“On Christmas Eve many years ago I laid quietly in my bed. I did not rustle the sheets, I breathed slowly and silently. I was listening for a sound I was afraid I would never hear: the sound of Santa’s sleigh bells.” (from The Polar Express)
We moved into the split-level house my dad built in late 1960 from the bungalow next door.
My brother Gary was born in May 1961, ending my nearly five-year reign as the youngest child and immediately thrusting me into the abyss of middle-child status. Not that I was bitter; who wanted all that attention anyway?
My sister Patty had her own room. Carl and I shared a bedroom that my dad designed for all three boys once Gary graduated from the crib in my parent’s bedroom. My bed was on the end, Carl in the middle, and Gary would be in the first bed.
Since my parents were the “early adopters” so to speak of having children amongst their friends, Christmas Eves at our house always included our extended family of my parent’s adult friends, mostly firemen and their wives, since they had to be home to prepare Christmas for us.
And then came the hour on Christmas Eve when we were all three ushered up to bed, while the adults continued the festivities below. Once in bed we busted out the Dan Electro transistor radios and followed Santa’s travels on WMCA or WABC radio out of New York City.
Sleep didn’t come easy but eventually, it would. In the morning whoever woke up first would wake up the others and we would all huddle at the top of the steps because we couldn’t go down the stairs until my mother and father got up.
One of us got picked to sneak down the stairs and do some scouting to see if Santa had really come. That changed as we all got older, depending on “your persuasion on the Big Man,” and was typically the younger believer, which like I said earlier and in case you forgot, was me for nearly five years.
We had a similar routine every year, captured in photos first by black and whites, then eventually in color, some of which I have already shared. My dad also had one of those early 60s eight mm movie cameras with the infamous light bar with the four flood lights. We opened gifts in an organized way making sure we each saw what the other one got.
Then my father would leave to join the other Oceanport Hook and Ladder firemen who every year would purchase gifts for all the kids in town under a certain age and with a Santa Claus on the back of the fire truck, would go street by street, house by house, delivering gifts to the kids they had on their list.
This was a tradition that went way back with the fire company in Oceanport and even my dad would tell stories of waiting for the fire truck when he was a kid in the 1930s when he would leap the hedge to get to greet the firemen and Santa.
While my dad was gone, we also would wait for the fire truck to come to our house, then revisit our gifts until my dad got home, which wasn’t always as predictable as you might think since there was always a little bit of Christmas cheer involved in that tradition as well.
Once my dad returned, we would walk across the street and down the rear driveway of my grandmother’s house and have Christmas and lunch with my mother’s family and my cousins.
Then we were off to Hillcrest and my other grandparents’ house and finally to my Uncle Teddy’s. Teddy always had the funniest-looking Christmas trees and those oversized Christmas light bulbs.
It was nice having not all but a good portion of our family living in the same town or very close by.
Over the years as we got older and we became volunteer fireman, both my brothers and I got to share that Christmas experience of riding the fire truck with my dad. And even after I moved away and would return home for the holiday, I would share that Christmas morning experience with my father. And we even developed some new traditions like on Christmas Eve, driving to Point Pleasant Beach to the Norwegian store to buy Norwegian cheese, fiskebollers (Codfish balls), and only once Lutefisk (because with Lutefisk only once was enough), and cod fish to make sandwiches.
And that Christmas Eve open house for whoever wanted to visit just got bigger and bigger, and even now my sister still tries to keep that tradition going in Oceanport.
I am too old now to lie in bed listening for sleigh bells or Santa’s location on the radio, or waiting for my brothers and sister to wake me up. But I have lots of nice memories of Christmases growing up. I guess when they say “the true spirit of Christmas lies in your heart,” that’s where the memories live for as long as we are able to remember them, which gets more challenging the older we get. Of course there have been Christmases since with sad memories, but even the sad ones remind us there is comfort and hope on the other side of those in time.
And writing about them and looking at old photos, reminds me of how much I miss my father and my brother. Maybe I will have a codfish sandwich and some Norwegian cheese, an Akvavit on the rocks, and turn on Glen Campbell’s That Christmas Feelingalbum on Christmas Eve this year.
“At one time most of my friends could hear the bell, but as years passed it fell silent for all of them. Though I’ve grown old the bell still rings for me, as it does for all who truly believe” (from The Polar Express)
And who knows, maybe after a couple of those Akvavits, I will hear some bells too.
The time stamp on this featured photo says Jan 1963 so probably Christmas 1962. Gary would be about a year a half old, me about 6 1/2, Carl 8 almost 9, and Patty about 10 1/2.
Gary, Christmas 1965?Early one, Patty at my Grandmother’s. Look at those legs!Not sure, 1966 or 67?Gar got a bikeI don’t knowPatty Christmas 1965Early one, Carl and Patty, bungalow Christmas, I was a baby…youngest child
I remember my dad standing in the hallway near the front door while my mother would roll up the sleeves of his Banlon shirt to show more of his muscles, I guess. Or maybe that was just the style around 1960. My father worked the second shift as a drill press operator at Bendix in Eatontown, New Jersey, on Route 35, and he was getting ready to go to work. This was the ritual.
Bendix sponsored an art contest every year for their employees at Christmas. I was young then, so I really didn’t know much other than I remember my dad creating beautiful drawings using pastels, and entering the contests during those years. I think one of his drawings won a ribbon one Christmas. This was the only time I can think of where he exhibited his artistic talent with something other than wood.
The Count Basie Center for the Arts is now a happening place on Monmouth Street in Red Bank New Jersey. It’s owned by the Monmouth County Arts Council and reopened as the Count Basie Theatre in the early 1980s. It’s a venue where you may have been entertained by Bruce Springsteen or Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes over the years.
