Precious Cargo

When my mother met my stepfather in 1978 he was somewhat of a free spirit. His main income source was rent on a couple of houses he owned in Belmont, NJ. To supplement his income as a slum lord, he also played saxophone in a jazz band and had a paper route. He lived in an old Victorian he also owned in Ocean Grove, NJ, twelve or so blocks from the shore and close enough to Asbury Park that you could ride a bike.

Tom’s only mode of transportation was a vanilla colored cargo van that had but one seat, the driver’s. After they were married I used to love helping with the paper route, driving in the van with the side door wide open throwing papers on people’s porches. My favorite was pay day when I would run up to everyone’s door and collect the monthly fee in a tiny brown envelope.

For my mother’s twenty-ninth birthday, Tom arranged for them to spend a night on the town in Atlantic City. After years of nothing but fighting with my father, my mother was ready for some romance. She bought a new red dress, did her nails, and had her hair done for her big night.

Tom arrived at my Uncle’s house where we were living at the time in his cargo van. He came up to the door to collect my mother and escort her to the car. When he opened the door, mother realized he had set up a lawn chair in the back for her to sit on. Mother didn’t balk but climbed right into the back of the van and assumed her throne for the evening. A window in his van had recently been broken so the ride was a windy one. Oh to have a picture of them riding down the road, an old hippy driving around a woman dressed up sitting in a lawn chair in the back.