Pam’s Pictorama Post: Here in New Jersey, where Deitch Studio vacations, there is more opportunity for household items than in the tight confines of New York City’s base of action. Recently I picked this up online and had it sent to New Jersey. Honey is consumed in both places although I think of it more in New Jersey where we purchase it from local bees. I was pleased to find it waiting for me when we got here.
Local honey for sale on River Road.
On the route which I (used to and hope to again) run, just beyond the dentist with a giant tooth out front, I would go past a pretty little old house on a main street sporting a sign declaring, The Bees Live Here and bottles of honey along with a cash tin so folks could leave cash and carry. Since I was always running I never bought it this way, but a friend who lives on a nearby block has purchased it for me.
I was thinking of this, in part, when I bought this honey holder. I have seen some of these come and go online and suddenly it just was my turn. I purchased it from @obscuraantiques from Mike Zohn who used to have a favorite establishment in Manhattan which I have written about and missed dearly. (One of those posts with the treasures within can be found here.)
These lumpy sort of homemade looking bees have legs that almost make them look like they are dancing on this faux weave container. There is a spot for the spoon. It is not large, only about five inches high and I have yet to introduce honey into it. Haven’t decided if I will or if it will just be on display in homage to the bees and their product.
One-of-a-kind bee ring in my collection.
Some readers may know about my affection for these hard working critters. I have shared the ring I had made by a jeweler friend, a large queen bee. She perches on a bit of honeycomb and attracts many compliments, sometimes even from folks on the street. (That post can be found here.)
Bees are quite busy here and my mother planted the garden (lots of choice flowers) in consideration of them and the birds. If I was here full time I would consider having a hive. It would probably be a bit of a disaster however so let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.
The aggressive cucumber patch! I have discovered it is alive with bees!
I was working on the cucumber vines the other morning – turns out that cucumbers, as much as I love them, want to aggressively take over the yard, not to mention their immediate area. I am pleased they are so happy but the cabbages and zinnias won’t have a chance if I don’t discipline the cukes some. However, I had never realized that the bees like the pre-cucumber flower so much and frankly they did not appreciate my interference with their morning snack, so I have largely ceded the patch in deference to them.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today is a bit of a day in the life of post, back to toys tomorrow! As ongoing readers know, a few weeks ago Kim and I packed kitties and a few bags and headed to our house at the Jersey shore for a few weeks. With a new job I don’t have a lot of vacation so I am commuting these first weeks.
My new digs for work are way over on York Avenue and 62nd – an ideal daily commute from our New York apartment and I walk to and from most days. Occasionally I hop on a slow moving bus that wanders up and down York – and then oddly meanders across 57th Street.
Over the river heading to NYC just as the sun is coming up.
I am paying for my being a hop, skip and a jump from work with more than a month of a Jersey commute which is an hour and twenty minute train ride, with another twenty to thirty minutes on the subway and walking on the other end. It is a bit of a shock to the system – being at the mercy of the NJ transit system and back in the clutches of the Q train daily.
On the other hand, as I write this from my deck this Saturday morning I just saw a hummingbird take a long, long drink from a flowering tree and that is part of my summer reward. As I write, I am perched on my deck in full view of some ripening peppers and tomatoes. Cicadas buzz in the background.
My commuter mug, a great gift, but it did turn on my earlier this week.
It may be worth it but there is a cost for my slice of paradise! Our morning, always an early start, is even earlier. Cats (so many cats!) need to be fed, litterboxes cleaned and Blackie needs his shot. Kim tackles much of it but there’s a mad flurry of activity for a bit. The train ride in is an easy one and I get on early so always have a seat. As long as I don’t have an early appointment to make me crazy if the train has a hiccup, it is generally a time for some extra work or reading.
Sunrise on the way into the city – sort of the dividing point where it becomes more urban.
A friend christened my commute with a travel mug for my coffee, which I now fill religiously and think of her as I drink my piping hot coffee on the train. However, the other day in my enthusiasm I filled it too high and the steam popped the top. When I threw my bag onto my shoulder to run out the door hot coffee streamed down my back! Ouch and a pause to change my top layer (and put some soap on it so it wouldn’t stain!) and I was out the door. My back smarted all the way to work and I couldn’t take my jacket off as my tank had a coffee stain on the back! I have learned my lesson and I both allow to cool and don’t fill quite so ambitiously.
Heading into Red Bank station, we slow through these woods and then over the river. I love this few minutes coming home.
