(ignore May 1, 2017 publlsh date – this was published on March 5, 2020)

                                                                        (this was a t-shirt my mother owned)

 

What do ’50s teen idol Ricky Nelson and I have in common? (aside from the fact that my job brought me to Madison Square Garden in 1983 to photograph him):

 

We were both born in Holy Name Hospital in Teaneck. His family lived in Ridgefield Park. My father – who went to Teaneck High School – used to tell me when I was a kid that he played on the THS football team against Ricky’s father, Ozzie Nelson, who played football at RPHS. It wasn’t until years later that I found out that Ozzie was born 15 years before my father, so Dad must have been about 2 when he went up against Ozzie. I hope he was wearing a helmet.

I grew up on Cumberland Avenue and had relatives on the street behind us (Sagamore Avenue)  and just across the tracks on Cherry Lane, where my cousin Larry Robertson lived. Larry and I share the same birthday – August 17 – but he was born two years before me.

Here’s a picture that I’m guessing my mother took because I found it in one of her photo albums. It was taken at a party at Larry’s house when he turned 7 and I hit 5. He’s in the foreground and I’m in the back with the sparkling eyes and the palm trees shirt I had just gotten in Florida when we visited my paternal grandmother.

 

The following month, I started school for my only year of education that took place in Teaneck: kindergarten at Lowell School. Some of the classmates names that I remember were Robert Teitelbaum, whose family ran Parisian Cleaners on Cedar Lane, Stewie Halperin, who lived down the street from me, and Russell Ross, who lived on Sagamore Avenue, a couple of doors down from my relatives, the Mulligans.

I don’t know if this was a school picture, but it was taken when I was 5, when Mom made sure that everyone knew my name.

 

MR. PHELPS PARK

When I was around 5 or 6, I wanted to join the summer programs that Teaneck had at all their parks. As you can see from the below map, there is a park at either end of my street, Cumberland Ave. I think it’s the only street in Teaneck where that happens (corrections always welcome). I wanted to go to Sagamore Park because Phelps Park was still kind of raw and swampy-smelling, but my mother wouldn’t let me cross Garrison Ave by myself, so I had to walk up and down the hill and go to Phelps Park every day.

The only event I can recall there was some sort of contest by the pool (which I think was more like a fountain). I must have looked good at 5 or 6 in my bathing suit because I was named Mr Phelps Park. Maybe I was the only entrant. Fortunately, I was allowed to cross Garrison Ave the following year to get sunburned at treeless Sagamore Park.

 

 

LITTLE LEAGUE

Being a big baseball fan, I tried out for Little League as soon as I could. In the first year, we played in Central Park, a year or so before it was renamed Votee Park. “What the heck is a Votee?”, we all wondered (sorry, Milton).

Mom had me suit up on the back porch:

 

The remaining seasons were played at nearby Sagamore Park. You can see the ball field in the above map. Our Western League team was called “F&S”. You can see in the below certificates what that stood for and why “F&S” was SO much easier. Of course, very-mature rival team members substituted a couple of 4-letter words for our abbreviation.

 

This was our team photograph. I think it was taken in ’59 or ’60. I’m in the middle row trying to perfect my Elvis sneer and Russell Ross is above and behind me. Our coach was the tall man in the middle, Herb McCullough, and the manager was Bob Blackwell on the right…….BOTH great guys:

 

Bonus – we got to march in Teaneck’s 4th of July parade. If I recall correctly, we assembled on DeGraw Avenue by Queen Anne Road and then walked up Queen Anne to Votee Park.

 

There was one game in my LL career whose details are forever burned in my mind. First, some background: I was a pretty good defensive middle infielder – short hops and accurate throws were my specialty. However, unlike most Little Leaguers, who usually bat around .750, I think I was around .245. I DID make the All-Star team, but only as a second baseman and NOT for my bat. I was also……….how can I put this nicely?………the ace right-handed pitcher. Before you start screaming “EGO FREAK!”, you should be aware that I could say that because the absolute best pitcher on the team was left-handed: my old pal Russell Ross.

