By Richard Mabey Jr.

How many of us have looked into the eyes of our grandfathers, saw their joy, saw their pain? My paternal grandfather, Watson Mabey, by his own definition was a horse-drawn man. He was singly one of the greatest positive influences of my life. From the time that I was in those early years of childhood, from about the time I was three years old, Grandpa would tell me the stories of the old Morris Canal. Of his days, working with his brother Earl and his father William, at the old family icehouse that once stood along the banks of the Morris Canal, near Incline Ten East.

When I was 12 years old, during my year-long battle with Rheumatic Fever, Grandpa would often come up to my bedroom and visit with me and tell me more of his stories of life along the old Morris Canal. My bedroom was the very same bedroom that Grandpa and his brother Earl shared, when they were boys growing up in the old Mabey Homestead.

My grandfather went Home to be with the Lord, in May of 1968. I was 14 years old and just finishing my freshman year at Boonton High School. I remember that I cried a river at his funeral service. The proud patriarch, the man who served as the last Engineer of Incline Plane Ten East, had now answered the beckoning call of the angels in Heaven. Grandpa had meant all so very much to me. I loved him dearly.

At the dawn of the Summer of 1968, I began the process of writing down, to the absolute best of my memory, the endearing stories that Grandpa had told me over the years. The mules, the canal boats, the hard work of cutting ice from the frozen waters of the canal during the harsh, cold winter days. Stories that intertwined in the very chambers and chords of my heart.

I wrote these stories down, while sitting upon the third-tier planking of my old tree fort. My tree house was an elaborate setup, consisting of three platforms, each one quite higher than the one below it. From the third-tier, I could see Earl’s Meadow, the full length of Mabey Lane, quite a bit of the forest path that led to the old Morris Canal, and a good half-mile, both east and west, of old Route 202 that ran along the front of the old Mabey Homestead.

I found solace and comfort in the solitude of my old tree fort. Squirrels would scurry about the thick tree limbs, birds would bring songs to my heart, the gentle breeze would sway the maple leaves, and from time to time a lone blackbird would fly nearby. 

I kept my journals, my hand-written remembrances of Grandpa’s enchanting canal stories, in a wooden box that was

nailed to the outer portion of the highest tier. Upon this highest tier, rested a little table that was nailed to the flooring of the wooden plank. It was upon this little table, that I had wrote my stories that Grandpa had bequeathed upon me. 

The wooden box was quite an elaborate box. The inside of this wooden box was lined with heavy-duty plastic. My good friend, Stuart Steinhauser, helped me build it. We built it during the Summer of 1965, on Dad’s workbench in the basement of the old Mabey Homestead. The wooden box was complete with a little latch and padlock. Originally it was designed to hold some of my comic books and Mad magazines. But as the Summer of 1968, unfolded, it became solely dedicated for a storage center for my notebooks of my hand-written journals. 

In early August of 1968, I began typing up some of the best stories that I had written, based upon my memories of Grandpa’s dramatic story-telling days. I had shown them to Mr. Marino, the Editor-in-Chief of the Lincoln Park Herald. And, I was blessed to have a few of them make the pages of that dear old small-town weekly. 

In September of 1968, I began my sophomore year at Boonton High School. Keeping up with Spanish homework, solving algebraic problems, and studying biology, distracted me quite a bit from finding time to climb the heights, to the third-tier of my old tree fort, and write the stories of the old Morris Canal. 

Now at 68 years old, I look back with great fondness of those summer days of writing stories, high atop that dear old maple tree. Sadly, that dear old majestic maple tree no longer stands. It gave me great comfort to write down Grandpa’s stories, during that summertime when I so deeply mourned the passing of my beloved grandfather. I still miss that dear old man. 

Richard Mabey Jr. is a freelance writer. He can be reached at richardmabeyjr@hotmail.com. Please put on the subject line: “Hometown Life.”