But when I was four or five years old it was known as the Carlton theater, Reade’s Carlton to be exact, a beautiful old theater built in the 1920s first for Vaudeville shows, then transformed into a movie theater.
Every Christmas season, Bendix would host a Christmas program for the children of Bendix employees. I have memories of standing in a very long line of families that wrapped around the corner and down a long Red Bank block in the cold patiently waiting for my turn to enter the lobby and get a bag of snacks, and I think, a small gift. Then we watched a movie, the only one I remember was Walt Disney’s Pinocchio.
My dad would give up his drill press and Bendix and go on to work as a union carpenter in those early years of the 1960s, so I only remember a couple of those Bendix Carlton Christmases. I seem to recall three of the drawings he submitted to the Bendix contests. I was able to salvage one of them, though he had cut part way through it with one of his saws. Saws and woodworking tools were much more associated with my dad than colored pastel pencils, so having at least a cut-down version of one of his Christmas drawings is pretty special.
The ghosts, the memories of this Christmas past writing, were 1960ish. My brother Gary was born in May 1961 so, at this point, he is a ghost of a Christmas future I suppose. The photo below was date stamped Jan 1960 so I think it was from Christmas 1959 when I was three and half. I must have asked Santa for a gun that year.
The photo below is from an even earlier Christmas, 1957 maybe? I am the little pudgy kid in the middle. I must have asked Santa for a car that year. Maybe I will ask Santa for a car again this year.
Frank Hayes was born in Ireland. Though there seems to be some debate over when Frank was born, some say 1888 and some say 1901, one thing was for sure, Frank always wanted to be a jockey.
But Frank was built more like me when I was in my 20’s and 30’s at 140 pounds. Not that 140 pounds was heavy, but it was if you wanted to be jockey.
Frank moved to New York City and when he found he couldn’t be a jockey, he decided to be a horse trainer and groom instead, at least he was in the game. It was the 1920’s and thoroughbred horse racing was beginning its golden era in this country.
When I worked on the ambulance at Monmouth Park Racetrack in the 1970’s, for a few days later in the meet, the track would feature a few steeplechase races on the card each summer. For us on the ambulance crew it was the busier days of the season because jumpers more frequently lost their riders.
Belmont Park, located on New York’s Long Island in the early 1920’s featured a similar steeplechase program.
One day Frank the trainer found himself an owner with a horse entered into one of Belmont’s steeplechase races who didn’t have a jockey to ride her.
The horse’s name was Sweet Kiss.
Sweet Kiss was a seven-year-old mare, an unraced maiden, and Frank saw an opportunity. If he could get down to jockey weight of 130 pounds, he could ride Sweet Kiss and fulfill his dream to finally be a jockey.
So, Frank did the impossible and in a matter of 24 hours managed to lose twelve pounds to qualify.
Frank’s dream was finally going to come true.
He was about to check “Jockey” off his bucket list.
I have been having a bit of a nostalgic horse racing week, kind of reliving A Sentimental Racetrack Journey once again. With November’s Breeder’s Cup in the books, the sport of horse racing winds down a bit as it awaits January’s Eclipse Awards, which are kind of like the Oscars for horse racing, the naming of the Horse of the Year for 2024, and the new year when all two year olds turn three and thus the beginning of the 2025 three year old season which includes the Triple Crown races.
My sentimental journey this week was once again triggered by my perennial Horse of the Year…
I reached out to Marilyne this week to check on Sid:
He’s doing very well. I just got a new job that is very time consuming so I leased him out to a lesson program In Alpharetta for 6 months to a year where he is spoiled and pampered and so happy, and I can still go ride whenever I want. She sends me pictures periodically, and he has 3 friends and a big field, and lots of daily love and attention. Here is one of my favorite funnies from this summer because he has quite the personality.
In the next picture his little brother Walker is learning good ground manners from him at the trailer.
The last two pics are from the leasing barn called Autograph Farm. They spoil him rotten!
Thanks for checking in!!
As is usual, I got a little teary-eyed.
Lucky Sid, after a long career of racing, is enjoying retirement. Marilyne is his second owner I have kept in contact with since he retired.
Somehow, I don’t think Sid struggled with the same stress and fear of being retired that I find myself experiencing. Sid is pampered and spoiled, and happy in his retirement.
And he has three friends and a big field and lots of love and attention.
And I am so envious.
I don’t have three friends or a big field.
I don’t know whether Sid has a bucket list, but he is a horse, so I am sure he has a bucket of something.
But it makes me happy that Sid is happy.
Frank’s dream finally came true. He rode Sweet Kiss over the twelve-jump course. Going off at the odds of 20 to 1 against the favorite Gimme. Gimme led most of the race though Sweet Kiss was just off the pace. Entering the home turn Frank shifted in the saddle and the two horses nearly collided, they made the last jump (somehow), straightened themselves out, and in the stretch Sweet Kiss dug in and pulled away by a length and a half.
Crossing the finish line instead of raising his crop in victory, Frank remained slumped over.
Eventually Frank would slide off the saddle and hit the ground. Though doctors rushed to his aid, Frank was pronounced dead right there on the racetrack.
Apparently, Frank had a heart attack and died probably around the time the two horses nearly collided entering the home turn. Some say it was the stress of the race and losing so much weight in such a short period of time that got him.
And because the rule books said the jockey had to remain in the saddle and cross the finish line in order to officially win, even though he was dead, Frank had won his first and his only race as a jockey.
Sweet Kiss broke her maiden status with the win but would race no more.