Our biggest rival was a team called Rotary, so this Sagamore Park home game was really important. Their best pitcher – a lefty named Jeff Steinberg – went against Russell and both pitched their hearts out. At the end of regulation (six innings), it was a scoreless tie. There was a LL rule that no pitcher could pitch more than six innings, so they brought me in to pitch the top of the seventh.

I had been pitching well lately, but I just did not have it that day and gave up two runs. In the bottom of the seventh, Rotary brought in Stewie Halperin to pitch.  Three-quarters of the pitchers in this game were from my kindergarten class! Stewie pitched like me and loaded the bases, but he DID get two outs.

Unfortunately for F&S, the game now depended on their “slugger” with the .245 batting average. I thought I heard a few groans as I approached the plate. Stewie quickly got two strikes on me. I’m not sure if the count was full or not, but I knew it could be all over on the next pitch.

Stewie had a very rhythmic pitching motion that was easy to time. I’m not sure, but I think I closed my eyes when I swung at the next pitch……………and hit it! I don’t recall where in the outfield it landed, but I wound up on second base and had tied the game! Semi-redemption! And the next batter – I wish I remembered who that was – did the same and drove us in for the walkoff win!

The ensuing euphoric celebration was short-lived for me. I saw Russell and his parents walking toward their car. He had tears in his eyes and I immediately understood why: he had pitched magnificently for six innings and didn’t get the win. I pitched like crap for one inning and got the win. It was WAY beyond unfair.

When I asked Mr. Blackwell about it, he told me that those were baseball’s rules (but it doesn’t make it right), so if there’s ANYONE involved with today’s Teaneck Little League with the power to do so 60 years after the fact, I would urge that person to somehow correct this injustice and present Russell Ross with a declaration stating that he was the winning pitcher of that game.

I’ve never felt deserving of it and I’m sure Russell’s always felt cheated.

 

LATE FIND – posted July 15, 2021

This is the 1960 Teaneck Little League schedule (lot of familiar names here). CLICK EACH PAGE TWICE TO FULLY ENLARGE. Use your back button to return:

 

 

MY EARLY PHOTOGRAPHY

My first premeditated photo got its own post in this blog – https://iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com/?p=249 – and while I had my mother’s camera, I took two others that day, so please read the setup in that other blog post and then come back for these two:

That first shot was taken on Wyndham Rd. I don’t know why I walked from there almost to Queen Anne and Cedar Lane to take this shot………….maybe I had an early inkling that some of the things in the picture wouldn’t be there forever, like the Peoples Trust bank sign, the tall Food Fair sign and the big red oak tree at Cedar and Palisade (“Gee Ma, why didn’t you have a zoom lens so I could have cropped all the extraneous stuff out?”):

 

Oh, look – more stop-action! I should have included this in that blog post: falling tree on Wyndham, dumping leaves on Cumberland (by the Leafe house!). This was taken at Cumberland Ave and Helen St. I’m standing in front of our next-door neighbor’s house:

I do photo walks all the time, so I guess this was the first one.

 

 

MUSIC

The story I went with for years was that I was sick one day and home from school when I was in the 4th grade at Hackensack’s Holy Trinity School, turned on the radio and haven’t turned it off since. That’s probably incorrect on both ends.

I definitely turned the radio off years ago when music stopped rocking and became boring, but as for the early days, I think I grudgingly accept that I didn’t find all of Mom’s early-to-mid 50s music intolerable. I’ve even put a couple of “house” tunes from George’s aunt Rosemary Clooney (“This Ole House”, “Come On-A My House”) in my iTunes library, along with one or two others from that period that I liked.

But I was absolutely hooked on guitar-driven rock…………..so much so, that I wanted to learn to play guitar. After much pleading, my parents let me go to some building in Hackensack whose front faced a municipal parking lot and I think had the word “Conservatory” in its name. But they had rules that I was neither expecting nor was interested in.

“Oh, you have to learn the accordion before we can let you learn guitar”. Oh, goodie – more lessons to pay for! I humored them for a while and then insisted on the guitar. Finally, they gave the OK.

Here I am on the old back porch with their guitar:

 

I’m glad Mom took this picture before their next unwelcome rule was revealed. They said that after X number of lessons – I forget how many, but it was in the lower single digits – we had to buy the guitar!

