Roger Norman

The year was 1941, and except for the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, it was a pretty good year. That was the year that many of the Pearl River Class of 1959 were born. I came into this world on July 9. Of course, I don't remember that particular day except when it rolls around each year and we celebrate another birthday. As of now in 2017, I have celebrated that day 76 times. Where oh where has that time gone.

My parents brought me home to my new address on John Street, just two blocks south of the Pearl River School. This is where I grew up and had many a good time. On our block, we had quite a few kids all about the same age. There was Mary Jane Friedel, Arlene Larsen, Richard Gruel, Richard Paska, Dave Manchetti, Bill Kinley and Christina Naugle to name a few.

One of my first memories was getting married to the little girl across the street. Her name was Mary Jane. I believe I was 4 and she was 3. Our sisters and their girlfriends wanted to have a wedding and poor Mary Jane and I were dragged into the ceremony. My sister June and Mary Jane's sister Jeanne, plus Nancy Buckley and Peggy Quog performed the honors in our back yard. They even had flowers and a photographer (at least one picture). These girls were all about five years older than us and tended to push us little kids around.

Another memory of our back yard was the chicken coop. My family raised chickens and we would go collect eggs for breakfast. I'm sure at some time we used to eat the chickens, but they never allowed me to see how that process worked. (Thanks for small favors). Also, an early memory was the milkman delivering milk to the front porch. We would put out the empty bottles the night before and he would bring full ones the next morning. In the winter, you had to get out on the porch real early; otherwise the milk would freeze and frozen cream would push the cap off and form what looked like a volcano coming out of the bottle. There also was the man on the 3-wheel bike who would ride down the street selling and sharpening knives. You could hear him ringing his bell and if you needed knives sharpened you would take them out to be sharpened. Then, later on, we used to get soda delivered by the soda and beer man. I guess you could say, "Dems Was De Good Old Days."

I remember playing many hours in the back yard. We had a big back yard that was about 200 feet deep. It was big enough for us to play baseball, kickball and football. We would even set up a badminton court some of the time. But when it got too hot we would go to our front porch which always seemed to have a pleasant breeze and shade and play games like monopoly, scrabble and card games. Our first swimming pool (if you could call it that) was an old cement mixing trough. It was about 6 feet long, 3 feet wide and a foot deep. Just enough to lay down in and get wet. Years later, we got a 12 foot above ground pool and then even later we moved up to an 18-foot pool. By the time we got the 12-foot pool, the chickens were all gone so we put the pool where the chicken fenced in area had been located.

Behind our property was an area we called the swamp. It was just a swampy area of trees and underbrush. But we, the neighborhood kids, made trails and forts back there. It was a good hideout area if you were trying to avoid someone. After I graduated from high school, a real estate guy named Fred Spreen bought the land, ran pipe down the middle to drain the swamp, put in a street (aptly named Spreen Drive) and then built houses on each side of the street. That really upset my folks, because for years they just had woods behind us and now houses were being built. But I guess that's what they called progress back then.

One of my earliest recollections of School in Pearl River was Kindergarten. It was show and tell day, so I brought my "wife" Mary Jane to school to show her off. She was 4 and didn't realize what was going on. Other than that, the rest of my school years are a blur. (Not really). I really enjoyed my years at PR.

In 3rd grade, my friend Richard Gruel talked me into going to try out for the chorus. Well as fate would have it, I made the chorus and Richard didn't. But we remained good friends until his family moved out in 5th or 6th grade. Richard was also the first family on the block who had a television and every Saturday I would go to his house to watch the Lone Ranger. It took us another year before we got our BIG 12 inch RCA.

My early memories of downtown Pearl River, were going shopping with my mother at Theises and Browers department stores and Angelo the barber on Main street. My father worked for the First National Bank, so he was downtown all the time. I don't remember where we grocery shopped until the Grand Union store opened. That was really something. All those canned goods would slide into place when you pulled one out. That was quite an awakening for sleepy Pearl River. Most of the town was concentrated on Main Street, Central Avenue and William Street. All just a block from the School. At that time, the school housed Kindergarten through 12th grade. As the town was growing new elementary schools were being built and slowly the elementary classes were moved out of the building and into their new schools. The old building became known as Pearl River High School. Our class seemed to stay ahead of the growth and we remained part of the school all the way through graduation.

