My earliest memories take place in the Borough of Runnemede, a New Jersey town of about 8,000 population about nine miles south of Philadelphia. I would have been abut five years old, so about 1950 0r 1951. In this early memory, we were living in a second floor apartment in a house on Forth Avenue (Number 29 I think) owned by a relative of my father’s sister Ella, Helen Wenzel, whom I always called “Aunt Helen.”

Aunt Helen never married and devoted her life to the care of her brother John, who was intellectually disabled. She a dog, Rusty, a Cocker Spaniel I believe, who lived in a dog house out back.

Here’s a link to the map: https://maps.app.goo.gl/9pnXtMPVGwQtJns59

Fourth Avenue was a dead-end street, one block long, which intersected with the Black Horse Pike (the main thoroughfare through town) and ended at a railroad track that ran through town parallel to the Pike. This was a single track spur line with maybe one train per day. As a result, the railroad right-of-way was used as a pedestrian shortcut, particularly by children and there was always a pathway to the railroad from the dead end to the railroad. 

Sometime after this memory, we moved into a small house on Oakland Avenue, about five block’s from Aunt Helen’s, but my mother and I visited from time to time and I always felt comfortable there.