When I (meaning my parents) refused, the company had me take a music aptitude test. Doing well on it was supposed to change everyone’s mind about not buying the guitar and dropping the lessons. I was doing really well on the test when the eagle-eyed instructor interrupted me and played some sound that I had just heard and responded to on paper. He wasn’t happy with whatever it was that was my answer, so he kept playing it until I realized that there was a better answer, so I changed it.

He promptly marked my paper “100%” and said that I really shouldn’t stop my lessons when I was so musically-inclined.

Even at that tender age (11), I had fully-functional BS radar and that was the end of my guitar-god dreams.

I sort of made up for it in other ways (http://bobleafe.com/).

If you can’t join’em, shoot’em:

 

 

One very tenuous connection to a Teaneck singing star: I never met Linda Scott (“I’ve Told Every Little Star”), but if I barrelled out of my Cumberland Ave driveway in my GTO straight onto Helen St to a point just beyond its southern terminus at Maple Ave, I might have demolished her garage. She lived on Elm Ave on the corner of Maple and the garage was behind the house, facing Helen St………..a literal direct connection (see route map below).

 

 

THE PAPERBOY

Of course, there’s a post about this part of my life on this blog – https://iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com/?p=272 – but that’s about the best part of having been a carrier………….and it happened in Washington, DC. THIS part is about my paper route and will only have relevance for those familiar with Teaneck’s streets.

My route stretched from the railroad tracks to River Rd. The below map is the same as the above one, but I’ve added where my home was, the paper pickup location (Beatrice and the track-side of Windsor Rd) and the red route markers (Beatrice to Garrison to Cumberland to Martense to Lincoln and Martense down to River Rd (and then the uphill walk back home):

 

 

OTHER JOBS

I think Robert Teitelbaum got me a job at Parisian Cleaners. That lasted about a week (WAY too hot!). Lasting slightly longer was my job at the Phelps Manor Bowling Alley as a pinboy. Despite the acrobatics you’re taught to keep out of harm’s way, my leg kept getting belted by a flying pin. It wasn’t much fun limping out of there. My only real regret was that I never got to bowl there.

As a kid in the 50s, I remember going food shopping with my mother at the IGA store on Cedar Lane – a few doors east of Davis Toys. It was owned by Herbert Panzenhagen, our Cumberland Ave neighbor. His son, Billy, was a year-older friend I used to play with at his house. He introduced me to HIS friend, Dickie Kunath, who will be mentioned later on.

Back to the store. The butcher always cut me a slice of baloney when he saw me with my mother. There were lots of Panzenhagen brothers of both the father and the son working there. In the 60s, they moved to another Cedar Lane location between the two Catalpa Ave sections and became Foodtown, where I worked when I was a little older. In the 70’s, I worked with Werner Panzenhagen at Blue Cab.

Speaking of which……….when I worked at Blue Cab, I was the entire midnight shift from ’70 to ’73 while I was a full-time college student. If you took a Blue Cab after midnight in those years, I was probably your driver. The whole story and some pictures can be found here: https://iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com/?p=6541

There IS one picture that’s not included there because I recently found it while researching this post. It’s the Blue Cab cat (I don’t think we named it), who I actually taught to fetch a small ball of rolled-up aluminum foil (yes, it can be done). We bonded because it was just me and the cat from midnight until 7am:

That’s not me in the background – that’s the late Sandy Nussbaum dispatching.

 

Here’s one reason I was so qualified for this job and also my music photography career (Mom must have had a premonition years prior):

 

Almost forgot: I worked at Bischoff’s in 1964 for $1.00 an hour. After 9 months, I received a big raise to $1.10. Two weeks later, I was fired for “making too much money”! That’s what I was told. Good old Ralph Brunkhorst……….

