Historic Places in South Jersey

Historic Places in South Jersey - Places to Go and Things to Do

A discussion of things to do and places to go, with the purpose
of sharing, and encouraging exploration of South Jersey.

Wednesday, December 18, 2024

On Retirement and what to do when your schedule is removed!

I retired in 2006 from both my jobs, my full time public school Art teaching job in a middle school, and my part time job as an adjunct professor at the (now closed) University of the Arts, Philadelphia, Pa.

It is am intoxicating feeling being free! The only time we are that free is when we are small children before going to school or in the summer when we are in school. I watched what other retirees did and noted a few were kind of adrift, lost, aimless. Some had other kinds of jobs. At first, I did take a part time job as a school-visiting history storyteller for Camden County Historical Society. It was fun but exhausting, hauling that travel chest full of historical artifacts up the steps of the many elevator-less publis schools in South Jersey, not to mention doing the majority of my presentations on Black Hitory Month and Women's History Month, February and March, the snowiest (in that period) times of the year.

Then I decided to pass the job along to another interested retired teacher and I took a full year when I determined I would do nothing but what I felt like each day. What I felt like was taking a drive. I had a nice New Jersey map book and with a full tank of gas in my Saturn station wagon, I would pick a back road and follow it to its end. I began with Kings Highway (which is where I live) and I followed it until it disappeared into other names and roads. My favorite and most fruitful destination was Greenwich on the Delaware Bay. There was a historic Oyster Ghost Town there and it was the dock for a historic tall ship named the Meerwald. I met the folks there, took a tour, hiked the trail through the salt hay marsh and fell in love with the locale. I became a volunteer. Every couple of weeks, I would drive an hour down to the Maurice River area, to the Bayshore Discovery Project and do some volunteer tour guiding. Once, I gave a tour to a man who turned out to be someone I went to high school with! His family had been boat engine mechanics and had a shop on the ghost town's main street: Hettinger's Motor Repair.

I kept on taking drives and following interesting roads and discovering history mysteries such as Fort Elfsborg, an original Swedish settlement fort now vanished except for road signs and a beautiful patterned brick historic house hidden in a floody estuary which made me interested in patterned bruck houses, I attended a lecture on patterned brick houses by an author of a book on it which was held at Bass River State Park. What an interesting place that is! From that, I began to visit the State Parks I could drive to.

Also, around that time, I had joined an Outdoor Club and went hiking and kayaking regularly all over the rivers and forests of South Jersey and met man interesing people including a group of geocachers, and an author who became my best friend, Barbara Solem. She had written a book on The Forks, and another called Ghosttowns and Other Quirky Places in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. We hiked all over the woods together and we still have lunch every week or two. History became my passion.

Another passion that had been lying dormant but for which I now had the time was family history! I joined ancestry.com and began to research some family mysteries such as what happened to my biological grandmother. Her sister, Lavinia Lyons had been my grandmother all my life and it came as a shock to learn that she was actually my great-aunt. She was a quiet and secretive woman by nature and intensely private so she clammed up whenever I tried to find out anything about my mother's biological mother, her sister, but I had two photographs of her and a name. Ten years later I had solved the mystery and made a family tree which I had photocopied and which I framed with frames from yard sales and gave to my four siblings for Chritmas. Also it inspired my continuing interest in cemeteries, a half dozen of which where my ancestors are buried, I have visited

My long rambles and my family history crossed at the Civilian Conservation Corps. My father had been in the CCC in his teens before he joined the Merchant Marines and then the Navy. I had run across the CCC in my forest ramblings and in particular at Bass River where there is a series of signs giving some history, as there is at Parvin State Park which is a great place to hike. So many great CCC stories emerged from the woods that I was inspired to write a book called White Horse Black Horse taking two fictional characters, a photographer and a writer on the CCC State Guides project in 1937. Then I gave some talks on my book and sold a few copies, but most I gave away to volunteers I met at historic sites.

Other historic sites that captured my interest were original settler log cabins and I attended a great lecture, again by someone who had written a book about them, at the Greenwich Harvest Festival held each September. On the grounds of the festival there is one of the historic log cabins.

And I also took a guided tour of One-Room Schools offered by the 'then flourishing' Burlington County Hisorical Society. It was marvelous, and being a retired teacher, my heart was touched by the early efforts of teachers to convert colonial children to literate citizens. One school in particular was fascinating because it is where the teenaged Clara Barton went to teach in Burlington in a one room school you can still visit. She lobbied to have the tuition school turned public so the poor children could learn to read and write as well as the ones whose families could afford to pay tuition. She succeeded so well a male administrator was hired to take over and in disappoiment and resentment at this unfair result, she went on to found the Red Cross during the Civil War!