She went on to earn the nickname “the Sweet Kiss of Death.”
And Frank Hayes, as a result “is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the first Jockey (and probably first athlete of any sport) to ride to victory after his own death.”
Though Frank’s dream was fulfilled, he not only checked off the bucket, but kicked it too.
I don’t know what the moral of this story is.
Maybe fulfilling dreams aren’t always worth the stress, the effort, and the expense.
If you are even a casual Mets fan like me, you remember the 1980s and Mookie Wilson, and of course the 1986 Mets World Series. Mookie Wilson is said to have gotten his nickname by the way he pronounced milk as a young child. Come to think of it, I may have also had a kid who asked for “more mook please.”
Kim and I arrived at my mother’s around 7 pm last Friday evening, and my mom was all excited to watch the Dodgers in the first game of the World Series.
I thought this was odd behavior for my mother, but then, thinking maybe there was a Manhattan involved, I just rolled with it.
“My grandmother was a huge Dodger fan, the Brooklyn Dodgers, and I want to watch the game,” she explained.
Great, I thought, this was kind of a welcome diversion, a break from Fox News and the Hallmark Channel. A break from the stress of the upcoming election, with all the fascist talk, the threats to democracy, swing states, blue walls, and fake news.
Yeah, it turns out Great Grandma Flora was a big Brooklyn Dodgers fan. I had never met Flora. My mother, however, was very close to her grandmother.
And, I wasn’t too familiar with the Brooklyn Dodgers either because not too long after I was born, in 1957, both the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants decided “California’s the place you otta be,” so they loaded up and moved west to Los Angeles and San Fransisco respectively.
This left the New York Yankees as the only team in New York until 1962 when Mookie Wilson’s Mets were established as one of baseball’s first expansion teams.
Now sitting and watching the game with my mother, I was happy to find out the Dodgers had a “Mookie” too!
Mookie Betts.
We watched all the way to 10th inning when the Dodgers’ Freddie Freeman made history by hitting the first game ending grand slam in World Series history.
Game One…Dodgers 6, Yankees 3.
Baseball used to be America’s sport.
As a kid I would walk down my street Willow Court in Oceanport, NJ, past the house my family called “the big house” then owned by my grandmother but also the house where Flora once lived; making my way down to Park’s Drugstore to buy the bubble gum pack with the baseball cards inside. It never occurred to me that the Roger Maris or Mickey Mantle card I had attached to my bike with a clothespin might be worth some big money someday. Nope, for me, it had much more immediate value clicking between the spokes of my rear bicycle wheel.
Saturday evening we were invited to a neighbor’s for a Halloween dinner party, so we got back to the TV and the game a little late. Kim went to bed, but my mother and I watched the second game till the end.
Game two…Dodgers 4, Yankees 2.
I never played baseball growing up, though we had Little League and Babe Ruth teams in Oceanport, I wasn’t very athletic. I played catch in the yard with my brother and friends and street baseball on summer evenings with the neighborhood kids. Since we lived on a dead end, we didn’t have to vacate the “field” too often by neighbors coming home from work.
The best baseball experience I can boast of is playing Cub Scout softball.
I wasn’t very good at softball either, but, I did manage some brief notoriety when I was playing catch on the sideline behind the bench one game with another teammate and managed to knock out another one of my Cub Scout teammates when the ball I threw didn’t quite reach the intended but instead found its way to another kids head. I remember he was talking to someone and went down, came right back up resumed the conversation, and then went down again.
Monday night, I am back home but even without my mother, feeling like I had to watch the Dodgers. The problem was the Steelers were playing on Monday night football, so up and down the stairs I went, as I tried to watch both games. After the Steelers’ 26-18 win over the New York football Giants, I watched the rest of the Dodgers game three, now playing in New York.And though I didn’t see the whole game I did see Mookie Betts hit a base hit that allowed for the third run of the third game.
Game Three…Dodgers 4, Yankees 2, again.
I remember the time I watched my friend Bob Woolley who unlike me was a very good athlete, on one of those Little League or Babe Ruth teams, throw a very exaggerated “change-up” pitch that effectively struck the batter out but also engrained in me an understanding of what a “change up” pitch was forever.
I remember the mid-sixties, and especially the 1968 World Series St. Louis Cardinals with my two favorite players of that series Lou Brock and Curt Flood stealing bases. They were fun to watch and along with pitcher Bob Gibson, they won the series.
And who could forget the ’69 Miracle Mets and the ‘73 Mets who weren’t as lucky.
Tuesday Kim and I had something scheduled, and by the time we got home and I turned the game on, it was clear the Yankees offense had awoken. They added five runs in the eighth inning to the six they had already, and as a result, I got to bed a little earlier.
Game four…Yankees 11, Dodgers only 4.
My last experience that involved a bat, ball, and glove was a short stint on the Oceanport Hook & Ladder Fireman’s softball team. I was the pitcher and after almost being taken out by a line drive, I walked off the mound and retired at the young age of 20 never to return to the diamond again.
Game five looked at first, to be a repeat of game four. Down by five runs, the Dodgers came back to tie the score in the fifth, only to be bested by one run in the sixth. With the score now 6 to 5 Yankees, the Dodgers would add two more in the eighth inning. Going into the ninth, the Dodgers couldn’t add any more runs, now with the Yankees at bat, they called in Walker Buehler in relief. Walker had started game three and would have started game seven had it gone that far, but with no more relievers left in the bullpen; he got the call.
Dodgers7, Yankees 6…the Dodgers are the World Series champs of 2024.
So that was that.