 

Enough about me. Let’s get to The Collection:

 

I think this is my favorite piece. I’m not familiar with Cedar Park, but if it’s one block from the trolley, I’d have to guess it was somewhere near where Glenpointe is today. I’m sure some knowledgeable person at the library has an answer to post. I’d also like to know where this “Home Office” actually was located since there’s no Elm/Washington intersection in today’s maps:

I found this online under “Corporations of New Jersey”. The columns on the right are titled “Act Under Which Incorporated” and “Date of Filing Certficate”. Given the “prospects of bridges and tunnels in the very near future” statement, I would guess this pamphlet to be from around 1920, give or take a few years:

 

This pre-1909 item shows a house on 4 acres for sale or rent somewhere in the Queen Anne Road vicinity:

 

I can’t find an address in the West Englewood section of Teaneck for the Roosevelt Military Academy, but it was founded in 1920, sat on 23 acres and was to move to the Washington, DC area in 1924:

 

The stories within this 1931 booklet are very interesting to those people into Teaneck’s history, as are the ads (a Hackensack house mover relocated the Teaneck VFW building) and the ads from supporters (I recognize the name of a former Teaneck mayor from 1958-1962):

 

What is this 1870 log about?

 

I doubt anyone in town is unfamiliar with the name “William Walter Phelps” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Walter_Phelps). I find this 1875 document quite interesting:

 

I was surprised I got it so easily on eBay. Here’s the seller’s description:

 

Here’s another eBay find:

 

Even Mrs. Phelps gets into the act (though without a signature):

 

 

POSTCARDS

I have over 50 Teaneck PCs and here are a few of them.

The writing and the year are a little hard to decipher (1900? 1910?) and I have to guess that the person, the house and the vehicle pictured on the reverse show the writer in a West Englewood location:

 

Route 4 wasn’t even named (or finished) in this card that shows “Teaneck and Geo. Washington Bridge Road”:

 

I think you can barely make out the “Entering Teaneck Township” sign at the old Esso station by the Hackensack River (and I KNOW you noticed the 14 cents a gallon sign):

 

This isn’t a postcard, but I found it on my hard drive. I can’t find another picture of it anywhere. Practically next to that Esso station on the river was a Sea Scouts barge that sat there for years. I saw it every day coming home on the school bus from Holy Trinity School:

 

One other old Teaneck gas station:

 

Gotta have at least one Cedar Lane Business Section card, right? Here are three. In the first one, I can see tall signs for Food Fair, Big Bear and Buick. I’m only familiar with FF being on Cedar Lane:

As for the third one, I just found this card on September 1, 2020, and I’m glad I did because it’s got the Phelps Manor Bowling sign on the left. Also on that side, I can barely make out signs with the words “restaurant” and “bakery” (could that be “Butterflake Bakery”?).

On the right under the Stillman & Hoag Buick sign is a building that says “W.J. Linn” – the office supply store. Continuing down that side, you can see the word, “GULF” and the sign for Parisian Cleaners:

 

Inns:

 

Outs (no longer there):

 

I think someone named Fairleigh Dickinson currently resides at this address:

 

When you open this:

 

…it folds out to show 10 images:

…and here they are (Captions – top to bottom, left row: “Entrance in Winter”, “Living Room in South Dormitory”, “Dormitory Room”. Middle row: “North Dormitory”, “Fine Arts Laboratory”, “Science Laboratory”. Right row: “South American Students Attending Bergen”, “Cafeteria” (cash register shows a 30-cent sale), “Basketball Team”, “May Fete” (shows no feet):

 

The Bergen Junior College 1949 yearbook:

 

The yearbook’s inside cover shows what’s currently the FDU entrance on River Road in the vicinity of Ramapo Road:

 

Dorms for the ladies:

 

…and BARRACKS for the men! (I smell a discrimination lawsuit):

 

A couple of decades later, this might be showing FDU students shopping for munchies at 4am – around the corner at the Pathmark on Cedar Lane:

(This CBS Radio ad came from the April 2, 1973 issue of Newsweek.)

 

I have no idea when this was from. I also had no idea that Shea Chevrolet was ever in Teaneck…….I always knew it to be in Hackensack. Somebody wanna clear that up for me? Clarence Lofberg was around a long time:

 

“The History of Teaneck” by Mildred Taylor

I think this was my mother’s copy:

 

Honestly, I’m really not sure if it was her copy or if I bought it on eBay because I found this on my hard drive:

…and I seem to recall that my mother knew Mildred, who had signed a copy for her.

