I'm walkin' home tonight
The streets are glowing 'neath the pale moonlight
I look around, there's not a soul in sight
And I'm walkin' home
Once again I hear my mother's voice
And all us kids making a bunch of noise
If I'm not careful I might start to cry
Just walkin' home tonight
From Walking Home by Iris Dement
Whenever I hear Iris Dement singing Walking Home, I always think of Pedricktown, New Jersey. Pedricktown was in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s one of the many small farming towns that fed this country. You could always smell the dirt of the sandy soil freshly turned to allow the planting of corn, tomatoes, peppers and asparagus. Stake trucks rumbled up and down the narrow streets. People rolled up their sleeves in Pedricktown and turned seed into truck vegetables year after year. Once a year on Memorial Day the boy scouts, the girl scouts, firetrucks and soldiers from the nearby Nike base marched with flourish showing real patriotic pride.
The corner of Railroad Avenue and Mill Street was the center of Pedricktown, a place which will always be my hometown. The bank, the grocery store and the gas station occupied that corner. All meaningful activity of small-town life passed through the crossroads. Within a block of where Railroad Avenue crossed Mill Street you also had the post office, a luncheonette and the Oddfellows meeting hall. The people, the events, the beliefs, and the environment of that place shaped me. In so many ways coming from that small farming today dictated what I became.
At the start of the song where Ms. Dement is singing about the street glowing ‘neath the pale moonlight. Me, I can see a different kind of glow. In my mind’s eyer I see the steely blue light that the lamps on those old wooden telephone poles right around the center of Pedricktown gave off. The light in front of the Oddfellows Hall on West Mill Street stands out to me because I could see that light so clearly out my bedroom window. As it shone down the light made the bricks of the old post office and just about everything else look like a faded-out aged photograph.
I remember walking out at 8:00 p.m. on so many spring nights over the years. I would head out only after I had finished my homework. Once out on the sidewalk I was looking for my friends. Were they going to be sitting on Sweeten’s grocery store’s stoop? Were they going to be standing in a clump of teen angst and boredom in in front of Draybold’s luncheonette? Would I find them behind the massive old elementary school? Maybe they were riding around in 63 Chevys or in Bear Bishop’s massive old gray Plymouth. If they were cruising, I just needed to stand at the crossroads and eventually they would come by.
When I came out the side door of my house, I would usually head out to the Mill Street. This was the east/west route through town and to get to it I would have to pass under those elephant eared leaves of our Catalpa tree. Closing the steel link gate, which kept a yappy black Scotty dog in, I usually turned to my right and headed down toward Sweeten’s. Chances were if I turned left and headed down by Cherry Street, I would run into my old man leaning against our house sneaking a cigarette. He didn’t want my mother to see him. He was supposed to quit. He didn’t. It helped kill him. No sadness now, what happened then is just what it is.
My shirt pocket held a soft pack of Marlboro red. When out of sight of the house I would light one up. If my old man saw me smoking, I was in trouble. To this day I can remember the lecture, “Your Mom has asthma, you don’t do to well in the breathing department yourself and quitting cigarettes as you get older is hard. So boy, stop now.” Took me a decade to figure out he wasn’t stupid. When I realized he was a little bit smart I did quit. Might have been the inability to walk up four flights of stairs without wheezing that taught me he was right.
When I walked out on the streets of Pedricktown at night I knew caring (or prying) eyes were watching my steps no matter which direction I headed. Reports taken from behind curtains in various houses up and down the short streets of this small town would find their way to my father. Depending on the report he would either let it slide or we would have a “discussion.” No CCTV was needed, human eyes monitored your every move. Mostly I think concern and care was the motivation of Pedricktown’s immersive human surveillance network.
Ms. Dement talks about hearing her mother’s voice call. I remember similar calls from a slightly younger age. I remember other’s people’s mother voices too calling out for their kids to come home. No cell phones blurped out an odd tinkling sound to say a text had come requiring the phone’s holder to come home. You heard the timbre of the voices yelling out your name. The edge to the voice told you if it was a merely a warning or if you were really late and deeply in trouble.
Iris talks about her father teaching her everything she knew. Me, I remember refusing to listen to my old man. But every old man in Pedricktown had some kernel of wisdom they wanted to share. And dammit they were going to share it with you. You could not escape small town wisdom.
You got shared communal wisdom at the meat counter in Sweeten’s when Jim Dunk smiled as he prepared your meat order and talked. Sometimes it happened when you were taking a check to the bank for your Mom and growling old Mr. Langford said something. Maybe it came when you were sitting on those stools near the candy counter in Draybold’s. Someone in there invariably would have something to say, and if you were waiting for a hamburger off the grill to go with you ten cent Coke you couldn’t escape the lecture. No matter how hard you tried not to, invariably you would listen. Sometimes something useful would seep in.
Sometimes after hitting Mill Street I wouldn’t find anyone. At that point I would just walk. When I set out down one of the four directions those streets led, there would not be a soul in sight. This absence of people would start me on a trek part search, part the burning off of youthful energy.
I might head east down to the bridge. When down there I would watch the muddy brown water of the creek flow by. Or I might turn up Railroad Avenue and walk north to the railroad tracks. How many times had I listened to the town’s siren wailing when a train hit a car trying to beat it across the tracks down at that crossing? If I was energetic, I could go on from the tracks to the auction block. During the day local produce was brokered to buyers here. At night it was empty save for a few empty produce crates and maybe a parked semi truck stake trailer.
Turning south I could walk by the scale house where the produce trucks were weighed to see how much would be paid for their cargos of Jersey tomatoes and bell peppers. This way would take me past the school. Sometimes I would end up sitting in the Methodist Cemetery that sat on the edge of the swamp located just a bit behind the school. If I kept on this way, I walked a pretty empty stretch down Freed’s Road or to the Oldman’s Creek down by the Darlington’s. The last possible route would take you west to the Baptist Church. I knew that path well, it was one I walked to church and Sunday School. It was where I was baptized. It was where my grandfather and uncle were buried.
In my day the Railroad Avenue walk would take you to the best chances of finding people drinking beer. Go south and they might be sitting behind the bank. Go north and they might be at the auction block. There was an odd chance someone with a pony bottle might be standing behind the school. Searching people out wasn’t always about the beer but it was always about the companionship. When you had friends from P-City they stuck with you. When we got sent to PGHS, our regional high school, you hung together with other P-City people. The tie wasn’t like blood, but it was damn close. We felt we were different than the kids from Carney’s Point and Penns Grove. Hell, being from Pedricktown was almost like being part of a clan.
On the right night the feeling was warm and comforting. Pedrickown always felt safe. Sometimes it seemed a million miles away from the real world. Living in our small town had an order to it. It might have been youthful bliss and ignorance but I don’t think so. I have never found as tight knit a community since I left. You know you were small town bred when you can remember rotten tomato fights among creosote transport crates and drunk guys riding tractors through town singing at the top of their lungs. You might even remember that one naked motorcycle rider getting whacked by mosquitos all over his chest as he flew through town.
