Sabrina's Cafe and re-purposed buildings

A place I have grown tolove for lunch is Sabrina's Cafe in Collingswood, on Haddon Avenue in the old Woolworth's Building.  The food has been, in the dozen times I've eaten there since just before Christmas, fresh and delicious.  I had lunch there twice this week, enjoying the cup of soup and half sandwich offer, which is exactly the right amount of food.  The soup was Apple/Pumpkin - scrumptious!  And I had tuna salad, open face on 7 grain bread with fruit cup instead of sweet potato fries.  I love the fries, but still struggling with my tooth problem.  By the way, Sabrina's offers Vegan, Vegetarian as well as Omnivore food choices which is great for those of you who go to lunch with people like me!

Anyhow it can be a bit noisy there when there are crowds of people who aren't respectful of public places, as in one day last week lots of people who are enchannted with the high pitched squeals of their offspring, and were actually applauded when their kids skreeched, and egging them on.  I love kids, but I like polite ones and polite parents.  Anyhow the acoustics can be daunting the but the fresh, well prepared, reasonably priced food makes it all worthwhile.  That's why it is crowded.  Yesterday, it was just as crowded but no loud people or noisy kids, and the noise level wasn't a problem at all.

Snow piling up around here but no power problems.  It is beautiful!  It gives me a great excuse to make a hige pot of vegetable soup, and snuggle up with great books and purring kittens.  It is the first time my kittens saw snow!  My dog, Trixie, being a lab, was leaping like a deer through the drifts in the yard.  She loves it.  Tomorrow I may slide into my snow boots and check out the neighborhood, maybe see if there are any kids with shovels looking for work and money.  They get scarcer every year.

Re-Purposed buildings.  I wanted to mention that the cafe' in the old Woolworth building was the second re-purposed building I've seen recently.  The other was the train exhibit in the old Phillips School in Cinnaminson.  I used to give art classes in the Police Athletic League housed in the re-purposed little Brown Street School.  I love it when good buildings are used and now demolished!

Happy Winter Everyone.  By the way, a great winter sock is WigWam, which I order through amazon.  the best hiking socks for winter I ever wore!

Happy Trails!

Winston Churchill and Mercy Street

During the second World War, Winston Churchill visited Montgomery in North Africa.  He offered Monty a cigar.  Monty scolded him, "I neither drink nor smoke and I am 100% fit!"  Churchill retorted, "I both smoke and drink and I'm 200% fit!"  
I love that reminder in this day of the worship of fitness and the demonizing of weight in general, that the free world was saved from destruction by a man in a wheelchair with a weak heart and an obese drinker and smoker!  What they had was courage and intelligence and will.  January 24 is the anniversary of Winston Churchill's day of death.  By he way, he went on to live 20 years past the end of the war despite a heart attack during his visit to America to speak with Roosevelt.  He died in 1965.

Have any of you seen Mercy Street, the pbs production set in the Civil War in a Virginia hotel turned into a hospital?  I watched the first episode last night.  I'm withholding judgement until I give it a chance to get going.  However, it did make me think that if Hollywood is running out of Superhero and Soldier ideas, they have a gold mine in finally searching the lost archives of Women's History.  Speaking of indomitable wills (as in the above on Winston Churchill), Dorothy Dix was a force to contend with and exactly the person you would hope was watching over things if you were a soldier and wounded in those dreadful times of medical butchery.  

 

Model Railroad Disp;lay, Footlighters Playhouse, 908 Pomona Rd., Cinnaminson, NJ

Today, just after noon, I set off in pale, cloudy, damp weather for Cinnaminson, 908 Pomona Rd,, The Footlighter’s Playhouse, to be exact.  As I have no doubt mentioned before, ever since I was a small child growing up in South Philadelphia, I have been enchanted by model railroad platforms.  My father had built increasingly complex platform set-ups over the years 1948 until we moved, around 1957 to New Jersey.

Who can say what attracts people to this miniature worlds.  Although I loved the powerful trains with their smell of fuel and their smoke and whistle, it was the snowy villages that most captured my heart.  We had the mirror pond and the lead saking figures, the people wrapped in winter coats waiting at the station, the sparkling cardboard houses and church, made, oddly enough in Japan, and later, Occupied Japan!

A year or two ago, a brother and sister bought me an “N” gauge Bachman trail and I set it up with my little wooden German villages, purchased in 1969 in Nuremburg at the Weinachts Fest.  I even created a tunnel, because watching the train come through the tunnel is somehow part of the magic.  So, although I was toying with envy and a sense of inferiority by going to model train exhibits, which ar always infinitely more elaborate than anything I ever owned or would own, nonetheless, every year at Christmas, I was find the model railroad displays to visit. 

Side note:  I bought my daughter age appropriate trains thoughout her childhood, but when, a few summers ago, I sold her last set, I apologized to her and said I hoped she wasn’t sad or disappointed.  She said she didn’t even remember ever having any.  I’m sorry I sold the set but in over twenty years, I had never put it up and the scale was far too large for my life these days.  The little “N” gauge is perfect both for the space I can give it and for my German village.  Somehow being smaller makes it even more magical to me.

In other years, I have visited the model railroad display at Jim Thorpe, Pa., Bordentown Railroad Days, and Bellmawr.  Today, the exhibit I visited was put together by the Burlington County Model Railroad Club.  It was spectacular.  Needless to say I took photos but there are somethings that lose their magic in photographs and must be seen in person.  This display had the forest mountains, tunnels, Industrial Parks, Train lots, Amusement Parks, Cityscapes, Suburbs, the whole panoply of scenarios. 