Great Grandma Flora’s team, once the Dodgers from Brooklyn, now LA, beat their once cross-town rivals, the New York Yankees.
My mom was happy, imagining her grandmother waving her flag (or pennant maybe) in celebration.
That’s awesome!
But now what do we do?
What are we going to do without a game six or seven?
We need a couple more days of Mookie, I don’t wanna go back to the election…
Ma, more mook, please.
More Mookie!
Because I, who had a better average at knocking out my teammates than I had knocking the ball out of the park, wanted just a couple more days of baseball.
Oh well, at least I had the experience of watching a couple of baseball games with my mother, creating a memory I never would have imagined happening in the first place, but also one that I may not have had the opportunity to repeat.
And besides, there are plenty of distractions I can find that will last me until Tuesday. This weekend is the Breeder’s Cup, the World Series of horse racing, at Del Mar Racecourse in San Diego. Though there have been Mookie horses in the past, like Bet on Mookie, Mr. Mookie, MVP Mookie, and Miracle Mookie; I couldn’t find any Mookies running this weekend.
And of course, I always have football that will take me through to Monday Night.
Then on Election Day, I can follow the play-by-play well into the wee hours of Wednesday morning if I decide to.
Or I can drink my Mookie and go to bed.
But before I go to bed I will pray for fairness and integrity in our election process, and, that the days that follow be calm, peaceful, and healing.
Amen?
Amen.
Postscript: The photo above is Mookie Wilson in the 1986 World Series. Mets baserunner Mookie Wilson slides into third base as Wade Boggs can only watch.
On Columbus Day in Asbury Park New Jersey in the 1960’s, the city would host a ceremony where a person dressed and portraying the character of Christopher Columbus, along with a couple of attendants dressed in their period garb, would brave the ocean’s waves and come ashore ceremoniously “discovering America” right there on the beach in Asbury Park.
The two Boy Scout troops in my hometown of Oceanport at the time had a native American dance team that I participated in called the Lakota’s. We would wear native American costumes and perform native American dances like the snake dance and the Hopi hoop dance.
On at least one Columbus Day, and I think maybe two, I and the other members of our Lakota tribe were there to greet Columbus as he landed in Asbury, we performed our dances to entertain the public and get our picture in the Asbury Park Press.
When I was growing up, we learned all about the explorers of the New World in grammar school (that would be elementary school in case you didn’t grow up in Jersey). DeSoto, Magellan, Hudson, de Leon, Pizarro, Cabot, to name a few, we learned all about them. We had to write “reports” and present our explorers to the rest of the class. Their place in history was quite important at the time. It was still cool to celebrate explorers.
And of course, the most famous of the explorers, the Italian Christopher Columbus, was widely touted as the person who “discovered America” on October 12, 1492, by landing on an island he called San Salvador. And as a result, thanks to Italian Americans and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1937, we picked up another holiday called Columbus Day to be celebrated on October 12, now of course it is recognized on the second Monday of October.
In October of 2021, President Biden signed a proclamation naming the second Monday of the month Indigenous People’s Day, in direct conflict with Columbus Day.
It was no longer cool to celebrate Columbus’ discovery because it opened the new world to other European explorers and ultimately colonization which would lead to warring and diseases that would have a devasting impact on the Indigenous peoples of the Americas.
My DNA indicates I am 75% Scandinavian and mostly Norwegian and since my people didn’t make it to America until the early 1900’s I don’t feel too much guilt with the mistreatment of America’s indigenous people directly. My people were Vikings, they were “raping and pillaging” other Europeans, of which, I suppose I must share some accountability for ancestrally.
And speaking of Scandinavians the truth is Columbus was not the first European to reach the Americas, the Norwegian Leif Erickson is credited with doing that about 500 years earlier; and the first European settlement Vinland, thought to be located on modern-day Newfoundland, was established by Vikings probably coming from nearby Greenland or Iceland.
The world has lots of sad stories in its documented and undocumented history. It seems that sadly, conquering and colonization were built into our human nature. The Bible and our world history books are full of stories of civilizations at war, conquering, enslaving, and exiling. I suppose we are all to blame, even our indigenous people. And, sadly, it continues still to this day, as we are made aware of listening to the news every day.
I spent Columbus Day, or Indigenous People’s Day, this year on the Eastern Shore making a quick visit to see my mother. Since the guy who cuts the grass was slacking a little that week, I got the lawn tractor out and knocked that off. With the tide clock indicating high tide in about an hour, though it was mid-October, I got a fishing pole out of the shed and threw the line out. I had some pretty good bites but only managed to catch a small spot, which I returned to the water to catch again another day. Though I don’t like the fall because I know it means winter is coming, October on the Eastern Shore has become one of my favorite months. I stood on the pier looking out over the waters and coastlines once traveled by another explorer four hundred years ago, Captain John Smith who explored the Chesapeake Bay and who knows, maybe even anchored his shallop in the protected waters of Fishing Creek while he traded with the natives on Deep Point Road.
In 1970 American writer Dee Brown published a book titled Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West. I read that book at some point in the early 70’s and though I can’t say I remember the details of the book now 50 years later, I do remember that I cried finishing the last chapter.
I guess I must have felt some guilt after all.
Postscript:
Today October 19 is the anniversary of the day Kim’s dad Royal lost his battle with cancer four years ago. October 15 was the anniversary of the day my dear friend Tawanda lost hers in 2011. I have written in the past about both, Royal in The Steinster and Tawanda in The Beauty of an October Day. I am confident they are both resting peacefully.
