Metuchen Edison History Features

Recollections of

Boyhood Days

In Old Metuchen

By

David Trumbull Marshall

Published by The Case Publishing Co., Flushing NY 1930

(Second Edition)- (c) 1930

Eddie's Wedding.

When I was a boy there was a somewhat feeble-minded youth in Metuchen by the name of Eddie.

Eddie, like most good-natured boobs, was the butt of many practical jokes which he took in good part usually because he did not have wit enough to do otherwise.

One evening it was noised about Metuchen that Eddie was to be married at the Rectory of the Catholic Church, then on the corner of Durham Avenue and Main Street.

The boys and girls resolved to give Eddie a send-off.

We all crowded into the reception room of the Rectory.

The priest leaned over the centre table, the better to read his office book by the dim light of a kerosene lamp.

The boys and girls stood on the sofas and on chairs to get a better view. Once the priest had to stop and rebuke Nellie F., one of the prettiest girls in Metuchen and one withal to whom fear was unknown, for giggling.

After the ceremony Eddie blew himself and his bride to a ride to the railroad station in John Dempsey's hack.

The boys and girls treated Eddie to a callithumpian serenade. There were dinner bells, and cow bells, and conch-shells, and tin horns, and last but not least a horse fiddle.

We all raced off to the railroad station to be there when the train came in, for Eddie was to go on to New York City, twenty-five miles away, on his honeymoon.

I don't think Eddie had ever gotten as far afield before in his life.

When at the sound of the dinner bells and the cow bells, conch-shells and the tin horns and the horse fiddle, the train pulled in, Eddie was so rattled that he asked the conductor, "Does this train stop at Jersey City ?"

It did; for that was before the days of the Pennsylvania Railroad tunnel and the trains always stopped in Jersey City when they got as far as the Hudson River.