Coincidentally, just yesterday, I was telling the handyman, who was here doing a plumbing job, about the exhibit.  He mentioned he had been to the biggest one of all in Flemington, NJ.  Just as he got into his car, our local train went by and, as usual, I could hear the whistle blow as it passed Northmont, then Kings Hwy.

It reminded me of a Paul Simon song:

She was beautiful as Southern skies
The night he met her
She was married to someone
He was doggedly determined that he would get her
He was old, he was young
From time to time he'd tip his heart
But each time she withdrew
Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance
Everybody thinks it's true
Well eventually the boy and the girl get married
Sure enough they have a son
And though they both were occupied
With the child she carried
Disagreements had begun
And in a while they fell apart
It wasn't hard to do
Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance
Everybody thinks it's true
Two disappointed believers
Two people playing the game
Negotiations and love songs
Are often mistaken for one and the same
Now the man and the woman
Remain in contact
Let us say it's for the child
With disagreements about the meaning
Of a marriage contract
Conversations hard and wild
But from time to time
He makes her laugh
She cooks a meal or two
Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance
Everybody thinks it's true
Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance
Everybody thinks it's true
What is the point of this story
What information pertains
The thought that life could be better
Is woven indelibly
Into our hearts
And our brains

Now that is not what the sound of the train means to me, and it never did.  To me it is a beckoning call like the howl of a wolf, to come away, seek adventure, see other places. 

On the way home, it began to snow.  First it was light flurries, as I passed the house where I lived when I first was married in 1967.  Then it got thicker and I passed my old high school, and the funeral home where the service was held for my brother’s best friend, another Vietnam Vet, who was killed on the job by a collapsed crane.  Soon however, I was in a fog of snow so thick it enveloped the world in a gauzy indistinctness.  It was the first snow of this season, late, this year, coming in January.  

Exhibit open each weekend throughout February from noon to 5, free with donation accepted 

Happy Rails, Jo Ann

Rancocas Woods Village Shops Alive and Well!

A couple of days ago two friends and I went to Rancocas Woods, a place I hadn't visited for about twenty years.  I used to go there every time it snowed because I LOVE log cabins.  And I would take my daughter there to see the log cabins and we would get lunch somewhere nearby, I thought it was in the village of shops, but I wasn't sure. 

Anyhow, I had recently read a column in the Sunday Courier Post about the Village Shops struggling to stay alive.  They mentioned the Crafts Co-op and Antique Emporium, a kind of store of which I am extremely fond.  So off we went, thought we had no snow!

The Antique Emporeium was even more charming than I expected.  The delightful mix of unique and inventive crafts with beautiful and evocative antiques was a delight to me.  I bought a few small gifts.  Most of my friends and I are working on clearing out rather than gathering in so I limit myself to gifts, objects I can enjoy until they are mailed or given to the true owner.  I did, however, buy one item for myself, a cozy pair of irresistable mittens.  My feet and hands get so cold they nearly went on strike until I bought those mittens.  When I paid for them, the counter clerk told me they were made from recycled sweaters - a fact I found both charming and gratifying as I love recycle.  We waste so much in this country, and I do say WE, so I'm not pointing fingers at anyone or throwing stones at other glass houses. 

Those mittens are a luxury experience and they were only $10!  I may go back to get another pair for my daughter who also favors recycle.

We visited all the other shops and I bought gorgeous greeting cards for Valentine's Day and St. Patrick's Day.  I am one of those people who still like to remember my dear by far away friends and relatives with a pretty card for the holiday, whichever it may be, and these were on SALE!  They were far less than you might pay at a pharmacy or card shopt and infinitely prettier.  They were on sale for 2 for $5 and anyone who buys cards individually knows they are up to about $4 a card these days. 

We had lunch at Carlucci's Waterfront because it advertised "waterfront views" and it provided them.  The view over the Rancocas Creek was beautiful and brought back so many memories of old friends I canoed with on the creek and intriguing spots we explored on the banks, as well as treasures we found.  Once I found a window fram, beautifully weathered with a shed snake skin entwined in a pane.  I used it in an Art Display in the University City Science Center where I had been an invited artist in the Color Xerox Project.  At the time, I was a printmaking major at Rutgers in Camden.

Visiting Rancocas Woods will not disappoint you neither will lunch at Carlucci's Waterfront.  You can look them up on the internet for phone # or addresses, sorry, I'm on my way out the door to a dental appt. and have a very painful infected nerve, so I'm leaving that part of the work to you!  ENJOY!

Happy Trails!  Jo Ann

Hike Your State Parks Day! 2016

A Great Way to Start the New Year!  With my two best human hiking buddies and my #1 best canine hiking buddy, I hit the State Parks Trail on January 1st, 2016.  It was my favorite way to start the year - Hike Your State Park Day.  We tried a new State Park (for us), the Rancocas.  We started at the Nature Center, but they had quite a crowd gathering for a guided hike, so we left and hiked on our own at the Rancocas State Park, just a little further back on the same road.  By the way, for you bird watchers, the Barbaras spotted a red headed woodpecker.  Without my binoculars, I can't see anything in a tree.

The day before the 1st, we hiked Pakim Pond, and the day after, we hiked Atsion, down Quaker Bridge Road.  Today, we hiked Parvin at the little one mile pond trail and were accompanied by three gorgeous gliding swans.  I'm always astonished at how large they are!

Tomorrow, we are having lunch at Illiano's, off Tuckerton Road in Shamong, which I heartily recommend, and then another hike but I don't know which woods as yet. 

Recently, I watched a wonderful if shocking HBO Documentary, called the Weight of America.  Naturally, one of the best things we can do is make use of the glorious woodlands, and easier and ubiquitous local parks.  What a great time to make a resolution to Get Out, Get Going, and Get Fit!

Happy New Year and Happy Trails!
Jo Ann