The photo above is of the Lakota’s though not in costume probably circa 1968. I couldn’t find the photo of us in costume. That’s me front and center. The photo below of Christopher Columbus landing on the beach is not one of our group. I couldn’t find that photo either. This one is from the book Images of America, Monmouth Council Boy Scouts.
On this day in 1981 Picasso’s Guernica, his anti-war mural, was returned to Spain after forty years of hanging in New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Picasso had requested the painting not be returned to Spain until Spain restored democratic liberties in the country.
The subject of the mural was the brutal bombing of the town of Guernica in 1937, by the Nazi Luftwaffe, who were allies of Fransisco Franco’s right-wing Nationalist forces during the Spanish Civil War. Picasso was commissioned to paint the mural showing the horrors of war to be exhibited in the Spanish Pavilion at the Paris International Exposition in 1939.
Today is also Grandparent’s Day.
We didn’t have a Grandparent’s Day when I was a kid. According to the internet, Grandparent’s Day was made official in 1978 as the first Sunday after Labor Day by then President Jimmy Carter.
I think relationships with my grandparents when I was young were a bit more formal than today. In fact, in my family, when we referred to them we always used their last name as in Grandma Rosch or Grandpa Christiansen.
All of my four grandparents lived in Oceanport, the town I grew up in.
I have written about my father’s parents, my Norwegian grandparents Sophie and Carl before.
My grandparents on my mother’s side (Rosch) lived right across the street. Technically their address was Main Street but the back lots of their property were on Willow Court, the street I grew up on, and right across from my house. My grandfather William H. Rosch however died in August of 1960 at the age of 75 when I was just four years old.
But I have nice memories growing up to adulthood with my three grandparents.
Kim and I are grandparents too now.
We have three grandsons, Cameron, Christian, and Ethan. I have written about them many times as well. But maybe not so much about Ethan.
Ethan is six.
He is very headstrong and determined but gets a little frustrated at times.
Recently at school, he and his classmates were assigned the task of drawing a self-portrait.
Ethan also happens to be very good at drawing, a talent that seems to run in my family, my grandfather Carl was an oil painter, my father worked with pastels, and my siblings are talented artistically as well.
However, Ethan apparently didn’t approve of being assigned the task of drawing a self-portrait.
As a result, he took on the brutality and the horror of being asked to do such a thing in a very Picassoesque way.
So, as all the other kids in the class drew their images as you might expect them to, Ethan created his Guernica, expressing his raw feelings on the matter.
And as his proud grandfather, I thought it was brilliant.
Happy Grandparents Day!
The class self portraits, Ethan’s is top rightIsn’t he cute? He had his first baseball game this weekend.Ethan’s GuernicaPicasso’s GuernicaEthan, Cameron, and Christian
Carl E. Christiansen, 94, of Woolford, passed away on Thursday, June 15, 2023 at Mallard Bay Care Center. He was married to the former Florence Rosch. A celebration of life will be held at a later date. (From the Thomas Funeral Home, Cambridge, MD)
It’s been two weeks since my dad passed away. When I was tasked with writing my father’s obituary, I panicked a little. The three lines of information on the funeral home website were begging for some detail. But the whole thing sounded depressing to me. I didn’t feel like writing. So, I did what I do best, I procrastinated.
But during that period of procrastination, I did something else that we all do these days when we don’t know what to do.
I Googled it.
Yes, I Googled how to write an obituary.
And I came upon “How to Write the Perfect Obituary, According to Professional Writers,” an article by Nicole Spector. It included lots of helpful information, but the most important point that stood out to me was this:
“…the fact that in the end, we all become stories. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, sure, but also: words to words.”
I liked that.
“…we all become stories.”
My dad had stories. And over the years I tried the best I could to listen to, remember, and document my dad’s words. Some of those stories I have already shared.
I just needed to write another one.
Right now.
I read another article recently that it was on June 17, 1885, one hundred and twenty-eight years ago, the Statue of Liberty arrived in New York harbor from France. Three hundred and fifty pieces of the statue were packed in two hundred cases. The following year it would be reassembled in its new home on Bedloe’s Island. In 1892 not far from the shadows of the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island was established as America’s immigration processing station, and over the sixty-two years that followed the statue would stand watch over the 12 million immigrants who came to the United States through New York Harbor.
Somewhere on an interior wall hangs the plaque with the now-famous words of American poet Emma Lazarus:
“Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”
One of those tired and poor included eighteen-year-old Boletta Sophie Jansen who arrived from Oslo, Norway on a ship named the Kristianiafjord on April 15, 1916.
Carl Oscar Christiansen also came from Norway but entered the United States a slightly different way, a little less legally. He jumped ship in New York, then traveled west to Norwegian communities in Minnesota and North Dakota. When he returned to the east coast, somewhere in his travels, he met Sophie. Carl and Sophie were married in the Norwegian Seaman’s Church my dad thought was in Hoboken or Bayonne, but the only one I could find a record of was in Brooklyn.
Carl and Sophie would eventually move to Oceanport, New Jersey close to a community of other Norwegians with another Norwegian Seaman’s church on Atlantic Avenue in North Long Branch. They would have four children together: Evelyn, Gerda, Carl, and Theodor.
Carl Edwin Christiansen was born April 11, 1929.
He was raised in the Hillcrest section of Oceanport, New Jersey, a new subdivision where his father bought a few lots and built a couple of houses.
We always joked about Norwegians having hard heads, I don’t know if that was intended to mean “hardheaded” as being stubborn or hardheaded in the literal sense. It didn’t matter in my dad’s case because he proved to be both. My father told the story of a time when he was very young when his sister Gerda was responsible for watching him and somehow Gerda managed to drop him through the cellar window where he said he landed on his head.
