Thanks to everyone for the nice comments on my “Life on Turkey Mountain” feature at Current. (This piece was originally published earlier in the year, but it got more attention this time around. Thanks to Current editor Robert Erle Barham for urging us to run it again over the holiday break.)
Here is a taste of the piece:
My mother’s father—my grandfather—was a milkman. He was usually out of the house each morning by about 3:00 to make sure his customers had cold, fresh milk for their cereal and coffee. When I was a kid I knew he had returned from his route by the clanking of empty glass bottles in the back of his truck. Her mother—my grandmother—stayed home and cared for her seven children. They lived in a tiny house on a seventy-acre tract of land on the side of a small mountain in Montville, a rural town in Morris County, New Jersey filled with winding roads and rolling hills. My great-grandfather, a Slovakian immigrant, purchased the property shortly after his arrival to the United States around the turn of the twentieth century. All five of my grandfather’s brothers lived on that land. They eventually opened a tavern and a gas station on it.Â
The picture above is my cousin Jake sitting at the old tavern. (From what I understand the new owners of the property recently tore it down.)
And here is a picture of the old family gas station followed by a picture of a recent renovation into a coffee shop:
My grandfather:
My grandmother and my aunt Carol:
My grandmother and the kids. That’s my mom in the top right corner:
Some have asked about the other installments of this early attempt at a memoir. Here they are:
A Search for Spiritual Certainty
Race, Class, and Religion in a Northern New Jersey Town
Any publishers out there who publish memoirs? I’d be interested in hearing from you if this sounds interesting.