My family lived in Pearl River almost all their lives. In fact, my Mother was born in the house on John Street and lived her entire life in that house until she passed away in 1984. My Father was born in New York City but his family moved to Pearl River when he was very young. They built a house on Crooked Hill Road which is where he lived until marrying my Mother. At that point, they moved into the house on John street. Some years later they bought the house from my Grandmother and she continued to live with them. Both my parents graduated from Pearl River High School as well as all their siblings.

My Dad had a brother and a sister and my mom had two brothers and a sister. My Father graduated from the old school on the south side of Franklin Avenue. I believe that building is still standing and is now an apartment building. He Graduated in 1922, I believe, and was a member of the Basketball team that won the county title that year. My mother graduated in 1929 and was one of the first classes to graduate from the new school. My mom was a stay at home Mom as were a lot of wives back then. My Dad graduated from the School of Banking at Rutgers and worked for the First National Bank of Pearl River.

As I was growing up, we always took a 2-week family vacation in August. When I was really little, we used to go camping at Lake George in a tent with cots. At least that's what I was told, but I really don't remember very much. Then when I was around 5 or 6, we used to vacation on Long Island with my Father's Sister and Husband. We did that for about three years until they divorced. After that, my Mother's brother said we could use his cabin on a lake in Vermont for our vacations. At least for the next ten years or so, that is where we spent every vacation. My sister and I loved it because we could swim, boat, hike and take exciting trips to local attractions in Vermont, Lake Champlain and Upstate New York. My Father also loved it because he could get back to nature and avoid the hustle and bustle of the Bank.

Then there was my Mother. She hated going there and used to complain that it really wasn't a vacation. She still had all her wifely chores to do every day. Cooking, cleaning and using the OUTHOUSE. Eventually my Uncle put in an indoor potty, so that helped a little. She did enjoy swimming in the lake, our nightly walks to get water from a nearby spring and the occasional road trips to some of the surrounding places. But it was pretty primitive and I for one enjoyed Vermont a lot.

Back in Pearl River, life was going on. I enjoyed school especially at year end when we would run out of the building shouting "NO MORE PENCILS, NO MORE BOOKS, NO MORE TEACHER'S DIRTY LOOKS". It was nice being with the same group of kids that we grew up with all through school. New kids would move into town and some old ones would move on when their parents had to move. But no matter what, we all bonded pretty well and to this day, we still do at our many reunions.

In school, I participated in sports, clubs and chorus. In High School, I did soccer, bowling and baseball which kept me pretty busy all school year. Because I lived so close to school, I never had to eat in the cafeteria. I used to go home for lunch every day. I remember trying to eat in the cafeteria one time and decided that that wasn't for me. Don't remember what lunch was like that day, but I never did it again.

Besides summer vacation, the other time of year I really enjoyed was winter. I couldn't wait for it to get cold. There was a pond between the end of John Street and Gilbert Avenue. It was called Gardner's pond. You had to follow a trail through the woods at the end of John Street to get to the pond. As soon as it froze over, many kids would congregate there and ice skate. We used to play a lot of hockey and just race around. Across the street from my house was Park Avenue and it had a great hill for sleigh riding. When the road department would come by and plow the streets and spread cinders (yes, they used coal cinders on the streets - didn't use salt back then) we kids would hurry out with our shovels and shovel all the cinders off the hill so that we could continue to sled. Sometimes we even had to throw snow back onto the street to cover up where the cinders were. But we would wait till the plows were gone so we wouldn't get caught.

In junior high (same building as elementary and High School in which I spent all 13 years), I remember going for 10 weeks of Art, Shop, Home Economics, and Music. I really enjoyed all those classes because you could make things, all except music. But I was in Chorus from 3rd grade on so it was OK. We made shop aprons, copper ashtrays, birdhouses and painted pictures.

Then it was onto High School, which was basically the 3rd floor of the building. The first floor was Kindergarten and the gym. The second floor was pretty much elementary, Junior High and the auditorium and 3rd was High School. I always looked forward to the days when we would view film strips that went along with what we were learning at that point. Film strips were 5 or 6 pictures of whatever we were studying at that time. They were projected onto a screen in the front of the class and we would talk about the subject matter. It was enjoyable because it usually took up the whole class. Not like today where everything is on a computer or from the internet. In many cases, we had to use our ingenuity to understand what the picture was telling us.

Most subjects in school were enjoyable. Especially Math and Science classes. English classes, I remember referring to them as my foreign language. I did OK in English, but really didn't care for it. That's probably why I never took a foreign language, although I did take one day of French. After that one day, I went to the guidance counselor and opted out and took typing instead. And as it turned out, I managed to use typing later in life when computers made their way into our lives.