 

I don’t want to steal from Mildred’s work too much, so I’ll just mention a couple of things that caught my eye:

1. The look of the 1914 Teaneck police department……

… and how they looked a decade later:

 

2. The drawings on the inside front (Cedar Lane) and inside back covers (Teaneck High School):

Cedar Lane was my downtown. I must have spent half my life there. My father graduated from Teaneck High (he was the editor of the Te-Hi News). I thought I would attend THS also (I wound up at Bergen Catholic). But what these drawings have in common is the artist – Richard Kunath: the “Dickie Kunath” childhood friend I mentioned earlier and the guy I hired sometime around 1967-68 to do a job for me that you’ll have to go here – https://iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com/?p=2761 – to read about and to find out what else Dickie wound up doing.

One last THS item: I found these on eBay and bought them because this would have been my graduation day, had I attended THS:

Is it possible to be sentimental about something you had no real connection to?

 

 

The Casa Mana

Four postcards:

 

Reception:

 

Matches:

(includes two interlopers…………other Casa Mana items in next pic)

 

 

Teaneck…….things

Ashtrays:

 

Glasses………my chance to mention Feibel’s, where I bowled my 3 highest games – all 242! And Lou Feibel was a really nice guy:

 

Halvorsen’s folding yardstick:

 

Buttons:

 

“Get Tough Teaneck” closeup (I cleaned it up a little…………..dunno who the opponent is):

 

TPD wooden nickels:

 

FMBA stirrers/mixers:

 

Teaneck Coal & Lumber pen (with a Hackensack phone number):

 

For those who want to cast a write-in vote for Paul Ostrow:

 

No idea where I got these:

 

Two NY Mirror pistol tournament tie clips (wasn’t the pistol range down by the DPW on River Road?):

 

This is in two pieces and I know nothing about the event:

 

Fairly-recent items:

 

If this medal is for the high jump, why are 4 runners depicted? The date is July 4, 1923, so it wasn’t a high school event. Did Teaneck have 4th of July medaled athletic events?

 

More from gun-happy Teaneck (and I ain’t done yet):

 

Still in its unopened bag from China:

 

If I could, I would use the knife to cut out that misplaced apostrophe:

 

Another more-recent item:

 

I thought it was a letter-opener, but it looks like a very dangerous tie clip:

 

Perfect for note-taking at the TPD or for scoring your bridge or canasta game during a wake:

 

This blotter has a questionable apostrophe and the phone number has an extra digit:

 

Decals:

 

Is that cop shooting into the hospital vehicle?

 

Anyone know the approximate age of this shield?

 

Pistol tournament patches:

 

Frosty the gunslinger:

 

’37,’38, ’64, 76:

 

Richard Kilmurray on Cedar Lane:

 

Even Mom got in the act. I don’t know how she acquired this, but when you work for the court as the court clerk, chances are, you’re not gonna put yourself in a situation where you’d wind up having to pay a fine to yourself:

 

She also probably didn’t climb up any stepladders to remove these signs. That’s just a guess based on the $20 sticker on one of them:

 

NOT MINE/CAN’T FIND THEM/DON’T HAVE (except on my hard drive):

Problem on the Casa Mana roof? (pssst…….the photographer did it)

 

Fairleigh Dickinson was founded in 1942 (MCMXLII) in East Rutherford. The Teaneck campus was acquired from Bergen Junior College in 1954 (MCMLIV – those 3 years of Latin at Bergen Catholic sure paid off):

Since when does 0.999 silver turn red when it tarnishes?)

 

Mom wrote her initials on it so no one would steal it:

 

I think this is a belt buckle. Why does it show the GWB? At no point in the nearly-3,000 miles of Route 80 between San Francisco and Teaneck do you ever encounter or even see the bridge:

 

If I recall correctly, the Imperial Diner was a couple of doors east of J&J Drugs and its menu offered you a free…..something if it was your birthday:

 

Sometime between 1959 and 1962, Kahn’s became Rocklin’s. I remember Rocklin’s getting a jukebox in that back room on the Chestnut Ave side in 1962 and us making Charlie Rocklin sick of hearing Little Eva’s “The Loco-Motion” and the Isley Brothers’ “Twist and Shout” when we played them a million (or more) times:

 

Reel her in!