This route to and from the city is a well worn one of course and I have been traveling it on and off since reaching adulthood. It was the first and last leg on my trips to and from college for the holidays. Eventually it was the trip I took to visit my folks once I was living in New York, and ultimately to my dad in hospice during his long illness. Aside from the time of the pandemic (I have written about my time taking the ferry here) and just beyond when I indulged in a car to and from my increasingly lengthy visits to mom during her illness, the train was my main conveyance here and back. (I wrote about those trips with a lovely comfort dog, Cash, here.)
Where the view turns urban as we approached NYC the other morning.
The trip on the Jersey side starts out with water and woods. A third or more of the way there, houses start to emerged and are closer together, over some marshland (my mom used to talk about the wildlife in those marshes!) and then it becomes increasingly urban. Before you know it you are in Elizabeth and Newark and then the City is in sight before a ride through a tunnel (used to terrify me as a kid, these tunnels) where my ears pop, and then into Penn Station on the other side.
Mom always talked about the birds and other wildlife in these marshes.
Of course the trip back is the same in reverse going back. Getting to the train is always more stressful in the evening and I struggle with the discipline to get out of the office with enough time to do the reverse path to the train. It is generally boarding when I get there (unless delayed) and I hop on in the nick of time. The evening by necessity is more work filled as I have left things I can deal with on the train for that time and it is largely work time.
Weather permitting a quickly assembled dinner can be had on the deck – twinkling lights on and Radio Dismuke (more about that here) playing popular standards of the 20’s and 30’s. Tempting to stay up, but an early to bed with the early to rise to commute on the horizon again!
Pam’s Pictorama Post: The suitcases are largely packed, art supplies for weighing in massively in a Fresh Direct bag – what did we do before Fresh Direct bags? I have moved everything imaginable in them. For those of you who don’t have Fresh Direct, they are super large reusable bags with handles which our food is delivered in. The company will take them back or you can stockpile them for moves to you summer house, move your office and more.
Kim’s bag of art supplies, carefully prepacked.
The cats are looking at us suspiciously. They duly noted that the suitcase after last week’s trip to San Diego never went back down to the basement. Something is clearly afoot! No one has gone near the carriers but we will need to grab them fast in the morning if we don’t want to have to dig them out from under our bed. I will them to become used to this twice a year ritual now but they are resisting it. Cookie will undoubtedly spend the entire vacation under a chair again, hissing at us. (We continue to try to deploy new ways of dealing with it and I will report back on those efforts.)
It looked like so much in NYC and seems like next to nothing here in NJ!
This year things are different than last. I have less vacation time earned at my new job so I will spend more of my time commuting, some remote days and then some vacation at the end. I am reminded of how different work is, having a new job is an adjustment still in month six.
Much of my staff is new and haven’t accrued much vacation and I worry that when the busy season of fall hits we will all get exhausted. We are all still getting used to each other and the team is still emerging and finding itself. We are told our offices will move, maybe as early as October. We are somewhat camped out in our current space (leaks! mice!) so we are looking forward to it, despite the fact it will come at a busy time.
The bounty of cherry tomatoes and a couple of tiny strawberries.
My new commute takes me way over to the East side of Manhattan – handy for a girl who lives on York Avenue most of the year, but adding time onto the commute from New Jersey. I am eyeing the ferry which would leave me on First and 35th just to shoot up to 62nd and York and cuts the trip to 50 minutes. On the other side the commute is a bit longer home and I have to decide if it is worth it. The ferry is, without question, a more pleasant way to travel!
Oh the cucumbers…
I am looking most forward to time in my garden however, and evenings out on the deck. That has become real summer for me. Reports of my cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers come from a friend daily. Cucumbers in particular seem very happy, with their prickly strange nascent bounty – pickle size bits! My cucumbers have grown lavishly and would cheerfully take over the world given time. I gave them small trellises to climb which they covered immediately and kept going. We eat a lot of cucumbers so I am good with this, at least in theory.
First year this dahlia bloomed – was given to me in memory of my mom.
The cherry tomatoes had spit out a few specimens on my last trip but are quite laden now. The larger tomatoes had not yet yielded fruit. The strawberries in their pots appear happy, but a bit slow. Perhaps they too need a trellis and a spot in the yard next year. There is a tiny grapevine which has taken hold and I am hoping that it will winter and return for further growth next year.
This grapevine is rather impressive. Has grown a lot in the few weeks since I was last here.
