There are places I remember

This was the place: Shavertown, PA

I had a paper route starting in 5th grade. I only delivered about 22 papers six days a week, but they were to houses fairly well spread apart. After school, it would take me about an hour and a half to finish, with another 15-minute walk home.

Unless I stopped at McCrory's, which was a fairly common occurrence. This 5&10 was at the end of a shopping center that was a centerpiece of my family's life for around ten years. At one end there was an Acme, where we got the majority of our groceries. I still remember the average tally for the week coming to around $20, an astronomical figure in my head.

But it was McCrory's and their small but hugely influential record department that is still with me. They also had a soda fountain, where in the summertime heat I might stop for a 10-cent orangeade after my paper route. That dime though put a large dent in my 44-cents-a-day take home pay from my route (2 cents a paper).

Rather I tried hard to save my money for important purchases, such as a new baseball glove that was the first thing I ever really earned with my own money. And as important as that was, it probably didn't rate as highly as the 45s I bought at that record counter.

Shortly before I had my paper route, my mother gave me the 69 cents at McCrorys so that I could come home with this:

How I wish I still had the picture sleeve (I do, however, still have the record itself). This record was life-altering in so many ways. I played both sides nonstop for weeks. I stared at that photo for hours. I sang "I Saw Her Standing There," to my parents from the back seat on the way to the Acme.

Soon thereafter I was able to buy my records with my money -- the real start of my record addiction. For the next 5 years or so, I bought dozens of 45s there, and even a couple of albums -- at $2.99 they were harder to save up for.

One day, a new Beatles 45 appeared in the rack behind the register, and I had to have it. There was no clerk around, and I leaned, leaned, leaned over the counter to grab it. Just as the counter started to tilt over, the clerk came to the rescue, telling me to be patient.

How could I be patient in the face of this:

I still do have this sleeve, but the record is missing. If I only knew then what I know now.

McCrory's is no longer there, and so many other things from that time are also gone: my parents, many relatives, and even some friends. All now just memories.

But today, on the 52nd anniversary of The Beatles first appearing on the Ed Sullivan Show, I am reminded how one unassuming department store held so many treasures that also led to memories that will also never go away.

I'm sorry sir, no one by that name lives here any more

When I was young, I would spend time looking at my grandmother's photo album, which was filled with faded and torn pictures, some from the very beginning of the the 20th century.

Many of those photos were taken closer in time to when I was viewing them than the one at the right is to now.

Translation: Time moves on rapidly.

So, to anyone who reads this, specifically Jack and Ruby in the future, here is more information than anyone will probably ever need or want to know about one family's home.

61 Grace Ave, Shavertown, PA, circa 1960

• That's my brother's bike leaning against the house -- there was a lattice gate that lifted up where the push mower was kept under the screened-in porch.
• That's the small patio where my dad would sometimes grill hamburgers and hot dogs. 
• That's our 1956 Ford (I think) at the far right.
• That's the clothesline where my mom (and sometimes my dad) hung out all of our laundry to dry -- we had no dryer.
• That's the back yard where I spent hours and hours hitting a baseball, kicking a football, playing catch with my dad, and having lunchtime picnics under whatever kind of tree that was with my mom.
• That's the window to our one and only bathroom upstairs to the left.
• That's my parent's bedroom window at the upper right
• That's where the living room housed our black-and-white Philco. 
• That's the same living room that had a fireplace that was not often used for warmth, but more often for popping popcorn and Santa's visits. Except that night when I heard screaming downstairs after I had gone to bed; I ran down the stairs to see my mom standing on a chair and my dad chasing a bat with a broom -- said bat supposedly entered the room down the chimney.
• That's the same house I where I first heard rock and roll, and soul, and country, and gospel -- much of it through the sounds of brother's record collection.
• That's the house with the kitchen that always had a radio playing -- my mom listening to WILK and Rag Mop" by the Mills Brothers, and my brother's transistor forever turned to WARM, the Mighty 590.
• That's where I first saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan.
• That's where I was shielded from the turbulence of the times -- Vietnam and the Civil Rights Era.
• That's where my parents sent my brother off to college -- the first member of my extended families to do so.
• That's where, starting in 5th grade, I walked to and from Shavertown Elementary, fitting my paper route in right after school.
• That's the house with very few books, save for a couple of Reader's Digest Condensed Books and a Funk &Wagnall's encyclopedia, which was bought in weekly installments from the local Acme Market.
• That's the house we moved from 3/4 of the way through 6th grade,
• That's the house that really felt like a home, and that sure is a hard feeling to replicate.

Bones nearly ripped from my back

I wouldn’t necessarily say the towns where I grew up in Northeastern/Central PA were racist per se, but some racial attitudes there were disturbing, to say the least.

For the most part, the only minorities most of these folks, including me and my family, came in contact with were on television.

Lily-white, Christian, all down the line, mostly unaware of the ways of other races, religions, etc.

