This is a 15-chapter short story standalone anthology of a middle school aged boy's unique adventures along the Delaware River. Friendships, camaraderie and the trials and tribulations of growing up evolve as the child grows into an adolescent. The book is a blend of Tom Sawyer's mischief, Stand by Me's nostalgia, and The Sandlot's exuberance. The stories are a nonfiction time capsule of the mid 1960's into the child's 1970 eighth grade graduation. Adventure, decision making, humor, personal responsibility and life lessons shape this overarching themed collection. This read is perfect for those who enjoy narratives of personal growth and self-discovery. The book features a valuable end of story "Chapter Lessons", which provides engaging material for learning. Every chapter promises a lesson, a laugh, and a timeless journey of coming of age.
This is a 15-chapter short story standalone anthology of a middle school aged boy's unique adventures along the Delaware River. Friendships, camaraderie and the trials and tribulations of growing up evolve as the child grows into an adolescent. The book is a blend of Tom Sawyer's mischief, Stand by Me's nostalgia, and The Sandlot's exuberance. The stories are a nonfiction time capsule of the mid 1960's into the child's 1970 eighth grade graduation. Adventure, decision making, humor, personal responsibility and life lessons shape this overarching themed collection. This read is perfect for those who enjoy narratives of personal growth and self-discovery. The book features a valuable end of story "Chapter Lessons", which provides engaging material for learning. Every chapter promises a lesson, a laugh, and a timeless journey of coming of age.
Mrs. Michalski was ancient, but she sure knew her stuff. Our brilliant sixth grade teacher captured our minds by filling us with tales of our close location to famous pirates and their buried treasure. As legend has it, the likes of notorious pirates Edward Teach and William Kidd—whose aliases were Blackbeard and Captain Kidd—sailed up the Delaware Bay along the main coast of the Atlantic Ocean to avoid detection from the British Navy during “The Golden Age of Piracy.”
Since Philadelphia and Burlington City were both established Quaker cities and pledged to nonviolence philosophies, they posed no threat to the pirates. Historians believed that pirates regularly frequented the Quaker port cities in the early 1700s to trade booty and resupply their vessels for their next plunder. Reports of Blackbeard, Bluebeard, and Captain Kidd finding refuge in such desolate areas of Marcus Hook at the opening of the Delaware River on the Jersey side and Blackbird Creek on the Delaware side are documented in texts.
Since sixth grade, the possibilities of buried treasure along our shores hung in our heads. As luck would have it, our town fell smack dab in the middle of both cities! I always wondered if I would find something amazing one day along the river. Now Easter break was here. As a seventh grader with a week off from school, I knew I had plenty of time to explore the river, searching for that mythical buried treasure.
I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I was ready for a week of exploring The Dunes along the river on my own, possibly searching for my own buried treasure left by the likes of Blackbeard, Bluebeard, or Captain Kidd. Near my house, there were tree-lined trails with a swamp for catching turtles and tadpoles. The sand dunes and their trails then led to the Delaware River. Without any adults in sight, we had the freedom to pursue adventures on the river like fishing, swimming, and exploring. As kids we loved hanging out on The Dunes and beaches along the Delaware River. Every visit began a new adventure.
On this particular “River Adventure,” I had been up early on Easter Break and got out of the house right after my parents had gone to work. My dreams of the pirates had me excited to explore for the treasure. I was one of the original latchkey kids, now old enough to come home alone off the bus and not walk to Granny’s house anymore. It was a “big kid” kind of feeling. I would be my own man. My parents always drilled into my head that I could have no one over and no one in the house. Rarely were any of my friends ever allowed inside the house, even when my parents were home, so being alone in the house was no big deal to me. I learned to hang out at everyone else’s house. Since this was Easter vacation, I had no bus to ride and no parents at home during the day. It had the makings of the best Easter vacation ever!
I didn’t waste any time. The first thing that Monday morning, I woke up early and got out of the house immediately after my parents left for work. My dreams had me excited to search for the treasure. Walking from my house over The Dunes took time. Even with well-worn sandy trails of sugar sand, it was a high hike up and across the sand dunes with my eleven-year-old legs. Thankfully, motorcycle paths helped to cut out leads towards the river, but the paths changed daily depending on the last rain. The trick was getting down to the beach since there were no clear-cut pathways.