Not only that but in addition to being dropped into the cellar, he said during his lifetime he had been hit by a car, fell out of a tree, fell on his head ice skating, and hit by a baseball bat twice.
And later still that hard head would prove to come in very handy as he developed his Parkinson’s and became prone to falling.
Though he grew up in Oceanport, for a brief period, about 3 years, his father moved the family to the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, another Norwegian neighborhood, in the 1930s so he could find work. During that time, they rented the house in Oceanport.
Returning to Oceanport the family lived in the house his father built on Springfield Avenue. He told of being raised in the church (that North Long Branch Seaman’s church) and spent Christmases there and remembered how excited he would get when the Oceanport Hook & Ladder fire truck would come by the house on Christmas Day. He said he would run out of the house and leap the hedge to get the candy from the firemen. He attended Oceanport’s Wolf Hill School and Red Bank High School. At the time Oceanport kids could choose between Long Branch High School and Red Bank High School.
One of his buddies growing up in Oceanport was Bobby Rosch. That turned out to be pretty cool for Carl because Bobby had a little sister named Florence.
Carl was active in Oceanport Boy Scouts as an early member of Troop 58 led by Paul Sommers Sr. In World War II he was a member of the Crop Corps and participated in the war effort working on a farm growing food for the troops.
He once told me that at one time he was the strongest kid in Oceanport. I think it was his school bus driver that got him interested in lifting weights. He could arm wrestle, climb a brass fire pole without using his feet, drive a nail with one swing and in the Boy Scouts, he said they called him “One Chop Moe.” He couldn’t remember where the nickname Moe came from.
He worked as a pin boy at the bowling alley in Long Branch and at Wood’s Boat Works and then was drafted into the Army. He enjoyed his time in the Army.
It was while he was in the Army, in 1952, that he married Florence, and they had their first child Patricia (Patty).
My dad always said he had been lucky in life and in his work. My mom thought after the army he went back to work at Woods Boat Works for a bit and then to Bendix as a drill press operator working the evening shift. In his off hours, he had a floor sanding business, a trade he learned from his father. He became a union carpenter in the early ’60s and then to the job he would retire from at the Wolf Hill School as their custodian extraordinaire. But even after he retired, he wasn’t finished working because when he moved away from Oceanport to Woolford on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, he became a waterman and crabbed commercially for eleven years.
It was during the time of shift work at Bendix that he started building his house on Willow Court. He and Florence along with their now three kids, Patty, Carl (Chrissie), and Curtis were living in the rented two-bedroom bungalow next to the property he would build his house on. With the assistance of his wife Flo, his father, his brother Ted, and his many friends skilled in various trades, he built the house he would raise his family in for the next 30 years.
Most all those friends like my father, were Oceanport Hook & Ladder volunteer firemen so when the fire whistle blew all the helpers would drop their tools in place and run the block and a half to the firehouse and climb on the waiting fire trucks.
Carl joined the fire company in 1955. He served in almost all capacities including Chief. He was also a volunteer member of the Oceanport First Aid Squad and once was on the crew of the ambulance that delivered a baby. Carl was very active in both organizations until the time he left Oceanport.
He finished building his house and in 1961 his fourth child, Gary was born.
My dad continued his activities with Oceanport Boy Scouting as an adult and in the 1960s started a second Oceanport troop, Troop 178 that was sponsored by the Oceanport Hook & Ladder Fire Company. In the beginning, Troop 178 was mostly made up of neighborhood kids from Willow Court, Arcana Avenue, and Trinity Place. In that capacity, he mentored many young kids as they rose through scouts which included camping and many backpacking trips on the Appalachian Trail.
Another great memory of many local kids in Oceanport was that of my father bringing one of the fire trucks down to the Fort Monmouth Marina and lighting up the ice on Oceanport Creek so that whoever wanted to, mostly him though, could ice skate at night.
Boy Scout camping eventually led to family camping as my dad convinced my mother to try it, first in a tent and eventually in camper trailers and truck campers. That was the way they got to see the country.
My dad would also eventually convince my mother, who can’t swim, to buy a boat, first a little one, then they got bigger and bigger. Then living full time in Woolford, Maryland on the Eastern Shore, his last boat, called “Pop’s Lady” (my mother’s nickname is Lady) was a thirty-three-foot working crab boat. He and his first mate (my mother) would drop their three long trot lines baited with bull’s lips every morning and take their catch to the wholesaler. The first time I introduced my wife to my parents they were sitting under a tree with a big bucket of bull’s lips rebaiting their lines.
As he got older, crabbing commercially became difficult and he sold the boat but continued to do carpentry jobs for the neighbors on Deep Point and their church, the Milton United Methodist Church building their new sign and a free book exchange library that still sits outside the Woolford Store. Skilled in fine woodworking as well, he made furniture too for my mother.
He liked to ride his bike and would frequently make the almost four-mile round trip up to the post office to pick up the mail. When he started to experience an increased incidence of falling while riding his bike his physician suspected something was wrong and in 2016 Carl was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. Yet, in spite of his diagnosis, his hardheadedness made it difficult to tell him he couldn’t do what he used to do and so he would insist on climbing ladders, using tools, and fixing things that he shouldn’t. He liked to show off by doing squats in the doorway while resting his heels on the door sill.
After his ability to maintain balance and walk deteriorated, he spent some time in the hospital and eventually to rehab and long-term care at the Mallard Bay Nursing and Rehab facility in Cambridge. My mother would visit him there almost every day.
On June 15, after nearly twenty months at the facility, he passed away.