Which came to light one day in third grade. A couple of weeks before Christmas, Carol Breakstone, who sat across from me, suddenly said, “we don't have Christmas at my house. I don’t believe in Jesus.”

WHAT???? I had never heard anything like this before. I quickly did a Horshack (hand up, “ooh, ooh!”) interrupting the teacher to tell her of this scandalous and unheard of claim. The teacher calmly explained that Jewish people (Jewish? I didn’t know she was Jewish. We didn’t know anyone who was Jewish!!) thought and believed different things – to my memory, it was a well-thought out explanation on the spot.

Which was mostly different from some of the things that were routinely said by friends and family growing up, and I must say, I was complicit in some of the commentary.

I am not proud.

The N word in those parts was common, but no one was safe: Jews, Muslims, Native Americans and Blacks, everybody. Attitudes that were passed down through the years, generation after generation.

Distasteful, for sure. Yet still important to remember.

As for me, my world became more and more color blind, due to maturity and the infusion of soul and blues albums my brother kept bringing into the house; you cannot discount the influence this had on me. Because of him and these records, I knew that Arthur Alexander and Smokey Robinson and Little Richard were heroes to MY heroes, The Beatles. That meant something.

Of course, sports played a huge role in my world view as well. Minorities were unheard of in sports when parents grew up, and they became the majority during my childhood. The likes of Walt Frazier, Homer Jones, Ron Johnson, Earl Monroe and Willis Reed loomed large.

Now, many years later, things have changed back in my hometowns, at least somewhat. How do I know this? When visiting just before the 2008 election, I saw a significant number of Obama yard signs. Maybe a minor thing, but this would been unheard of 30 years ago.

My kids may never quite understand how Nelson Mandela, who died this week, changed the world as a whole.

They may also never know just how far they are from the much smaller world their dad grew up in.

I knew I'd moved in a haunted house

Halloween is my least favorite "holiday" of the year. At the risk of sounding like an old grump, to me it has become more of an excuse for gross-outs and adults behaving badly. And my patience for both has mostly disappeared.

It wasn't always this way.

My neighborhood growing up in Shavertown, Pa., had a tradition that I never heard of, before or since. And people I tell today don't believe it, but I remember it well.

As I trudged up and down Mt Airy Road and Pioneer Avenue with my double-enforced Acme shopping bag (no fancy candy-gathering totes from Michaels or Target for us), I knew that I had to be prepared before knocking on anyone's door.

It was expected that each trick-or-treater come equipped with a joke, a song, a riddle, or something. You had to give to get.

My go-to something for at least several years was this riddle, which speaks of my age and wit:

If you were going to die and only had five cents in your pocket, what would you buy?

Wait for it...

A pack of Life Savers.

Laughs all around, and then the candy went in the bag. Lots of candy.

I also vaguely remember doing a song and maybe another joke in previous and subsequent years, but the details are long gone.

Just like my enjoyment of this "holiday." Sorry.

Open to pain and crossed by the rain

My grandmother on my dad’s side left me the family photo album after she passed away. It’s been sitting in a box for a few years, and I’ve decided, as this blog is purportedly a testament to what has gone before in my life, to pick some of those that are most representative to showcase for my stated purpose of “Farther On.”

Given how mementos if not memories have disappeared from the combined Lockard/Warburton household, this is priceless stuff to me, and it is well past time to get it documented. So this is the first in a series that I will be sprinkling into my posts.

While we obviously had a camera in our family, there are precious few photos of my immediate family. This is the only known photo of the four Lockards as a unit from Grace Ave. in Shavertown, Pa. There are several others that contain all of us, but other family members have wandered into the frames.

This was taken in front of my paternal grandparents farmhouse in Huntersville, Pa. I imagine my grandmother (Orpha, the one who had the photo album) took the photo, and probably snapped it with a Kodak Instamatic. She must have literally been standing in the road when the photo was taken, as the front door of the house was only about 10-12 feet from the winding road that was Route 87.

By this time, my grandfather (Pappy, we called him), would be retired from farming and walking with two canes, severely crippled from arthritis. That is mostly how I remember him, moving about in such a labored manner from the kitchen through a storage room to wait on customers in a general store that was attached to their home. Pictures of that are forthcoming.

This photo finds us in summer with open upstairs bedroom windows. It could be stifling in the big old place as circulating air was hard to come by. The gutters need attention and the house looks like it needs a paint job as well; funny, in my memories the Lockard homestead at the corner of Dutchtown Road is sparkling, up-to-date and ready for the long haul. Just the way I thought of my family at the time of this photo.

My dad looks distressed about something (which was mostly unlike him then) and my mom is hidden, which is not surprising given her aversion to the camera. I am about four, which makes my brother around 14. And indeed, this is my family’s regular summer attire: No shorts (except me) and my mom in a dress.

In about 10 years or so, this unit would be blown up, and that look on my dad’s face would be very common. My mom would be gone, my brother would live 1200 miles away in Florida, and my dad and I would be muddling through on our own.