Miss Brown

Miss Brown was a maiden lady, a teacher/librarian, and a member of our church. She lived in a tiny house on Kings Highway, just across the small bridge that leads into Swedesboro. She lived on the creek. The house was such a delight, but it was tiny. She was soft spoken and seemed to really enjoy four rambunctious children.

I looked on Google Earth and it seems that just past that bridge, there is still a tiny building, but after all these years, I doubt it's the same one.



I always thought that small bridge was a bit scary, maybe because I had never seen a bridge like it before. Oh, I'd been over the Ben Franklin Bridge, and probably the Walt Whitman Bridge had been opened by the time we were visiting Miss Brown, but that bridge was small and different.

Miss Brown would come to pick us up in her brown Chevrolet (with running boards) and we would pile into her car for a day in the country. Why Swedesboro was more a day in the country than where we lived, I don't know. It just seemed more barren, because we had to go through so much swampy land to get to her place.

I think my mother particularly enjoyed these jaunts. Dad never went with us. But she enjoyed them so much because Miss Brown had such a wonderful garden. I recall walking through her garden down to the creek, never venturing into the water, but returning to her small home, very muddy.

Creek water is tidal in many New Jersey creeks, and this one was, so there was a mud-bed in her yard at certain times of the day.

The little house was really only four rooms, with a sun porch tacked on the back -- and when I say "tacked" I mean tacked. You could see throught the boards where the porch was attached to the house. Since I was never there in winter it didn't matter. We ate our lunch -- we always went for lunch -- on that little porch area.

I remember the floors in her little house weren't exactly "plumb." But to me her home was like a patchwork quilt. Lots of stuff, lots of patterns, but oh, so homey.