Mom always had grapes and strawberries growing wild across fences in the backyard growing up – we never harvested them much and they were really there for the wildlife. I take that attitude with my blueberry bushes which are laden with berries and disappear in the twinkling of an eye. These days the birds, bunnies and chipmunks and I are locked in a race to see who gets what. of the other produce I am sorry to say I am less generous than my mother was.
The deck last summer.
Few things restore me better than an evening on my deck with twinkling fairy lights and some music playing. It makes all the effort of moving us there worthwhile. Time slows which these days is magical.
However, as I write this, the front door area in this small apartment is laden with packages and cats are giving us a sideways look. They know! Shortly I will do a final clearing of the fridge and throughout and we will hit the road. With any luck I will send a sign off from the other side!
******
We arrived, relatively without incident. Cash, my favorite car dog friend, was displeased with cats in his car, but he remained at a reasonable distance in the front seat. Just looking at Jeff occasionally and asking Why? (I have written previously about Jeff and Cash here.)
Cash looking at Jeff and asking, Why are these cats in our car?
Cookie and Blackie have disappeared into the house, under something somewhere. B will likely come out when he hears us in the bedroom later, not sure about C. We are trying something different and giving her a room to herself, Kim’s studio, upstairs.
Rainy day here so I only have rainy pictures of the garden. Alas, hoping it clears for us this evening!
Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today’s Pictorama tidbit comes via our good friend Bruce Simon. Bruce and his wife Jackie live on the other side of the country. My job used to bring me to their doorstep periodically and they have family this way and therefore not-quite-annual meet ups were possible. The Covid years resulted in several years where we were deprived of visits. This year we somehow managed a visit on each coast and we saw them earlier this summer and then a bonus round with Bruce a mere weeks later in San Diego when we flew in for Comic Con.
Kim and Bruce go way back to Kim’s west coast youth, but Bruce won my heart early on with splendid collections of early cartoons he sent. Krazy Kats, Aesop Fable cartoons – he has made a serious contribution to my cultural education. So it is a hats off to Bruce Simon for this post!
Much to my surprise Bruce brought me this splendid Felix tidbit found in his ramblings for the books he produces. (Some of those can be found on Amazon here and here.) This bit of a classified ad hails from The Muskogee Daily Phoenix and the Muskogee Times-Democrat. A quick look online reviews that this is an Oklahoma daily publication still in existence today. It was founded in 1888 so its had quite a run thus far.
This ad would appear to be an ad for the Classified Ad pages of the paper at the bottom while boasting this Kit Kat Klub Revue with the Krazy Kats of Rhythm. A nice swipe of Felix is chuckling in the lower left corner under On the Screen A Woman Rebels starring Katherine Hepburn. You could only see the Krazy Kats on Wednesdays and there is a balloon which informs us that this is A Wliburn Cushman Circuit Unit.
A replay of this pic of Bruce and Kim in San Diego where we had a lunch of waffles one day.
A snippet of another newspaper available online informs that this was a five piece band and Mr. Cholet was the singer and front man for the band. They played sweet hot and swing music. This was back in 1937 and 150 people had the opportunity to see it on a given Wednesday at the Ritz. If you read the fine print at the bottom it seems that putting an ad in the Classified Want Ad would get you one free ticket for the show.
Someone asked me recently how it felt to no longer work for an arts organization and I had to admit, I am missing the many hours of live music I have enjoyed in recent years. Radio Dismuke (I wrote about this rather wonderful online radio station as resource in a post here) helps fill the gap, but it is a big change, as was leaving the Met after many years of enjoying it – more or less like having all that art in your own living room.
Admittedly this ad puts me in the mood. However, it is an itch which is unlikely to get scratched soon as tomorrow I pack Kim and cats up and we head to the New Jersey camp for the remainder of the summer. So more on that annual bivouac tomorrow, stay tuned.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: Some Pictorama readers will remember previous posts on a small (but now clearly growing) collection of medals I have acquired. These award pins I assume were given out (at school?) to encourage various virtues.
I found one for Improvement and purchased it for my birthday in the winter of 2020. It was meant to commemorate how well I felt I had grown into my job over the first few rough years there. I had spotted it while getting some jewelry repaired – probably one of the watches, they seem to need to go frequently. Anyway, I fell in love with the idea. I do like encouragement.
That one and the one that came after for Excellence, purchased on eBay, were both made of 10k gold. This too amazed me. There was a time when real gold medals were given as awards to children at school. Man, I was happy when someone put a sticker with a star on my paper! (A post on the prior prizes can be found here.) I would have been over the moon for one of these pins – as I am sure the youthful recipients were.
Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.
I believe I only got to boast Improvement on the lapel of a jacket a few times before the world shut down for the pandemic. A few years later Excellence joined on the same jacket and people would frequently remark on them. (One of my staffers surprised me as he had read the post here.)
In many ways Neatness is another whole kettle of fish. Unlike my others, this one is made of silver. The other two date from 1910 and 1945 respectively. This one dates back to 1881! (This was clearly a longstanding tradition. It should be noted that my Excellence came from Canada, so we know that it was popular there too.)
I wonder how far back does the tradition go? Of course many of these were considered special and therefore saved over the years. Once I got the hang of the right search numerous ones seem to pass through the portals of eBay and Etsy. I am highly selective however about the message and have to have some sort of kinship to it.
This one is so special though. I love how it has a star shape and hangs off a banner – both declaring Neatness and the date above. It is a little like being the sheriff of neatness. In the center of the star shaped charm it also says 85 and I have no idea what that refers to since the date is so clearly marked as ’81. Twice on the back, top and bottom, it has the recipients initials and this gave me a giggle too. They are N.P.B. so it was in a sense clearly meant for me.
Back of pin. Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.
Alas, I’m afraid however that an award for neatness is indeed only aspirational in my case. I may strive for it, but neatness is more of a goal than a given. It is unlikely I would have earned it. As I look around our treasure filled single room abode, let’s just say neatness is not a concept it was built around. Our books and my toys and photos grow like topsy and cat hair and New York sooty dust is to be kept at bay. Luckily we now have the house in New Jersey for some of our booty.
Still, when it came up for sale via my Texas team on Instagram @Curiositiesantiques (or via their website here) I knew it should be mine. While Jason and Sandi thoughtfully keep a weather eye out for things that might interest me, resulting in a mounting number of cat related items of various kinds, they may not know that these are a developing passion.
I am told this pin belonged to Terry, Jason’s mom – thank you Terry! (A few prior purchase posts from this Dallas duo can be found here and here, for starters.) Sandi as a regular reader knew I might find it of interest. Here’s to hoping I find myself in Dallas and can meet them one of these days – or perhaps a meet up at Brimfield. Hmmmm. A girl can dream.
I need to find the right jacket to pin this to, although maybe a black sundress will do for summer. I always think that it’s good to have ideals and I will indeed strive to exhibit and embody all these desirable qualities.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: A few different things conspired to prompt a rather wonderful childhood memory recently. The first was our friend Bruce bringing over a bag of Ranier cherries – the ones that are sort of orange fading to a bright red, rather than the dark maroon of the more common ones. Despite the story I am going to tell, I somehow came to gobbling cherries late in life, but have eaten them with an abandon to make up for lost time. I generally buy the dark red ones, but cast no shade on the Ranier variety.
The next things was this little device shown at top – a cherry pitter. I also use it for pitting olives. I was in New Jersey a few weeks back and realized that I only had my decades old one, acquired in cooking school tucked happily away in our New York apartment.
Not much to look at yet it is perfectly adequate for these two tasks and if you are trying to cook with either cherries or olives it is a much needed and appreciated tool. To be without it means any chance of a perfectly sliced cherries or olives for decorative effect will likely not happen. I promptly ordered the contemporary equivalent from Amazon. I searched cherry olive pitter and there is was. The beauty of the internet age. I sent it to NJ and it was waiting for me when I got here on Wednesday; it is a decidedly zippier, upgraded version. A happy summer of cherry and olive pitting awaits.
Meanwhile, the memory in question was one of an annual cherry picking at my grandmother’s house. She had an enormous Ranier cherry tree in the backyard. In retrospect as an adult I don’t think I realized that cherry trees got that big. It required a proper ladder to get to the top.
Was actually a bit hard to find a photo online of a large-ish one. My grandmother’s was much larger than this!It makes me remember it being in bloom though.
Anyway, the kids, spouses of kids and grandkids were all assembled and we picked cherries all day. There were sea green plastic buckets I can still see in my mind and we filled them with those orangey red cherries. My grandmother would then take them and cook them down and can them. They would supply pie filling and get spread on toast for the rest of the year and long winter ahead. (Mom’s mom who I have written about before here with a historic photo of that yard – sadly the tree was in the other direction and would have been tiny!)
These are exactly as I remember them.