(it says “1952” in the file name)

 

Never saw these before:

Late addition (I have no idea what this is):

 

I used to play on this pedestrian bridge over the tracks:

 

Wow – the GWB is only a block away!

 

I think this was my mother’s (so many animals on Cedar Lane!):

 

Grand opening of the Teaneck Theater. It only says “September 24” on the marquee, but the year was 1937:

 

 

TRAINS

A railroad station in Teaneck:

 

This photo hangs in my apartment. It was taken from the Cedar Lane bridge over the tracks and shows not only the pedestrian footbridge, but also Sagamore Park (open space up top in front of the houses). Windsor Road appears to only be a couple of tire tracks:

 

The rest of these show train pictures from various collections and what was written on the backs:

Westbound on north-south tracks?

 

 

PHOTOGRAPHS (Mom’s)

On October 8, 1964, she took a picture of Goldwater headquarters, where the old IGA supermarket used to be:

 

On September 24, 1964, she photographed Barry’s son Michael at what she referred to as “Teaneck’s Cow Palace” – a place I can’t identify. Anyone know where it was?

 

On October 28, 1967, she photographed George Romney (Mitt’s father), Max Hasse (who I knew from his involvement at Blue Cab) and others on Cedar Lane. Maybe they were going to the Imperial Diner? George looks ready to shake Mom’s hand:

 

 

PHOTOGRAPHS (mine)

My mother was a longtime customer of Teaneck Camera on Cedar Lane and knew owner Henry Forrest well. By osmosis, so did I. Years later, the store moved up the street to where Hallmark Photographers was on the NW corner of Cedar Lane and Palisade Avenue. I took some pictures:

By this time, Henry was in ill health and the store was being run by a likable guy named Charlie. One day when I went to see him, he was busy with a customer, so I waited my turn.

He and the customer were having a lively conversation that was pretty funny and at one point, I heard something that I had the perfect line for and blurted it out. They both laughed and the customer turned around and gave me a big grin.

When they had finished the conversation, the customer left. Charlie says to me, “You know who that was, right?”

“No”

“That was Ben E. King!”

“Holy shirt!”, as I turned around to try to catch up with him and attempt to set up a shoot sometime. I knew he lived in Teaneck, so I was all ready with my spiel.

He was gone. I never saw him again.

 

In 1982, I did a shoot from a seaplane that was based in Ridgefield Park. It was a very interesting shoot – https://iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com/?p=620 – and on the way back I happened to notice Glenpointe being built and took this shot:

 

That same day, I was on Cedar Lane and took a shot of the Cedar Lane Cinema:

 

In 1983, I took a picture of my parents and the house I grew up in. I used a fisheye lens to get it all in – well, most of it – and that’s why things have a weird curvature to them:

 

I moved out of Teaneck in 1971, but stayed local for the next 9 years. In order, I lived in Englewood, Leonia, River Edge and Ridgefield Park. In 1980, I moved back to Teaneck and lived on West Englewood Ave – about a block east of Queen Anne Road. In 1986, I shot a big fire down the street, nearer the tracks. The whole thing is written up with photos on my site (http://bobleafe.com/).

You’ll have to scroll down to T and find the “Teaneck, NJ” listing. Before (and after) the fire photos, there are other interesting things like the “Hands Across America” event in 1986 and the 1984 shot I took of my mother, who worked for the town for 3 decades (it was supposed to be her retirement photo, but………….).

(This photo):

 

In 1988, I moved to Hackensack and I’m still there.

 

Late addition I just found a week after posting: In that Teaneck section on my site, I mention (and show) a photo that was on the front page of the local paper. I just unearthed that front page:

 

The Teaneck-to-Hackensack Thanksgiving Day Football Game Parade in 2010

Do they even have these anymore?

