On a warm afternoon, we exited Route 130 at Merchantville Avenue but went up Rogers Avenue 'cause I wanted to see, before anything else, our flat at 2908 Center Street. Drove slowly . . . there was no traffic. Didn't want a drive-by so parked car under a shade tree on Rogers soon after crossing Center Street. We walked back a few yards, turned right on Center. Passed Charlie Coe's house, next to which is one that used to be the Bo-Peep Day Nursery, and then the squat brick apartments began.
Quinn's TV repair is now a hair salon, and Evans Luncheonette has become a shop that no longer serves food, so perhaps the hordes of wall-dwelling roaches have gone as well. The flat above Quinny-the-nut's place looks no different from the outside except for boxy air-con units in two windows. Its ceilings were so low that I could reach and touch them in my early teens. I was tempted to ask the beauty-salon operator if perhaps we could tour what once was the Duffy's flat but Jade nixed that intrusion.
I noted that the corner of Center and Irving was still a bus stop, from which Mom would catch the Number 14 bus (driven by gabby Fred Krauter) for downtown Camden each morning for her waitress job. With three kids and a no-account husband, she never wavered. Not once.
We walked slowly around to the flat's rear, which hadn't aged as well as had its front. I went behind Quinny's garage and was tempted to go up the wooden stairs to our flat but decided to leave well enough alone.
Jade had not been keen to visit my hometown, having heard many dreary tales over our 20 years together. But once we drove beneath the tree canopy beginning on Rogers Avenue from Route 130, she was amazed how lush green the area is. It wasn't hard to convince her to stroll deeper into my youth.
We walked slowly down Irving Avenue toward the railroad tracks, me pointing out memories left and right. Despite the heat and strong sun, it was green and cool beneath the cathedral canopy provided by trees that were there 40 years ago, albeit smaller. I was surprised how near the end of Irving Avenue is to Center Street. It seemed farther then.
I pointed out Bob Kopytko's house on our right, TY's on the left, then that of Jim Ormsby. TY's wasn't as changed as was Ormsby's. I wanted to cross the railroad tracks a bit but it's now fenced. Foliage along the raised trackbed is thicker than I recall it being. Earl and Darcy Horner's house was across from Ormsby's . . . Things I didn't know I still knew were bubbling up.