Oddly, I don’t remember eating them off the tree. Now, I was at the time probably the youngest family member of the team, probably about five or six at the time I am describing before my brother was born. Perhaps my mother, always a worrier, didn’t want me eating pit filled cherries. I can see her fretting about that. Anyway, I didn’t and somehow didn’t really get into the swing of eating cherries until I was more or less an adult. If I were able to visit that tree today I’d be popping half in my mouth as I went, eating my body weight in cherries off the tree.
On one of those days I remember it ending in, if not a barbeque at least a picnic. (My Italian grandmother wasn’t really much into barbeque – she liked to cook her food on her stove and in her oven and make the table grown with delicacies which were not of the grilled burger variety.) I wandered around and found my way to a small tree. Much to my horror, as I touched the tree I was immediately covered with ants! I screamed the way only a small child shocked by ants can scream. It took a minute for mom to figure out what was wrong with me, get them off and set me right. (Tree must not have been well to be full of ants, but I don’t remember much about it.)
Dusk on the deck with the fairy lights on. Deck (and lights) had to be completely redone last fall – boards were all rotted! This is my first evening of return on investment! Well worth it.
Perhaps that memory came back to me because as I write this I am sitting on my deck in New Jersey, in the evening of July 4. Next to me on the fence I share with my neighbor, I discovered a huge and evidently industrious ant colony. I can see those hard working fellows even by the dim light of my fairy lights out here. Do ants ever stop and rest? These don’t appear to as I spotted them early this morning and they are still at it.
On of the solar lights I have around which I love!
A gentle boom, boom of distant fireworks is going off, but not enough to bother either me or the five New Jersey cats who have had their dinner and are largely sleeping. Fireflies have come out and look like miniature versions of the fairy lights. (People ask me if we still have fireflies and I am glad to assure them we do – have they really disappeared from places?) The mosquitoes, whose enthusiasm for my flesh has been somewhat tempered by some spray will chase me in soon. But my first evening on the deck this year and I guess summer has begun.
The back gate! Newly installed light here also last fall – so we have a bit of light coming and going at night. It is motion activated.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: One of my favorite new hobbies is purchasing bits of local memorabilia to decorate the New Jersey house. Having grown up in the area I have always found local history interesting and I am having fun finding ways to celebrate and embrace it as well as my own history there. Along those lines I picked up this postcard recently with the intention of framing it for the house there. This is a bit of a long summer and childhood post so settle in if it appeals. I guess I am kicking off summer officially today.
In a parallel universe I think I bought a tiny wooden house in Highlands on the water and live there. In that world I either live with and/or disregard the constant flooding of the area and I have no idea what I do for a living. There was a moment in this world where I gave serious consideration to such a purchase for a weekend house (affordably due to the aforementioned flooding), but my ever practical minded mother talked me out of it. I lived through enough flooding to hear her talking sense about it. Nonetheless, my heart does remain with the idea of a few rooms in a wooden house, just a few minutes walk from the river and ten or so minutes over the bridge to Sandy Hook beach.
Back in the early days when Bahr’s was still a rooming house and bait and tackle shop.
When I was very young, we had a house – one sold by Sears and Roebuck – on the nearby spit of land in Sea Bright we call the North Beach. I adored that house and did consider making it my home when my parents sold it in my early 20’s. My earliest summer memories are there, with beach access across the (incredibly busy) street and clubs with pools where I would ultimately learn to swim. In recent years, the bridge between the two, Sea Bright and Highlands, has been remade from a simple old fashioned one (up from the glorified foot bridge that would have existed at the time of this postcard) to a very high, super highway version which I guess you can walk over, but seems a bit threatening.
Anyway, Highlands and its kissin’ cousin tucked nearby, Atlantic Highlands, were always there as part of my childhood. It has an interesting mix of real estate, multimillion dollar homes on the steep hilly incline overlooking the water (mom and dad would speculate on how terrible winter driveways and roads they must have) and down to the small, wooden homes near the shoreline. For those of you who followed my nascent ferry adventures to and fro Manhattan, this is where the ferry leaves you, or conversely picks you up. As a child we mostly drove through it as a way of avoiding round trip beach traffic to Sea Bright or a to get out on the highway.
Nearby ferry landing.
One of the fixtures of Highlands is Bahr’s Landing restaurant. It is currently billed as the oldest restaurant in New Jersey, dating back to its earliest incarnation as a seasonal houseboat chowder and boarding house for those working the waterfront in 1917. Boats were rented and on the off season the family went back to their necktie business in Newark.
