Anton Massopust
By: Katherine Massopust
PERTH AMBOY – My dad liked snakes. I asked him one time why he liked snakes. He answered, “Because snakes are the underdog and no one likes snakes, so someone has to like them, so I do.”
He lived his life like that. He always stood up for the downtrodden and the people that needed help. If someone had a problem, he always helped them. That is one of the reasons he became a firefighter. To my dad, the Fire Department is a brotherhood and his fellow firefighters were his family. He was there for everyone in life and in death. If a fellow firefighter needed help, he helped them with whatever problem they faced. If a firefighter died, he was there at every funeral reading the fireman’s prayer.
He loved nature whatever the season was. He loved to go down to the Perth Amboy Waterfront to look at the brant, swans, or ducks or whatever creature was visiting down there. He loved the Great Swamp and made sure he went there every fall to see all the colors of the trees. When everyone else went shopping on Black Friday, my dad went to see the snow geese in Brigantine. He loved to go to Lancaster, not only to eat at Dinnier’s or Millers, but to stop, and watch the Amish Farmers plow their fields, or to buy all the many variety of pickles he enjoyed in Bird-in-Hand Market.
He loved Culvers Lake and listening to the insects and frogs on warm August nights. The locusts, crickets, other insects and the frogs were music to his ears. He loved to go to Wildwood for the Firemen’s Convention, and to Cape May in the summer and fall, especially to the nature reserve there and Sunset Beach to watch their flag ceremony. He used to ride the bikes across the entire boardwalk in Wildwood which is around 2 miles. He did this until he got too sick in 2003. (My mom still rode the bikes down the whole boardwalk 2 years ago – we both did!)
He was the Science Department Head in Perth Amboy High School for over 30 years. I always remember him feeding the rats, mice, hamsters, gerbils, Guinee pigs, turtles, snakes, frogs, lizards, fish, and every other creature in the biology department including an alligator, a skunk, George the Parrot, Houdini the Ferret, and Thomas the Tarantula.
Every April 1st he made it a point to go to a pond in Culvers Lake to get frog eggs for his biology classes. The frogs always laid their eggs on the first day in April. Those eggs would eventually hatch into tadpoles, then transform into polliwogs, then frogs. The students saw this firsthand.
From when the time I was 11-16, my dad coached the Blue Koalas softball team in Hopelawn Little League and later on the girl’s softball team in Perth Amboy High School (from my sophomore year to the year after I graduated in 1985). I remember he had beard bite as one of the signals to steal a base. Sometimes he would forget himself and bite his beard, and the runner would go, even though it wasn’t a good time.
He always enjoyed the flea market in Culvers Lake. He loved to socialize with all the characters there, both the dealers or the customers. He would go on to run the Culver Lake Wicker Outlet and Flea Market in the Red Barn for over 30 years with his partners.
He always wanted to be the tough guy, the “real man,” but he was tougher than he thought. More important than being a “real man,” he was a good man. Daddy was the type of person who picked and chose his battles. If someone wronged him, many times he viewed bickering with them as a waste of his time and not worth the aggravation. He felt they had to live with what they did.
He was a man of character, and always believed to do what is morally right.
There were many vacations, parties, and events that we enjoyed over all the years. So many memories.
Miss you, Daddy.