So you can see how one trail led to another and one story ignited another. But as the years went on, things began to happen to me physically which was a shock because I had always been so healthy and active AND a vegetarian! But genetics plays a big part in the age story along with lifestyle and like my father and mother before me, I developed arthritis in my spine and knees so there was no more hiking up frozen waterfalls in Jim Thorpe, Pa. or 8 hour kayak trips on the Winding River.

By then, being a natural storyteller, and having gotten the hang of writing a book (I had started out as an English teacher in my education career) I had written and independently published three books. I tried using a contact given me by my author friend but he wasn't interested in historical fiction and the interview was too depleting for my sensitive writer's soul so I gave up on traditional publishing and found a commercial printer (not online - an actual building with people). I wrote a relationship novel, a memoir of living in a van in Europe for a year, and gave away most of my books.

In my travels, I had become interested in old train stations. Most historic towns around South Jersey had one and since I am old enough that I actually rode trains when passenger trains existed, I was still entranced by the romance of the train. At one of the old train depots, I found an Art Gallery: Eiland Arts Center, Merchantville, NJ. It was in the town where I had gone to high school, and I got to chat with the gallery/coffee cafe' proprietor, Nicole Eiland. She put me on the mailing list and I began to get notifications of upcoming group art shows. I was invited and inspired and I began painting for the shows! My work was accepted and a whole new avenue opened up for me. I couldn't hike anymore but I used the photographs I had taken of my favorite hiking places as resources for my paintings. And I began to make paintings of some of my favorite historic spots. I sold 4 paintings of historic sites in Maple Shade, 2 paintings of the woods, two of rivers, and a scattering of other subjects over the next decade.

So, the interests that had grown out of the seeds of driving and visiting were: Genealogy

Historic site volunteering

Hiking and kayaking

Writing books

Painting

Quaker Religion

Almost forgot - Seniors Group

And the most recent one which was to emerge from an emotional crisis. A family event occurred which caused me unresolvable emotional pain and I decided to visit a Friends Meeting for Silent Worship. Many years earlier I had attended Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, Quaker version of church. I liked it, the freedom of conscience, the peacefulness, the practice of meditation. The closest Meeting was Woodbury Friends Meeting, ten minutes from me. I went on a snowy morning and there was only one Friend there but I stayed and two years later became a member. It is a small group of generally half a dozen in person and a few others on zoom. I like the intimacy and the peace. They were hit by an unexpected event when a drug and alcohol support facility renting a building on the grounds of the historic Meeting went bankrupt. The building (located on the other side of the parking lot) was abandoned. A year later, I asked if I could clear out and paint the reception area and turn it into an art gallery. One of the other regular members is also an artist and I had introduced her to the group shows at Eiland Arts Center in Merchantville. We both had paintings to put in a show of our own and we did! At the same time, a former high school student who had become a stained glass artist was looking for a studio and he rented two sections of the abandoned building, so now we had a stained glass studio, and a gallery! I paid the stained glass guy to pain the gallery. Currently the South Jersey Artists Collective is working on a grant to rent the rest of the building.

Before they take over the building, I grabbed the opportunity to have a Solo-Retrospective of the artwork I have done since my college days in the 1970's. My youngest sister who is 20 years yonger than I am, does work for me a couple of times a month, and she helped me hang the show. I had cards made for the show at Bellia Copy Center in Woodbury, very friendly helpful people and very reasonable in price. This has given me a great sense of satisfaction. By the way, showing my work at Eiland Arts gave me the confidence to show work in other local shows and this year I had work in 7 exhibitions, Cherry Hill Annual at Croft Farm, Haddonfield Fortnightly Annual, Camden County College Seniors Show and four group shows at Eiland Arts. Not bad for 79!

I can't believe I almost forgot to mention that walking around town I noticed our fire dept. had been turned into a Senior Center that nobody seemed to use to I wrote a proposal to the mayor to hold a group Meeting once a month. Six years later we had a dozen regular members. Each month I invited a speaker or provided a project, and what I found they enjoyed most was Show and Tell. We brought items or photographs and told our stories. The town has taken over the building and expanded with a grant to provide five days a week of programs for the seniors of our town.

Looking back on it today to write this blog post gives me a great sense of satisfaction in how rich and productive my retirment has been. The moral of the story is to get moving, go places and talk to people and things turn up and passions get ignited! I met so many retired people who volunteer at local historic sites and they have made new freinds and generated interests to pursue in their lives which enriched their time. It is a great gift to be free! And a great gift to share your time and talents.

Happy Trails Retirees! Jo Ann

wrightj45@yahoo.com

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