, from leftover nails, old baby carriage wheels, odd pieces of scrap lumber, and a rope. Most often, I was the engine, which I deemed quite unfair. My brother decided the solution was for both of us to ride our buggy down Cinder Hill, an unpaved street with a steep incline that went right to the edge of the bay. 

As we started to zip down the hill, a car came up the hill towards us. My brother made a sharp turn to the right. I was thrown into the gravel at the side and my brother landed underneath the buggy. We were scratched up but nothing was broken. However, that was the last time we went down Cinder Hill.

Did you grow up in the 1950s? What were some of your youthful experiences?