| Author | Message | ||
     extuscan Citizen Username: Extuscan Post Number: 403 Registered: 6-2001 |
I’m writing this for whoever lives at 546 Summit Ave. This is the small house on the right corner of Summit and Midland Blvd. My parents lived there from 1976 until 1990-something. They paid $44,000 for it. We were only the third owners of the house. We don’t know the first, but the second were the Durrs. Mr. Durr worked for Thomas Edison as an engineer, and later was a ranger at the museum. He was the last living person to have known Thomas Edison… so he claimed. He couldn’t even walk up the stairs any more so they had to sell the house which they owned since the 50’s or 60’s With only two owners it was very original. One bathroom was remodeled at some point, but everything else was original. Even the furnace was the original coal burning furnace with adaptations so make it burn oil. I remember it being caked with white hard insulation. It was almost a cement, and probably asbestos. It was kept alive by the Zwiggards who told us there was no reason to ever replace it. There was one wall left of the coal bin under the stairs. We still have to coal shovel the Durr’s left behind. They left behind a few other things we still use, including a fireplace poker and a corn wisk. There was a small door that went into a crawl space under the den, but I never went in. In the other corner of the basement there was a wooden-walled bathroom, usually littered with muscle building magazines. That would be because my dad had his weight bench down there. My mom had her sewing machine in another corner. My parents used that basement. My space was under the stairs, along that wall from the coal bin. My granddad’s footlocker from WWII was my desk and that’s were I played the most. The whole basement was painted light yellow and the floor was battleship grey. There was one of those “fake digital” clocks in the window over the sewing machine… This was one of those types with all the numbers on little clackety panels that rotates and flopped down to show the time. One day it buzzed and all the little panels fell off. The Raggety Ann doll which sat next to it remained stoic faced. Upstairs from the basement was a mud room. We had a springer spaniel who gouged the backdoor and chewed off the rubber moulding around the baseboard. He tore up that little room. Later he bit my hand and wouldn’t let go. That very day we got a golden retriever. The kitchen was gutted out by my parents in 1976, two years before I was born. The remodel was done by Sears Roebuck. I remember the fake wood paneling! It was tiny. I’m sure its long gone! The rest of the house was very pretty. The dining room had a corner cupboard that was supposed to light up. I remember my dad setting a small fire trying to get the lights to work. It remained dim for the rest of the time we lived there. We had a gold shag carpet and the walls were yellow. In the mid 1970’s, with the spirit of the bincentennial, everyone was interested in “early american” furniture. My mother began to accumulate a Hitchcock dining room set piecemeal through sales and classified ads. The living room had a fireplace with bookshelves on either side. A long time ago, Pathmark used to sell the Funk and Wagnalls Encyclopedia, volume by volume, week by week. The trick was that Volume One was only a penny, the second one was like three bucks, and the rest were whatever they were. We had a full set of encyclopedia volumes from Pathmark on the shelves there in the living room. Pathmark still did this when I was in high school and I went and bought ten copies of Volume One for a dime and gave them to friends as gag gifts. Its kinda like a crazy “relative” of my dad who would buy expensive things on installment, make the first payment, and give you the gift and the payment book. He gave my dad a $45 transistor radio in 1962, and gave my grandparents the first color TV on their block. He also gave them the payment book. This is when my dad made $2 a week. But back to the house… The living room used to have two doorways into the den. One was blocked up with a bookcase when the den was “updated” at some point in the 50’s with knotty pine paneling and recessed radiators. In the living room we had an electric blue velvet couch and two old chairs my grandparents no longer wanted. The two upholstered arm chairs could be put front to front making a big fort that you could sit in… walled off by the armrests. The upstairs was pretty plain. There used to be a small porch over the back door and the roof of this was right under the second floor window at the top of the stairs. Our cat would frequently go out on the roof. This house didn’t have storm windows like most houses do now where the glass slides up and down. This house had old-fashioned glass panels and screened panels and you had to change them in the spring and fall. They were hung from the top and then you were supposed to hook them on the bottom into little eyelets (like a privy latch). Well the eyelets were always gunked in paint so the screens just hung there… and the cat could push right out under it and go on the roof. Then she’d meow and we’d let her back in. My brother and I shared a room at the front of the house. It had a bump in the wall for pipes but was otherwise square. There were two wall sconces. The room was painted light blue with white trim. We had a big oval rope-rug and twin beds from Sears. Our grandparents bought us the bedroom set. My parents used my mothers bedroom set that she had gotten sometime in middle school or high school plus an old dresser she inherited later. My sisters room had some sort of wallpaper from of bears having a picnic. It was “French” wallpaper and wasn’t pre-pasted. I remember my parents having such trouble with that wallpaper. There used to be a wallpaper store that my parents went to that was across the street from Edison Labs in West Orange. Kind of ironic that we bought wallpaper at the same place where the house’s original owner worked. Anyway, I remember that they had a display showing that they could turn any wallpaper into a window shade. It just happened to be the same wallpaper we had in our hallway. Can you imagine having your window shades made so that when you close them they look like the wallpaper? That really was a long time ago. Not much left inside the house to mention… it was a tiny old house. The lot was small too, and ofcourse, unchanged over the years. I mentioned the hang-on storm windows, but this house also still had it “barn door” style garage doors. The had a big X on them, big heavy black hinges and some sort of mechanism on that held the door open in a breeze. These doors were very tall so there was a rope to pull the catch that held the door open. The garage had a door and a small window with a flower box. My mom had a garden along the