The Obituary
Carl Edwin Christiansen, 94, of Woolford, passed away on Thursday, June 15, 2023, at Mallard Bay Nursing and Rehab. He was married to the former Florence Rosch.
Carl was preceded in death by his father Carl Oscar, and his mother Sophie; his sisters Evelyn and Gerda and his brother Theodor; his son Carl Robert; his grandson Donny and his great-grandson Jaden.
Carl is survived by his wife of seventy years, Florence (Flo, Lady), his daughter Patricia (husband John), and his sons Curtis (wife Kim) and Gary (wife Marie), and Carl Robert’s wife Teesha; granddaughters Chelsea, Alexa, Hayley, Savannah, Jenn, and Kelly; grandsons Jason, Johnathon, Reiss, Kyle, and Gavin; great-grandchildren A.J., Devin, Braylen, Jaxson, Emmy, Isla, Elijah, Isiah, Oscar, Anders, Leona, Cameron, Christian, Ethan, and the most recent, Jack.
He was lucky in life.
And we were blessed to be able to share a part of that life.
The son of immigrants, the last of his family of first-generation Americans, he now rests in his new home where the tired are also welcomed and he can once again breathe freely.
At this time there is not a memorial or celebration of life scheduled.
However, I would encourage you to take Ms. Spector’s advice and if you feel moved, share a story and post it, tag his Facebook page, or forward it to me and I will post it.
And maybe enjoy a Manhattan while you are writing.
Postscript:
We would like to thank the staff at the Mallard Bay Nursing and Rehab for their care during Carl’s stay, as well as the many residents who supported my father and became our friends too.
Carl E. “Moe” ChristiansenAppalachian Trail“One Chop Moe”Flo and Carl at Springfield Ave houseEarly Troop 178 photo, Larry on the right was this only kid not from the neighborhood.Wolf Hill SchoolCarl and ChrissieCurtis, Chrissie, Patty, and Gary on the front lawn of the house he built. The bungalow in the background.
Pop’s LadyThis is What an Amazing Father in Law looks likePop and his LadyMy Pop the Waterman
This weekend, Kim was up visiting her mom, so after a morning work meeting on Saturday, I did a quick trip up to New Jersey to help with some family business.
A New Jersey Turnaround so to speak.
The nagging song in my head the last couple of weeks has been Las Vegas Turnaround by Hall and Oates.
Las Vegas Turnaround was on the album Abandoned Luncheonette released in November of 1973.
I wasn’t a really big Hall and Oates fan back then in that I don’t think I ever bought any of their music and besides, you could hear plenty of it on the radio.
But I remember the first time I heard this song.
To my parents, it was known as Hi-Henry’s. Then for a little while, the Cat’s Meow and I am told, JM’s River Edge. Then for many years and up until recently, it had been the Casa Comida Restaurant.
In my life experience, however, in the early to mid-1970’s, it will always be remembered as Barry’s.
Crossing over one of the two bridges that connected Oceanport with Long Branch, the Branchport Bridge, the old building, and the prominent sign always greeted you on your right. I remember that sign growing up, in whatever iteration it was at the time.
The last couple of years, other than two day trips, once for my brother Carl’s memorial service and once for my Aunt Joan’s funeral, I hadn’t been back to New Jersey. In fact, the last time I spent a night there was the night before my brother passed away.
But in late July Kim and I had the opportunity to go back up to celebrate my sister’s 70 th birthday and visit an old friend, Monmouth Park, on Haskell Stakes day. It was a nice weekend and it was nice to be back.
And then yesterday, arriving late in the afternoon, I made the nostalgic trip over the Branchport bridge with the building that was Barry’s in my teenage years, now empty and for sale on the right as I left Oceanport. Then I made the left on Atlantic Avenue to head to the ocean to visit another place that had significance in my life growing up, the North Long Branch beaches.
In 1973, the legal age to be served alcohol in New Jersey was eighteen. Even though I didn’t turn eighteen until June of 1974, that didn’t keep me from being one of the regulars at Barry’s. Some long hair, an early attempt at growing some facial hair, my brother’s draft card, and a good friend who was already eighteen who worked there, and I was good to go.
I even remember nights we closed the joint and ended up sitting at a table having a beer with the owner, Barry himself.
Barry’s always had good live music. Tim McLoone, of McLoone’s restaurant fame, played there regularly early in his career. He is somewhat of a legend along the section of the Jersey shore where I am from but with a restaurant now at the National Harbor he is known in the Washington DC area as well.
Another band whose name escapes me would let me join them and play harmonica occasionally. That sometimes went well and other times did not.
And then there was my favorite band, Guildersleeve (I think that is how it was spelled). A versatile band with a female and a male lead singer. There were a couple of songs, however, during their sets, when the bass player would sing. One was Drive my Car by the Beatles. The other was Las Vegas Turnaround.
I guess going back to Oceanport after a couple of years, spending some time in the picnic area of Monmouth Park on Haskell Day, and having that song playing over and over in my head recently has made these last few weeks a bit nostalgic for me.
It was about this time of the year 44 years ago that I was getting prepared to leave Oceanport. I remember at the time friends telling me I would be back in three months, and that I would never be able to leave Oceanport. And though that first year I probably spent more of my weekends in Oceanport than I did away from Oceanport, I never did go back there to live.
But hey, who says you can’t go back?
Who says you can’t go home?
Somebody from Jersey maybe?
But it’s alright.
Yeah, it’s alright.
Unlike Bon Jovi though, I am still waiting to crash into my pot of gold.
But it’s alright.
In fact, it’s good.