Eventually the business took off sufficiently in the 40’s to become year round and, according to the article I found, the original houseboat established the existing building today. Oddly, I only learned recently that the family is one I know – I went all through school (kindergarten through high school) with the current generation owner, Jay Cosgrove. Yay Jay!
Undated photo from their site but maybe not too far off from when this postcard was made.
In an unconscious way, Bahr’s played out through my childhood, young adulthood and has come back for me in middle age. As a small child I remember off-season celebratory birthdays there – as year round residents my parents preferred it in any season but summer when the local traffic would increase ten fold overnight. I could be wrong, but they may have introduced oyster crackers into my life which I adored as a child.
Postcard not in my collection shows rickety original bridge between Highlands and Sea Bright to Sandy Hook beach.
As teenagers and on summers home from college we didn’t care and braved the traffic cheerfully. The restaurant proper was too expensive however and we were instead content (very content indeed) to sit next door on benches near the water for services outside until late in the evening, eating lobster rolls and juicy fried clams. There was a movie theater a few blocks away which showed second run and old films for 99 cents and so a reasonably affordable date night was established.
I had not been inside the restaurant for many years when my sister Loren suggested it for a birthday lunch one year, shortly before she died and we celebrated our childhood there. Bittersweet, it was my first and last time there for a number of years as I thought going back would make me sad.
Bars from the water side in an undated photo.
However, in my mother’s final year or so we ordered in food a fair amount and I figured out Doordash from there on a few occasions which we enjoyed. I did it weekly or so until they could no longer find drivers. Mom was a vegan, but there were a few vegetable dishes she liked and everything we ordered from there was delicious and a wonderful change of pace.
In the subsequent year since mom died, a good friend and I have taken it up again as our occasional treat. We generally go at lunchtime during the week, occasionally dinner, when even the summer traffic is more bearable, taking an inland route which spares us some tussle.
Yup, the mug I purchased full of the chowder and some of those oyster crackers from my childhood shown here.
I wish I had copies of the old photos the interior of Bahr’s is decorated with – some go back to the days of it as a houseboat, renting rooms. Others show fishing in the immediate area – I always take time to study them. There was also a time when it had an early life as a ferry stop for cruise ships that would head down to the South from New York City. Ancient majolica oyster plates fill another vitrine. A small gift shop is at the front, near the bar and the oldest part of the building. I recently purchased chowder size mugs, one for the house in NJ and one for 86 Street.
This is the bar area where for some reason I have never eaten. I think we favor the water views. I always like to go and look at the photos and art in it though when I can.
The fare at Bahr’s is the absolute top shelf of what you expect and want from a local seafood restaurant, perched right over the water. Plates groan with ultra fresh local scallops, clams, oysters, lobster and various other kinds of fish. I remain partial to a warm lobster roll which has come to define this item to me, simply lobster chunks with butter on a traditional roll, served with homemade potato chips if I feel decadent. Homemade biscuits are served for starters – this is not diet dining. My friend Suzanne remains largely devoted to a plate of scallops and vegetables. We both occasionally go off script however and in this way I discovered their “original recipe” spicy clam chowder which is stupendous! I am a fan and have begun buying a container for the freezer in NJ each time I go and it makes for a very happy meal subsequently.
Recent image from the parking lot at Bahr’s.
The postcard I have acquired appears to most likely be from the 40’s given what I know and that it is a linen postcard – those were produced in the 30’s and 40’s. As you can see from my recent photo, not much as changed, down to the neon sign which must flash to boats like a beacon. That is Sandy Hook, now a state park, across from it on a tiny spit of land with the ocean beyond. Seen today the immediate surrounding area is a busy dock, as shown in my photos, and Moby’s, the affordably cousin they also own, next door. If you sit outside near the water and the docks, fat seagulls rule while ducks and geese placidly come and go. There is a parking lot where it is just sand here.
Verso of card.
On the back in very neat pencil print it says, The air is wonderful here on river. There are five children here & they have such a good time. Hope everything is well with you. Love Marg. It is addressed to: Mrs. M. Martin, PO Box #137, Gibbstown, New Jersey without a stamp so maybe it went in an envelope or just was never sent. On the back of the card, printed at the top it says, Bahr’s Seafood Restaurant Highlands NJ. Lobster and Fish Dinners. The “Half Moon” Bar and Cocktail Lounge, Charter and Deep Sea Boats for Hire. Est. 1917 – Highland 3-1245.