length of the garage where she grew vegetables. The driveway was never paved, just gravel. There were lots of massive pine trees. Two were perfectly spaced for a hammock, and were thus used. There was a hedge along the driveway between us and the neighbors. It was actually the neighbor’s hedge. The neighbors didn’t mind that my brother attacked the hedge with a hacksaw on a regular basis. The neighbors were the elderly Mrs. King and her son Bob. The Kings owned that house from new. Mr. King died before we moved in. The only thing left for Mrs. King was her son Bob… and she took care of him. Bob was an engineer, and my mother basically says he’d come home, eat dinner, and go to bed. Bob made a small cherrywood table for Mrs. King in shop class. I can’t remember a lot of Mr. King but I remember my dad and Mr. King pulling down a tree in his yard with a chain and our Impala station wagon. Mr. King died when I was very young. He was about 50. I remember the night either Mrs. King or her caretaker came to our backdoor crying. Bob never married and there wasn’t much else in the way of family. Mrs. King ended up with a caretaker, Mrs. Clark. Before long we didn’t see much of Mrs. King but saw a good deal of Mrs. Clark. She was very nice to us. We’d visit and each get one of those dry Danish old lady cookies out of a tin. We moved to a different house in town and lost contact. We saw in the paper that Mrs. King had died. At the estate sale my mom bought Bob’s table. It was a remarkable little table for a Columbia High School shop project. The top was a solid piece of cherry wood 24” wide. The legs are in the shaker style with a slight taper on the inside edge. The legs and styles were mortised and tenoned. It was all very beautifully done for someone only 16 or 17 years old at the time. The only exception to the elegance is when you turn it over and see that the top is secured with crude “L” brackets. It’s a shame CHS doesn’t offer woodshop any more. But anyway, 546. If you look at the cement patch on the side of the front steps you’ll see a few tiny fingerprints… mine and my brothers, circa 1984. I doubt we left much else in the way of marks on this house. Are the little measurements of our height still on the back of our closet door? We climbed that old dogwood on the side of the house and attacked it with hacksaws, but doubtlessly after our 20 year abscense it has recovered. There used to be more moss than grass under that tree. Most of the yard had no grass because of some towering pine trees. I think two remain… you will note that they are perfectly spaced for a hammock. Try that. The driveway was gravel, which was odd even in the 70’s and 80’s… except the neighbors had a gravel driveway too. My dad had an Old Cutlass Ciera that had a very distinctive noise. The train station is a good three blocks away, but when my dad would start the car the dog knew it. He’d get up, knowing that dad was on his way home. It seems almost impossible that he could have heard that car across many houses and an entire park, but it was a very distinctive noise. We knew dad was home because of the crinkle of the gravel, but the dog knew when he started the car. Mom had an Impala station wagon. It was big, blue, and rusty. Midland Blvd has that funny island (Dog Doo Island we called it) and she’d hit the island with the rear wheel of the Impala sometimes. We were always amused. That island had, next to our house, two columns and then a bench with a little roof. I guess before my time there used to be a sign hanging above the bench that read “Summit Park”. My dad told me that. He grew up about five blocks down the street. It was great living down the street from our Grandparents on my dad’s side. You could bet that in the kitchen grandma was watching “The Price is Right”… you know… back when Bob Barker had brown hair. Grandma decorated her house on green stamps and it showed. My mother was no stranger to green stamps either and just threw out her last green-stamp purchased table lamp this week! But anyway grandmas house was full of clutter. She would leave piles of paperback novels all over the living room. Under the legs of the furniture were always little aluminum squares. I dunno why. Grandpa was, without fail, in the basement, on the couch, with a box of Snyders Pretzels. He had two TVs. One was the one he watched, and the other was just a broken one he used as a stand. There was a cup with pinking shears sitting on a table. Now if you are bored at grandmas pinking shears could be a lot of fun. I remember asking my mother what they were for and her telling me that for anyone but my father’s mother, they were for sewing. Nooot a whole lot of respect there for “your father’s mother” came from my mother. Grandma would give us stuff she didn’t need. She gave us a Crockpot. Mom threw it out that day. Grandma kept cookies… animal crackers in little boxes with a string and mallomars… in the cabinets going down stairs. Grandma said she kept them there for when we visited. My mom says they were definitely there for Grandma and that’s why cookies were two-per-child. One thing we did keep was her porch furniture. My great uncle gave a patio set to my grandparents, used, in the 1960’s… we got it used in the 1980’s, and its still on our back porch. It was the metal kind with big loops and metal 6-petal flowers. The couch had a bad slat and people fall through it. I learned to weld on that couch. My mom still threatens to throw it out like everything else we got from that house on Midland Blvd. When the grandparents moved to Florida instead of renting a moving van, they rented a dumpster, and 30 years of suburban kitsch went to East Rutherford. I guess fate won’t dodge this furniture much longer either. But back to 546! There were huge trees along the midland blvd side of the house. These were some type of tree that would shed its bark. We’d collect it, break it, play with it. I moved out in the second grade… but maybe ten years later at our other Maplewood house I found a pencil box in the garage full of bark from those trees. That was a nice reminder ok enuff | ||
| mammabear Citizen Username: Mammabear Post Number: 160 Registered: 5-2001  |
I know the neighbors at 545 Summit and will pass on your post, okay? | ||
| TomD Citizen Username: Tomd Post Number: 33 Registered: 5-2005  |
I realize this was six months ago--forever on this site--but I just read the local history section. Anyway, I just wanted to say that I thought this was a really sweet post. I hope my two little ones have fond memories of our Maplewood home; we're trying to build those now. Thanks for the post. | ||
| Psychomom Citizen Username: Psychomom Post Number: 212 Registered: 5-2005 |
hey extuscan, When did Mr. Durr die?? My grandmother worked for Thomas Edison and she died around 1985...she worked in his record library I believe. |