I never got to France so, dropping out of French class wasn't the worst decision I made in High School. One good decision was enrolling in Drivers Ed. Between Mr. Stanley and Mr. Bowden, they instilled good driving skills in us. I vividly remember in Drivers Ed, keeping track of how many times we would stall out the stick shift car. It was hard learning how to master using the clutch especially waiting at the red light on Central Avenue at Main street when coming up the hill from the railroad tracks. Many a stall out happened at that intersection by all of us in the training class.

In the summer, starting in my Sophomore year, I started working to make some money. My first job was at Mel's Army Navy Store on William Street. I think my mother wanted me out of the house and she used to shop at Mel's and she got me the job there. I was the stock boy and occasionally would help a customer if Mel was busy with someone else. Then in my Junior year, I started working at Food Fair on Middletown Road. I did that for my Junior and Senior years and during my first year of college. I worked the cash registers, stocked shelves along with working the produce aisle. On one auspicious occasion, I was hanging sale banners in the front windows when the guys said let's go to lunch. So, I stopped hanging them and left for lunch. The sale Item that day was Grapes priced at 49 cents. When we came back from lunch I looked at the signs and it said "RAPES 49 cents". It appeared I left before putting up the letter "G". All the guys got a kick out of it but Gus, the boss, wasn't too happy. Needless to say, I quickly put up the letter "G".

Ted McElroy also worked there and I think he was the one that got me the summer job. He was also a part-timer but worked all through the year. We met sometime in elementary school. His parents moved into Pearl River when he was in second grade. They lived on South Middletown Road but he made a shortcut to get to school through the woods down to John Street and then up past my house. So sometime in elementary school, we became friends. And to this day we still get together. In fact, I was his Best Man when he married Diana and he was my Best Man when I married Beverly.

After graduating in 1959, I went on to college at Alfred Tech in Alfred New York. It is now part of the State University of New York (SUNY). There I studied Mechanical Technology and graduated in 1961 with an Associates in Applied Science degree. After college, I went to work for the Ford Motor Company in Mahwah, N.J. I hired in with the promise of working my way into their Plant Layout and Design Department. But first I had to do some time on the assembly line to learn about the plant. After nine months on the line and no move within sight, I left and went to work at Plastic Craft Products in West Nyack. There I worked as an estimator and part-time sales person. During my time there, Uncle Sam came calling and I got drafted into the Army. My friend Bob Prigge, whom I grew up with from Kindergarten on, got drafted too, so we went into the Army together. We were together at Fort Jackson, S.C. through basic training and then we got separated. He went on to Fort Lewis in the state of Washington and I stayed in Fort Jackson. After my advanced training, I was sent to Fort Chaffee, AR. I was there for about 5 months then got shipped to Fort Sill, OK. It's there where I met my future wife Beverly. That's a story in itself. But I might as well tell it here.

One afternoon, Frank, a guy in our barracks came in and said his girlfriend from Chicago had just come into town. She and her two sisters and a friend were on vacation in Colorado, and decided to come to Fort Sill to surprise Frank. Well, he came into the barracks and said his girl and 3 other blonds were there and who would like to go out for a drink. At this point I had a car with me and I said I'll go. So, we all met in this little dive in downtown Lawton called the Gallery. It was Frank, his girlfriend, Pat, her two sisters, Beverly and two other guys from the barracks. As we were sitting around the table talking I reached for my beer and took a big swig. But it wasn't beer at all. It was Root Beer. I had been talking across the table to Dorothy, (Pat's younger sister) and no one was talking to Beverly. I think she switched the glasses, but to this day won't admit it. We all had a big laugh about me almost choking on Root Beer. But come to find out when I started talking with Bev, she worked for the New York Daily News' Western Advertising office in Chicago. That started us talking about New York and stuff in general. Well, the girls stayed one more day before heading back to Chicago. We decided to take in the sights of Oklahoma (not much to see) the next day. Bev jumped in my car and the other girls all went with Frank in Marilyn's car. She said she would send me one of the papers and she lived up to her promise. And that started a long line of letter writing. During our Christmas leave, I drove Frank to his home in Oak Park, Illinois and went out on a date with Beverly. I then drove home to Pearl River and on my way back, I stopped and picked up Frank and also got to see Bev again. That started a beautiful relationship.