So Bahr’s has earned its place to be enshrined at our New Jersey residence. With any luck, some old photos will show up to join it and I look forward to treating you to a bit more of that local lore.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: I guess I have on occasion posted about father’s day. (Most notably in an unusual post before he died which can be found here.) Generally I tend to find it painful and assume others may as well. However, I just came across this photo of my dad the other day while looking for something else and I decided I would share it today.
November of 2017 seems like worlds ago for me, for all of us I guess in many ways since we managed to have two pandemic years we didn’t see coming in the midst of it. I had started my new job at Jazz at Lincoln Center earlier that year after almost 30 years at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I had already been to Shanghai with the orchestra and was trying to adjust to a very different pace of work. (Posts about leaving the Met and that wild trip to Shanghai can be found here and here.)
Shanghai toy cafe.
Meanwhile, my parents had recently moved into this house, the house I inherited and will visit later today. That alone has changed so much. First my mother directed much of the planting in the yard which went from somewhat neglected to a sanctuary, but even in the year since she passed I have transformed it further with more plantings, a vegetable and herb garden and made the deck an oasis.
The NJ garden in clean up mode a month of so back. Strawberries and cherry tomatoes are evidently already producing. More on that later today.
The years she and my father spent in this house were years of caregiving and the house was set up around that. The bedroom I have taken was my father’s. (I used to sleep in a sunny room on the second floor which in some ways I preferred, but mom wanted me to take the main bedroom at a later time and ultimately it made sense so I could be closer to her at night.)
Recent photo of the front of the house in NJ.
Pictorama readers have seen, most notably, the garden transform. However, I have made many changes inside, redoing the floors, adding furniture, rugs, lamps and, of course since it is me we’re talking about, interesting stuff I have collected – already.
An older Milty on a very recent visit.
Still, this view out the window remains largely unchanged. It is a sunny, favorite window. I still have that chair, but it was moved a bit during mom’s last illness and has remained there. (That chair is Beauregard the cat’s favorite spot and if you sit in the chair with him he will pat your head.) For several years it gave first dad and then mom the best view of the small but cheerful yard to enjoy daily.
I remember the day I took this photo very well. It is the only picture I took that day. Dad had returned from a stint in the hospital and Kim and I were visiting and I snatched it discreetly. He had a rare very good day that day, arguably the last really, and I pretty much knew it was a real moment of grace in an inevitable decline. I remember him being very lucid and remembering all sorts of things in conversation with some prompting by me and mom; his memory turned to Swiss cheese at the end – bits he would recall perfectly and then complete holes. He was very candid about it.
Dad is taking a rest and enjoying the sun here. His extremely devoted cat Red on his lap. (I have written about Red here – a real prince among cats that one!) Our other cat, Milty (still around today at about 20 years of age and one of the New Jersey five) is observing from a favorite spot on the window sill – much beloved. Mom filled it with plants over time and although I keep fewer there than she did, there are still a bunch. I’ve changed the blinds as the existing ones (like so many things – think roof, deck!) broke shortly after mom died.
Red on my bed, a photo taken about a year after the one of dad.
Also on that window sill are some reproduction Remington bronze sculptures which were among dad’s favorite possessions. He always loved bronze sculptures and liked to have these around him. (There was at least one other, enormous one, at one time.) I recently found myself in someone’s office who also had some of these, including a large reproduction made for a restaurant, and immediately felt at home. All the walkers, bottles and other paraphernalia of illness is there too.
I have written posts about my father and his interesting and fulfilling life as a cameraman for ABC news, and about his youth and riding a motorcycle across the country (those can be found here and here), but today, just a small tribute to that moment in 2017, coughed up by my phone and as a gentle nod to the Father’s Day holiday today.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today’s is perhaps a odd post. Although Pictorama readers know of my passion for all things vintage cat, there are numerous other well worn paths of buying and collecting here at Deitch Studio. Sometimes these wax and wain, but many have long legs. There are the clothing equivalents, black cotton t-shirts and undershirts to wear under jackets, sweaters and sometimes even dresses. Then there are running socks which despite my best efforts lose their mates over time so it always seems like a good idea to buy more or resign myself to being mismatched.
Tin box that holds my collection of cards (get well, sympathy and birthday) here at home.
Among my more interesting ongoing buying interests are boxes. It is as if by supplying myself with enough boxes some day I will actually be organized. (An extremely popular post about the antique tin box that helped organized my home office during the pandemic can be found here.) The boxes, in all sizes, continue to come, but the organization a bit less so.
