Cookouts/Picnics
What was needed for a cookout/picnic?
Grill
Burgers
Hot Dogs
Potato Salad and/or Macaroni Salad.
Potato Chips.
Soda
Beer
Quoits or Baseball & Bat & Gloves.
Radio
Lawchairs/Picnic Table.
Possible Small Plastic Pool for kids
Camera
Warm Spring or Summer Day (almost always a Saturday or Sunday)
Family & Friends
Iron Law of Cookouts:
If you take too long to grab a Soda, you will have to put
your hand way down in the bottom of the ice to get Montco
Diet Lime Soda.
7 comments:
Mack: And the best place to have a picnic in my younger days was Washington Crossings Park. Good memories.
Hi Mack; That house we built on Edinburg Road in Mercerville was perfect for cook--outs. It had a large corner lot loaded with trees. It was large enough to build our own swimming pool. My good friend Freddie DeBronzo, who built his own house on Revere Ave. and I, actually made the pool with cinder blocks. I was very disappointed on my first visit to find out they filled it in and built garages there. Regards.
JoeZ and Mack,
Washington Crossing State Park, indeed! It was an awesome place with the pavillions and the baseball fields across the drive. So was Bowman's Hill, over in Pennsy.
These picnic groves were great places to get away from the city.
The only real sounds we heard were the kids and folks having fun and games. You could hear the sound of quoits slamming into each other or rolling around the pins, or the cheers following a softball or hardball being hit to the outfield.
The only wildlife I recall was yellow-jackets. We were always fending them off because they were attracted to Kerns orange soda more than anything.
How about the charcoal grills charcoal grills that started real slow and smelled/tasted of kerosene for hours. They never really got going until after all your food was eaten.
Hot dogs cracked and hamburgers shrunk and had to be covered with mustard and/or ketchup and chopped onions. The taste of kerosene was a normal part of picnics. Wasn't there an old fashioned charcoal roaster in Trenton before briquets came onto the market?
One more thing I remember from church picnics at Washington's Crossing was the dry ice for the ice cream. Just shove a piece of the stuff into an empty soda bottle (without getting your fingers frozen) and fill the bottle with some water from the drinking water faucets. Fog bubbled out of the bottles as rwe rand around with them.
And there was the spring water place down by the River at McKonkey's Ferry House - it closed following the big flood during the 50s. Boy was that water tasty! We filled gallon glass bleach bottles before picnics and brought water home afterwards.
Great times for kids!
Hi Joez Ralph & Bill:)
I loved Washington Crossing too.
We found the Italian American Sportsman Club property in Hamilton Township in the 30s and 40s as an ideal spot for larger picnic and cook outs. Especially appealing were the arrangements for trap shooting, softball and the many things to do to keep the kids happy. Once again, we're praising the days gone by with our old friends.
It wasn't a cooler when we were kids as many of you remember. It was a galvanized tub and someone had to run over to Swan St. to get the ice. No ice, no picnic.
Don't forget Pork Roll and Kerns Creme Soda...the red one!
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