To get to the Delaware’s beach, you had to sand surf down the side of The Dunes. You could get there either by standing upright or sliding on your bottom. It helped if you took a trail by the trees that had been covered with river bottom dredge spoils to enable larger ships to get to Trenton, just north of Burlington City. The forest that had once been part of a tree-lined river view was now completely covered by the sandy bottom of the river. Our home view now was just The Dunes. Over ten years of post-dredging, the resilient trees near the beach line began to spring out of the sand dunes. These small, twig-like branches poking out of the sand were like handles to use as you descended down the fine, ever-shifting sugar sand while surfing toward the river’s edge.
Before landing on the beach, you had to determine whether it was low tide or high tide. At high tide you had to continue to hold onto the trees and walk gingerly through them to stay dry and out of the water. At low tide you could release the death-hold grip on the branches and drop onto the darkened wet sand where you could see an army of rats scurrying back and forth across the sand and into the treasures of washed-up trash, pallets, and rusted fifty-gallon metal drums that had floated their way to our beaches.
This particular morning the beach was at low tide. The lowest I had ever seen. Upon landing on the firm sand, I began my solo trek, paralleling the river south toward the Kaiser Gypsum dock. Ships offloaded huge white rocks that made a journey by conveyer belt across an entire football-sized lot into the Kaiser factory, where the rock was crushed and used to produce sheet rock or wallboard. During the offloading of the gypsum, white dust flurried in the air like snow, coating our streets, sidewalks, and automobiles upon weekly deliveries. Most of the off-loading was done at night.
This dust was the reason my dad had purchased an acre of a farm field and built a home where we moved out of town when I was fifteen. It was the middle of my sophomore year of high school! I left my lifelong friends because of that wallboard factory. Ironically, about five years later, the factory closed for good.
As I neared Kaiser Dock that warm Monday morning, I could see no ships were there. Suddenly, I noticed a ten-foot-long piece of rotting wood sticking out of the sand. I visited the river at least once a week in search of washed up treasures. I walked over to it and examined what was exposed. It was unique. Nothing like that had ever appeared out of the sand or water before. I walked back up and over The Dunes to go home and got a shovel. I had an old WWII Army portable folding shovel in the shed. With my handy tool, I could adjust it into a pick if necessary to dig at an angle. I had dug many an underground fort with that old shovel! My army tool would now help me uncover that wood.
As I returned home, I saw Big Rich and Mark Bruno, my best friends in the world. Big Rich was the biggest eleven year-old you would ever see, and Mark was always the brain behind our adventures and escapades. Both were out in the street on their high-handled bar-banana seat bikes, attempting wheelies. Mark was a great curb jumper, but all of us could ride the back wheel on a wheelie for the length of a house or two.
“Hey guys!” I called. “Do you wanna help?”
“Help do what?” Mark asked.
“I just found this huge piece of wood sticking out of the river at low tide. I want to see what it is.”
They detected the excitement in my voice, and my enthusiasm was contagious. We had all week off from school to explore this strange piece of water-logged wood. This was going to be a truly fun Easter break.
The guys went into their home sheds and grabbed shovels, too. Once we got down to the river at low tide, we began to dig—and dig and dig. After two hours we had exposed almost fifteen feet of wood.
“This thing is enormous!” Big Rich shouted.
“What the heck could it be?” Mark appeared puzzled.
“I don’t know, but we have to keep digging before the tide takes it all away.” I was very concerned.
“What happens if we expose all this wood and the tide comes up and washes it under the sand again?” I asked. Silence prevailed as we pondered what to do.
Big Rich nodded in agreement. “We need more help.”
“I don’t want to share this with anyone, guys.” I was adamant about keeping this thing under wraps until we had solved the question of its origin.
“Yes, Big Rich, you’re right! We need help to expose this enormous hunk of wood,” Mark exclaimed. He ran up the sandy dune side wall, leaving Big Rich and me to continue digging. Mark came back after almost an hour had passed. “Help is on the way!” Mark hollered as he surfed down the side of the sandy dune. “I’ve got the Kalbachs and Hammerslys coming! They are bringing shovels too!”
“I’m thirsty. We’ve been digging for over two hours,” I said as my mouth was as dry as the sand I was standing in.
“Well, you can’t leave now; the rest of the crew are on their way,” Big Rich countered.
I shook my head. “I’m leaving once they get here. We can work in shifts. I gotta get a drink of water.”