The Branchport bridge with “Barry’s” in the backgroundNorth Long Branch
I got a reminder that three years ago on another July 13th I posted a photo of my feet, next to the pool I had just opened and the palm tree I had recently planted. Feet FaddishI called it. Then in September of 2021 I returned to my lawn chair with Feet Faddish Two.
Once again it’s the 13th of July and since it was hot and I was tired from working outside, I thought I would stop for the day, and revisit my feet, my pool, and my palm tree once more.
So I inflated my pool, and positioned my lawn chair so that my feet would rest “under” one of my palm trees. My palm trees are growing but I had a scare in April when we had an unexpected cold snap. My palm trees are still young so I wrap them in bubble wrap to protect them from the cold in the winter. I made the mistake of unwrapping them a little early this year and I thought I had lost a number of trees. Though most have come back, one didn’t make it and a couple more are struggling.
If you look close you can see on the other side of my pool is my Par One golf course green so the pool can double as a water hazard.
My sister-in-law Teesha has recently made the decision to retire to the somewhat mythically sounding place called Margaritaville, in South Carolina. I am happy for her. With my brother Carl now gone it has to be hard to remain in that house.
The Fourth of July week was pretty cool. Kim and I got to hang out with all the local family on the fourth. Later in the week we took Cameron out to the Eastern Shore to see my dad who he hadn’t seen in a while and spend some time fishing and crabbing. My California brother Gary was on the east coast with my sister in law Marie so we got to hang out a little.
Sunday morning I got a call from my old friend Donny R. We grew up together, spending time in school, the Boy Scouts, and Oceanport Hook and Ladder. Donny was a police officer in Oceanport and is now retired in upstate New York. His birthday is close to mine in June so I wished him a late happy birthday. Before I left New Jersey, we would often throw ourselves a combined birthday party in his backyard.
It was nice to hear from him. He told me he lives about 20 miles from Saratoga Racecourse and I told him that visiting Saratoga was on my bucket list so he said we were welcome anytime.
Though it was very nice to hear from him, when you are my age, phone calls from old friends from home often come with some bad news too. In the case of Donny’s phone call, it came with lots of bad news, the passing of three friends I knew from Oceanport.
Karen S. was the daughter of two of my mom and dad’s best friends so we saw a lot of each other growing up though she was a bit younger. And she ultimately married another friend of mine from Oceanport.
Larry Y. was another Oceanport guy and member of the Oceanport Hook and Ladder.
Kevin A. was an Oceanport guy who was also a member of Oceanport Hook and Ladder. Like Donny, Kevin was also a police officer in Oceanport. My favorite Kevin story is the night he found me and my buddy Joe (who I have written about a number of times before) after a couple of beers attempting to get Joe on the back of my motorcycle so I could take him home. Instead, Kevin nicely suggested we put Joe in the Police car and he followed me on my motorcycle first to Joe’s address to drop him off and then to my house where I waved him thanks and went safely to bed.
That was the mid 70’s. It probably wouldn’t happen that way now, and probably shouldn’t.
In less than a week we will acknowledge another year of our Donny being gone, this year will make twenty years believe it or not. His accident occurred July 19, 2002.
I have heard two messages discussing fear in the last week both originating from a similar part of our world on the Eastern Shore. One from our buddy Bill Ortt in Easton, and one in the Harriet Tubman story. Harriet’s birthplace was just a few miles from my parent’s house in Dorchester County.
I must admit Harriet has become my new Sheroe in recent days and I have been trying to learn as much as I can about her. Maybe that is another story for another day.
Trusting the information Kim received from the policeman she spoke with on the phone, Donny experienced no pain. But I have always been troubled by the concern of whether he experienced fear.
We know Savannah experienced fear that day and is still working to sort that out.
Bill Ortt’s message included quotes from Zig Ziglar, an author and motivational speaker who died in 2012.
Rev. Ortt explained that Zig would propose you could look at fear two ways:
One is FEAR meaning “Fear Everything and Run.”
The other is FEAR meaning “Face Everything and Rise.”
In Harriet’s story from the movie anyway, she is helped by a “conductor” on the Underground Railroad, Reverend Green who before she left on her first journey to freedom would advise her that “fear is our enemy. Trust in God. The North Star will guide you, follow the North Star…”
It’s a tough challenge but facing our fears does allow us to learn and grow.
And, trusting in God.
It worked for Harriet.
I know our Donny trusted in God, and that helps to mitigate the sorrow.
I don’t fear the day God calls me. And like my wise friend Donny R. said, every day we wake up and get out of bed is another birthday and should be celebrated.
It’s not that I don’t get scared. Like those times Kim is almost home from visiting her mother and the house is a wreck. But that is a different kind of fear.
Listen to Rev. Green and Father Bill.
Fear is your enemy. Trust in God. Let the stars guide you. And if you can’t see the stars follow the river.
Face your fears and rise up.
And as I remember the events of July 13, 2019:
“Cameron told me this morning that when I am not alive anymore, he wants my truck.
That caught me off guard a little but hey you never know.
You never know what God’s plan is.
So today, I think I will just sit by the pool, next to my little palm tree, and look at my feet.
The garage will be there tomorrow.
Me, and days like this, may not.”
Today was a day for me to take a little break.
And though I am really happy for my sister-in-law and her move to the mythical place called Margaritaville, I am sure that comes with some fears.
For now, me, with my little pool, my little palm trees, my banana trees, my one-hole golf course, I have all the amenities I need to rest my feet in my mythical place I can call “Box Wine Ville” if I want.
Fear will be there tomorrow, me, and days like this may not.
Trust in God, He will guide you.
Postscript:
Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families of Karen, Larry, and Kevin.