Just yesterday I wrote about a sardine box I will use for odds and ends (I think I have decided it is heading for the bathroom in New Jersey for hair ties and whatnot which the cats steal otherwise) and today I sit surrounded by a group buy of early jewelry boxes that just came from Britain.
A ring that was a gift and is in its original box.
I think the largest of these will also go to New Jersey to store a few things there, away from prying cat paws which twitch to grab and play with them while I sleep. I may share one with a friend as well. Ring boxes are a great luxury but do require that I remember which one lives where so there isn’t a scramble in the morning – nor do I want to forget about anyone and have them go unworn. Most if not all are lined with old, worn velvet and many bear an inscription from a jeweler of another time and place. (Of course it is always very special to find an antique bit of jewelry in its original box, that which it has lived in from its very beginning.)
Popeye lamp acquisition which now resides in New Jersey.
Another purchase itch which is a bit more unusual is lamps. I seem to exist in a world with little or poor overhead lighting and as a result for both homes and office it seems an ongoing need. I have written about some of those acquisitions here and here. I will confess though that I have my eye on two more – a rather comical dog lamp which I have bid on in an auction and another attractive desk lamp.
Dog lamp under consideration.
At the office right now I have a lamp made of antique dice which has followed me since I purchased it for my return to the Met back in 2001. However, the light in my current office is dreadful even and I am considering another desk lamp. What I really need is a standing lamp, but those are especially hard to source and given the ceiling leaks I would have to be very judicious about where I located it.
This lamp below crossed my path on eBay and I am tempted although I would say this is more a NJ lamp than an office one. I think it would be a lovely light either on a desk or even on a bedside table. Thoughts?
A maybe purchase on eBay.
Part of me understands that there will be a point at which I have enough lamps, but I don’t quite seem to be there yet.
On an even more practical side of things there are bowls. If I was in New Jersey I could share a large number of bowls purchased for that house which seems oddly bereft of them. Soup bowls and serving bowls. For that kitchen they are all new. Here in New York I try to fill in with vintage ones that match my blue and white ware china (the Blue Plate Special dishes inherited from my grandmother and a post on those can be found here) such as these which were purchased on a day in Cold Spring, New York last fall.
One of two blue and white bowls from a buy in Cold Spring.
So for now, these “practical” collections seem to amass until one day I am tripping over too many of whichever. Stay tuned for updates on those pending above however as that time has not come yet.
Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: As I start writing this post I am in New Jersey on Saturday evening with Beauregard, the huge all black cat, who is the master of this NJ Butler house. It is the end of several sunny days of stay here and I will head home tomorrow – potentially completing this on the train if I cannot before.
This photo postcard came to me via eBay and is an odd choice for me. This little girl with her chicken on a leash charmed me. Small children with pet chickens seems to be popular on the internet these days so poultry pets remain popular. Working for a veterinary hospital with an active Exotics service, we see a fair number of chickens. (Presumably chickens that are for eating go to a different sort of vet than us although obviously we’d care for one in need if presented!)
The little girl is nicely dressed in trousers and boots with a somewhat sporty coat with a design of the buttons across her shoulder and chest. She looks quite happy as does the (large) chicken on a string leash. There’s one or two other chickens, behind a fence in the distance who look on and the soil looks dusty. The nearest vegetation we can see are trees way off in the distance and the sun is casting long shadows. Given her attire, it was chilly.
This card was never sent and looks like it was quite beloved, handled. It is undated, but on the back in a child’s neatest script it says uncle zack.
Many years ago I remember my mother had a video of a woman she knew slightly about her and her pet chicken. I don’t remember the chicken’s name, but it lived in the house, primarily in a sort of all season room at the front of the house. A cared for pet chicken might live to be ten or twelve years old according to the internet, I actually thought it was older. The chicken in the video went everywhere with this woman – today it might have been considered a comfort animal.
Recently in a talk given to staff to celebrate diversity, one of the vet’s pointed out that some clients feel that people belittle their choice of an usual animal and express surprise that they would pay so much for the care of a fish, tiny turtle or perhaps chicken or duck. (I also heard about surgery on a goldfish recently which fascinated me! The surgeon was evidently personally quite fond of goldfish and frustrated by a common cause of death in them he was able to improve but not resolve the fish-y issue.) However, as animal lovers our heart knows no such boundaries and be it pigeon or porcupine we are committed to them and find great happiness with critters in all species, shapes and sizes.
Pam's Pictorama 