I took these two shots on State St just before they made a right onto Central Ave on the way to the Hackensack High School field:

 

 

THE BIG RED OAK TREE (NE corner of Cedar Lane and Palisade Ave)

I took this shot of the bare tree somewhere around 2012 or 2013 after I came out of the bank on the SW corner:

 

State Senator Loretta Weinberg is a family friend and I knew that this tree had personal meaning for her, so I wanted to create a special photo when I heard that it was going to be taken down, so on June 1, 2013, I trudged up Cedar Lane at dusk, set up my tripod and took 3 identically-framed photos of different exposures and ran them through an HDR (High Dynamic Range) program and this is what I came up with:

 

There was talk about that picture being used on a plaque or something, but that never happened. I did shoot the tree being taken down piecemeal, but this is all I’m gonna show you of that:

 

However, I was interested in the milling of the tree. For months the big pieces of tree sat in a lot in Rochelle Park. I finally got word that some of it was to be milled in Westwood, so I arranged to shoot that:

(Quick! Count the rings!)

 

Here is the rest of the process:

 

I got a couple of large, thin pieces that I thought might make a nice clock, but they dried out and cracked:

According to the cracks, it’s about ten minutes to two and 30 seconds.

 

My Hackensack apartment’s living room window has looked straight out at the Kipp’s Bend section of the Hackensack River for 30 years. In the last year, however, Hackensack’s renaissance construction put a big building between us and I no longer have that great river view. But over the years, I’ve taken a million shots of it that include Teaneck and here are a few of them:

In the shadows on the right is the northern tip of Hackensack’s Foschini Park, but the illuminated river bank (and its reflection) is all Teaneck:

 

This is a much wider version of the previous shot and it shows the baseball field at Terhune Park and a bus going by on River Road:

 

Except for the Hackensack car dealer balloons, this is all Teaneck. Actually, I can still see this as it’s a bit north of the above two shots:

 

This was my best shot during Hurricane Sandy. It wasn’t raining, so I could clearly see what at first looked like a volcano a half-mile away in Teaneck. It turned out that no homes were on fire…………….it was just a lot of extreme sparking from downed wires on North Street:

 

I just found some interesting online information about cousin Larry:

https://tinyurl.com/FacebookLJR

https://evogov.s3.amazonaws.com/media/33/media/15425.pdf

And there’s a lot more to him than that. Did I mention that he’s also the Teaneck town historian?

 

 

I’d like to thank the Township of Teaneck for their wonderful support during my mother’s illness and her subsequent passing. It seemed like every official and co-worker in town visited her at Holy Name Hospital and came to the wake at the Volk Funeral Home.

When the cortege left Volk to head to the funeral mass in Hackensack via Cedar Lane, none of the cars turned left onto Cedar Lane and, instead, continued north on Teaneck Road for a short distance before making a left into the municipal lot.

It seemed like the entire police force was standing at attention in front of the police station (Mom worked in the Violations Bureau). As we continued through the lot, municipal employees lined the route. I was later told that they were all given time off to attend the funeral and burial.

We got another surprise as we turned right onto Cedar Lane: a police escort, courtesy of another cousin – C.J. Mulligan, a beloved Teaneck cop (remember that the Mulligans lived on the street behind ours?). C.J. was known in Teaneck as the motorcycle cop and he got motorcycle cops from many other towns to escort the entourage to Hackensack. He even arranged for the police bagpipes to play at the gravesite.

He once told me a story about when he had stopped a woman for some motor vehicle violation. “She looked just like Aunt Eunice! I couldn’t give her a ticket!”

This thoughtful, all-around nice guy retired in 2013: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApCBOTk97xs

 

That’s it – I hope you enjoyed MY personal history of Teaneck.

 

email: bob@bobleafe.com

 

LATE ADDITIONS

May 8, 2020

I just found an image on my hard drive plus two loose postcards. The HD image is of Lowell School, as taken from across Rt. 4  c.1935:

 

The first postcard also shows Lowell School – my only Teaneck alma mater (kindergarten):

 

The other card shows the Grace Lutheran Church on Claremont Ave and Helen St. The church could be seen a short block away from my home on Cumberland Ave. As a kid, I remember playing King of the Hill with friends on that side slope. I took my jacket off one day and forgot to bring it home, leaving it on the grass. The next day, Teaneck police were at my door telling my mother that there had been a burglary at the church and my jacket – with my name and address stitched in – was found inside the church. I guess I was a suspect until they figured out that I had been playing there with my friends and someone must have found my jacket and brought it into the church in case I was a member. I don’t think I ever played there again:

 

August 8, 2020

Just found a couple of pictures I took on January 3, 1988 from almost the same spot on Palisade Ave:

