We moved to Bergen “Avenue” in 1953. We lived at 1021 Bergen Avenue which is still there. There used to be a red house [1017 Bergen Avenue — ed.] next to the lot which was Engle’s Bar. The lot belonged to the bar. My mom and dad bought this, their first house after renting the home of my dad’s brother and his wife on Fairview Street in Morgan Village. My dad’s brother was career Navy and was a Master Chief who was sent to Vietnam in 1953 as part of the advisors which were being sent by our government. This is the first place that my aunt couldn’t go and she and her son lived in the house on Fairview Street, and my mom and dad and my sister and I moved to Bergen Avenue.
We lived across the street from the Clark family. They were at 1020 Bergen. They were Mary and Ed and their kids were Mary, Terry, Sandy, Pam, and a few years later, Ed. Next to them was the William Deal family. Denny Deal was a Camden fireman. On the other side of the Clark family was the Straub family. Mr. and Mrs. Straub were older as I remember them. They had quite a few grown children, two of which worked as steel workers on the Walt Whitman Bridge. The younger son was killed from a fall off the bridge when they were building it. (I haven’t thought about that in years.)
On the corner of Bergen Avenue on the north east side was the little shoe store that was run by the woman who also lived upstairs. School shoes were always bought there. One pair for school and one pair for church. Opposite the shoe store was Louie’s furniture store. It was a glass front store, and Louie was always standing out front. I always wondered how he managed to stay in business when there was never anyone in the store. But he always had a suit and tie on and was standing there watching the traffic on River Road. I remember as a child the suitcase factory that burned one summer night. It was opposite Engle’s Bar and parking lot. It went up in a ball of flames. I think it is still an empty lot?
I remember riding our bikes and jumping rope until the sun went down. So many kids to play with and no one ever argued and rarely did we get into trouble. I also remember the house next to my parents house had an apartment upstairs where a young family lived. There was a son and a daughter. The man and his father who owned that house lived downstairs. They kept to themselves and as kids we were afraid of them because they were really strange. It was also a tragedy that the son, Eddie Marren died by drowning when we were in elementary school and then his sister Ellen was one of the group of kids who died when we were in junior high from the accident when the car that all of the kids had piled into went off the road and over an overpass onto high tension wires in Atco. I think only two kids lived out of about 8-9.
Bergen Avenue was really a quiet street. The Murtaughs lived in the 1100 and the Namms lived in the 1200 block. I can remember Louie Namm walking by our house in the evening coming from the Jewish classes that he took in the evenings, and later Carol and her younger sister. I remember Sandy Lyndsey and her family, and Terry Bruccollere who lived in the row houses up the street. We all walked to school together to Sharp School and later to Vets and Wilson. Those were the good old days when you could actually walk the streets of Cramer Hill without fear.
I can remember going to Frank & Toms which was the grocery store on the corner of River Rd, and 32nd street. It changed names so many time while I was growing up. The drug store at 32nd and River Road where [Howard] Unruh did his infamous tragic act of killing everyone. My mother-in-law had just walked past that corner with my husband in a stroller shortly before the killing spree took place.
There was a Cleaner and Al’s Barber Shop with the infamous pony that all the kids used to sit on while getting their haircuts. Next to the barber shop was the sub shop that I used to walk by on my way home from school at lunch time. My favorite smell in the whole world. I have never tasted a sub quite like that place. Then of course there was Pelligrino’s beauty parlor next to the cleaner. Thinking back on this, it was so convenient to have everything so close. We would catch a bus right at the corner of 33rd and River (the 1280) or the #9 to Philly. We would also meet at the corner of Bergen and River on Friday nights to go skating in Fairview. The bus would come by and pick us up and bring us back at 10. God I miss those days.
Dolores Arensberg Campbell
July 27, 2006
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