“Okay,” I replied, somehow mistakenly thinking my little Zorro thermos would give each person one gulp.
The new recruits showed up with shovels and rakes from their houses. Even the neighborhood girls and the boys’ little sisters came and helped dig. We made a small army across the low tide beach. Eventually, we uncovered over forty feet of exposed wood. The crew kept digging.
One of the little sisters blurted out, “Is there any treasure around here?”
“Hush up!” I snapped toward her.
I made my breakaway move to get a drink, but not before one of the other girls, Carla, voiced a sarcastic comment. “So, do you think we are digging up a pirate ship?” Her mockery always killed me.
“I dunno what we’re digging up! Maybe it’s a dinosaur!” I shouted out as I began walking away.
“Dinosaurs aren’t made out of wood.” Carla got a little nasty now.
“Have you ever heard of petrified wood?” I asked. Carla stopped and gave thought to my comeback. She was three years younger than me.
“Yes,” she said as she nodded in affirmation.
“Well, this wood isn’t petrified, so it can’t be anything you think it is,” I shot back, even though my comment made no sense.
“Hey! You’re talking crap now,” Carla snapped back. She had caught onto me quickly.
“Yeah? Well, you and all of your girl cooties are just as crappy too!” I had the satisfaction of the final word over Carla, but I was still nonsensical.
As I trekked home up the river side of The Dunes on fumes from digging, I needed to take a water break away from the digging. I stood and looked down. I observed an amazing sight. From way up atop The Dunes like a sunken ship resting on its side. Now I was even more motivated and intrigued to further uncover this new river mystery lying just over The Dunes behind my house. This might actually be a pirate ship! Maybe we were all going to find its buried treasure!
It was close to three thirty in the afternoon when I arrived home. I heard the rumbling pickup truck pull into the driveway. It was my dad. He’d know what to do! I ran out of the kitchen with my half-filled thermos and beamed, “Dad! We just found a pirate ship!”
A big smile grew across my father’s face. He never really showed great excitement for anything but playing cards. “So, did you find the pirates? Did you find any treasure? Where is this ship?” he questioned.
I shared the entire story. He then inquired, “So, are you going to put my shovel back in the shed after all this digging?”
“Yes,” I replied, and I began impatiently pulling him by the wrist. “Come on! Come on! We don’t have much time.”
Dad’s mouth dropped open in awe when he finally arrived on top of The Dunes where I had first gained the idea to discover the sunken ship. I had never surprised him so well except for his thirty-fifth birthday when Mom told me to leave the basement light on since Dad always hated that. We went out to dinner at Howard Johnson’s restaurant to celebrate. When we arrived home and pulled into the driveway, he was annoyed at seeing my waste of electricity.
“Gene, how many times have I told you to turn off the basement light when you are done playing downstairs? Go down there right now and turn off that light.”
My reply as I was getting out of the car was a simple “no.”
He went crazy. He began threatening me. I ran into the house, into my room, slammed the door shut, and locked it. He rattled the door handle, screamed, and threatened me. He banged on the door like he was about to knock it down and stormed down the stairs into the basement to turn off the light. When he hit the bottom step, a huge group “SURPRISE!” rang out from my bedroom floorboards. I never went downstairs.
Back at The Dunes, my dad was stunned at the amount of work that the neighborhood kids had done to expose the ship. We had revealed sixty feet, and we were still going strong. We faced one enormous problem, though. The tide was quickly inbound. Soon, all of the visible wood, along with our hard work, would be hidden below the Delaware River. We were about to lose our battle with nature. It was a sad thing to surrender our prize to the Delaware River, but the rising tide was a daily event. We grabbed our shovels, and Dad made sure to grab his, and then we climbed the sand dunes and returned home to rest up for the next day of digging. Would the river push the sand back over the ship in the night? Was it a pirate ship? Would there be any treasure? A treasure map at least?
The next day the entire neighborhood was on the low tide beach, close to sunrise. It was an amazing sight. The tide hadn’t washed much sand over the wreck. The river was calm compared to the ocean unless there was a storm. The only thing different about Tuesday’s work was that we started to dig deeply around the sides like a true excavation. Unfortunately, several girls on the street had found out about our discovery through their brothers who were digging at the site, and girls are a real pain! A couple of them decided they were not only going to dig alongside us, but also tell us how to dig. How unacceptable! I didn’t have a sister, but Mark, Big Rich, the Kalbachs, and the Hammerslys all had at least one. This was turning into a circus. At least this event had led to great neighborhood camaraderie among the kids on the block.
