Psychic Black Hole?

A fun day at seaside?

On a towel upon the dirt with a searing, scorching sun overhead and occasionally frolicking in a death-dealing salt bath, all while hoping for a cool offshore breeze.

-Brilliant Bill

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My initials are WET. Inherent irony. Childhood trauma has always made me uncomfortable around water, and, like a cat, I hate being wet. A dry towel is my best friend. Most people walk through small puddles on a rainy day. I don’t put my foot anyplace water has accumulated. This goes way back, and I’m regularly affected by it. The story originates in what I’ll call the South Jersey Black Hole.

The triangle formed by Black Horse Pike, Lower Landing Road and Chews Landing Road is at the heart of the psychic black hole of South Jersey. This is where Black Horse Pike crosses over North Branch Timber Creek.

There is an area along the Black Horse Pike (Rte. 168) in Glendora, New Jersey that stresses me anytime I’m near there. Maybe it’s a mild PTSD. Maybe it’s something more ethereal. A highway bridge, barely noticeable, crosses the North Branch of Big Timber Creek. It’s tidal water, ever dark and muddy. There’s a sewer treatment station there. Traveling south, you go down a hill on the Black Horse Pike from Glendora (passing a cemetery on the right) into what feels to me like a constricted, depressing ravine, cross the bridge and go up a hill (a cemetery on both sides) to the appropriately named “Hilltop,” complete with ice cream shop (heaven?). The whole general area seems fraught with tragedy. It’s sort of a mystical negative energy vortex. This is the exact place where the North Branch of Timber Creek transitions from a lovely, meandering freshwater  stream into a dark, muddy, marshy tidal creek. The gateway to a psychic black hole?

News story of the drowning of seven-year-old John Hackett of Glendora, NJ. He lived (and died) in the psychic black hole of South Jersey.

The tragedy, for me, goes back to Thursday, February 24, 1955. It’s the only day I actually remember from my second grade experience. I recall sitting in a pew at St. Teresa’s Church, along with every other student in the St. Teresa school, and I see a little white casket, all alone in the center aisle. In the casket, the body of my seven-year-old classmate, John Hackett. The Sunday afternoon before he had been at a railroad trestle over Timber Creek in Glendora, skipping stones over the frigid water with a friend. He slipped and fell into the water, no doubt wearing warm, bulky winter clothing. According to the local newspaper story “…the younger boy lost his footing…fell into the icy stream and sank. The creek was at full tide, and about 12 feet deep.” That was 70 years ago, and I still cringe every time I drive over that Timber Creek bridge. Whenever possible, I go out of my way to avoid the area altogether.

Bee Lane (upper right corner) off Somerdale Road is where Joan and Craig sacrificed their own lives in 1969. Left of Black Horse Pike is the place where a railroad crossed Timber Creek in 1955, and that’s where John Hackett died. The block of trees at the northeast corner of Black Horse Pike and Front Street is where the bridal shop was.

That area seems to invite tragedy. Not half a mile away, a teenage couple committed suicide on October 15, 1969. Joan Fox and Craig Badiali were idealistic and promising young people who decided such an act of protest against the Vietnam war was worth their lives. Having participated in that war, I was also protesting at the time, but dying would not have changed things. And so, two more senseless deaths are recorded in that little South Jersey “Black Hole.” Those deaths tore apart families and seemingly drove a local religious minister to madness. The whole sad story is in the excellent, comprehensive book, Craig and Joan, by Eliot Asinof.

Less dramatic, but in the same area, was a fire that destroyed a bridal shop, described in the news story as a “114-year-old local landmark.” Seventh Heaven Bridals was the go-to place for women preparing to walk down the aisle. And the fire meant death to the business, a business that delivered more happiness than most.  Like everything and everyone else sucked into that Black Hole, it  never came back.

A business in the business of happiness fell victim to the psychic black hole after surviving 114 years. Today, that site is simply a dense stand of trees.

If you’re skeptical about the mystical element of this place, consider this. The day I wrote this story I sent an email about it to my sister, Kathy. She was in first grade and also present in the church the day of John’s funeral Mass. I ended by telling her I was going to Aunt Charlotte’s candy shop, a Merchantville “landmark” to get a dark chocolate-covered coconut creme egg in anticipation of Easter. While waiting to pay at the counter, a man in front with his son was talking about the boy taking up competitive swimming. I asked how old the boy was — “Seven,” he said. I didn’t ask his name.

Looking north on Black Horse Pike where it bridges the North Branch Timber Creek. The water may look blue, but that’s photo rendition. The liquid is dark and muddy and deeply foreboding. It’s there to lubricate the psychic black hole.

Afterthought: John seems to have been a bad name to have in my grade-school class. There were six, and half died before they were 20. John Hackett drowns, age seven. John Sulpizio, high school gym accident, age 15. John Haley, Vietnam war, two weeks short of age 20.

News of the death of John Sulpizio, my classmate at St. Teresa’s for eight years. I don’t think the psychic black hole got him, but it’s not far away!