As we began to expose more depth, the wood looked more and more like a ship for sure. On Wednesday morning it rained, and it poured into Thursday. We were running out of time. By Good Friday we had at least lost the girls, but also half of our male companions. Since we hadn’t discovered any treasure at this point, many of the guys had lost interest. Our hopes were dimming to get to the bottom of this mystery before returning to school on Monday. We knew that on Easter Sunday, we would be committed to church—a long sermon to honor “Jesus rising into eternal life.” Plus, we’d also have a family dinner at Granny’s. Everything was going to depend on Saturday.
I got up at sunrise on Saturday and grabbed my trusty foldable US Army issue folding shovel and headed across The Dunes alone with my Zorro thermos filled with water. I found the back of the ship resting on its side and continued to dig. Eventually, Mark and Big Rich showed up before 8:00 a.m. We were all motivated and continued our excavation.
Suddenly, I came across a wide, thick wooden piece that looked like a beam. I could see faded writing across the grain!
“This is incredible!” I thought. I returned home and got a hammer and pry bar to take off the engraved wooden section, but even though the wood was waterlogged, I couldn’t pry it off. I returned home again to get a piece of paper and a pencil. I rubbed the etching with a pencil over the drenched beam. I held my breath as I slowly revealed the beam’s secret: Was it Captain Kidd’s ship? Was it Blackbeard’s sloop? The words appeared slowly as the paper was carefully shaded in pencil. “Captain James Fink” emerged. Then underneath the date “1779.” I had a name! The guys jumped for joy! We had a name associated with this wreck that I had discovered! It was a ship! Mrs. Michalski was right!
This was a time before the internet, computers, X-Boxes, and cell phones. So, with limited research resources, our adventure hit a dead end.
I attacked the piece of wood with my hammer and prybar. I pulled out four rusted, cut flat nails from the beam, and peeled off a small chunk of wet wood. Although we didn’t find Blackbeard’s treasure or Captain Kidd’s booty, we found something remarkable and memorable: a shipwreck by Captain James Fink from 1779! Have you ever discovered anything so special?
At first glance, the title seems outdated by 21st Century standards. Its proclaimed notion about girls might offend some readers. Also, Gene J. Miller’s fictionalized memoir about middle school boys coming of age in Delanco Township, New Jersey, on the Delaware River, might appear unappealing to the same youths today. Well, trite but true - never judge a book by its cover.
Miller's fifteen stories resonate for the preteen crowd. It also will make many Baby Boomers recall "happy days." Lovers of Mark Twain or Robert Louis Stevenson will find a new author to tantalize young minds. Miller's characters echo the naive confidence, love of discovery and hunger for adventure epitomized in Tom Sawyer and Jim Hawkins.
An example – the hunt for Captain Kidd’s treasure. The main character, inspired by local pirate tales spun by his sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Michalski, with his best friends, Big Rich Palm and Mark Bruno, went to dig at low tide in the dunes along the beach for the booty. The actual story will amaze and amuse readers. The protagonist gets his stern father and other neighborhood adults involved. They uncover an 18th Century ship and the captain’s name. Cleverly, that story, designed to be read-aloud, ends with, “Have you ever discovered anything so special?”
Like Twain and Stevenson, Miller’s tales are highly descriptive and easily read. They began as bedtime stories for his grandsons. The author’s description of his middle school self and his then mates sets the stage for what a mismatched crew might do with their spare time and imagination.
Mark was “cool.” Big Rich was recalled as “huge... a middle school Hulk.” Miller writes:
Then there was me, The Straw. Not the straw that stirred the drink like Reggie Jackson, but the thin, wispy, bendable, straw that could be blown away in the wind. Poor me; if I ever had muscle, people might see me for the first time. I was a lean buck fifteen on the scale. When I would take off my shirt to go swimming in the Delaware River, the local bullies called me Chicken Chest.
The trio explore and discover quirky individuals while they involve themselves in everything from bike riding to archery to dance lessons to a first kiss in, “So Girls Really Don’t Have Cooties!”
The collection, a font for parents or teachers, will inspire elementary and middle school kids to dream.