 

August 16, 2020

While I was researching something else, I stumbled across this reverse-painting-on-glass (what the little sticker says) Fairleigh Dickinson scene. I don’t know when it was created, but I do recall that the then-controversial mural came about in the early 60s:

 

 

MORE ADDITIONS:

September 7, 2020

I just found a lot more items from Teaneck. If you’re reading this in the Teaneck Library’s Archive, it’s unfair for me to ask them to find the time to make the addition every time I find something, so I’ll ask if they can just add a note stating that you should go to my blog post https://iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com/?p=9366 and see the most up-to-date version that contains everything I’ve added from time to time.

I’m not going to try and fit late additions into the above topics anymore. Anything I find from here on in will be added below to make it easier for you to immediately find the adds without having to slog through the entire post.

 

So let’s start with the more common items:

Teaneck High School postcard (unused, no year):

 

A piece of paper from the Rec department. There’s no other writing and I have no idea why my mother had it:

 

Three stickers for Teaneck’s 75th anniversary:

 

This was my mother’s copy of a Teaneck publication called Your Town. Though no date of publication is found in it, it appears to be from 1948. My parents married in 1946, so it seems that she moved from Long Island and got right into life and government in Teaneck:

 

I’m not sure why she signed the inside front of it………..perhaps to thwart thievery or maybe she was just trying out her new signature:

 

Aside from pictures of council members, etc., there wasn’t much to see photographically………….except for this one:

It looks like it’s from the ‘40s. You can see tall vertical signs for (from left) Food Fair, Buick, Big Bear, Cedar Lane Drugs (pre-Miller’s), (something)Soda (can’t read that top word……….pre-Hy and Harry’s) and regular signage for Woolworth’s, Teaneck Quality Market and Blue Sea Fish Market.

 

My father graduated from THS in 1938. Of course, I have his yearbook tucked away somewhere because it doesn’t tell me as much about him as its immediate predecessors do.

Because the one person who never signs a yearbook is the owner, I bought 1937 and 1938 THS yearbooks on eBay several years ago, so I could get HIS high school signature and whatever little things he wrote.

The cover of the ’37 yearbook was not in the best of shape, but who cares? You can make out “HI-WAY” and a year that looks to me more like 1932 than 1937:

 

THAT’S why I also scanned the first inside page:

 

In 1937, Dad was one of the two Headlines Editors of the Te-Hi News, and in 1938, he was the editor of the paper. His nickname was Loose Leafe. He even had a special signature for that nickname.

The yearbooks I bought had belonged to a classmate of his named Dorothy Parrish, in whom he seemed to be a bit interested.

This image shows part of the 1937 Te-Hi News yearbook page. Dad is sitting on the far left of the front row. You can see what my apparently-not-very-shy father wrote at the end of his junior year to Dorothy in her yearbook. (And what kind of an editor doesn’t know the difference between “your” and “you’re”?):

Hmmmm……….Dad’s mother’s name was Dorothy…………I wonder if there were some mother issues going on with Miss Parrish.

Thankfully, we’ll never know.

 

Also found in that yearbook in the sponsors’ section was this ad for Feibel’s Bakery:

As mentioned earlier, I knew Lou Feibel from Feibel’s bowling alley. That was Junior. Senior ran the bakery, which later became Butterflake Bakery.

 

 

On to the 1938 yearbook……….

The front cover had no mention of the year on it, so – once again – I had to scan the first page:

 

Inside this yearbook was Dorothy Parrish’s diploma, the commencement program and the 1988 program for the 50th anniversary reunion:

 

This image shows what he wrote under his picture in Dorothy’s 1938 yearbook. There’s other interesting information about him already typed there:

This is why I purchased this yearbook: to get Dad’s upgraded-from-Junior-year “Loose Leafe” signature with the one big “L” at the beginning and the one big “E” at the end with small “oos” on top of small “eaf” in the middle (the “s” needs some work, Dad).

He seems to be a bit less amorously-demanding of Dorothy this year. The big-time Managing Editor of the Te-Hi News must have moved on to someone else (maybe her louder sister?).

 

The 20-year Reunion………

Held in HACKENSACK? BLASPHEMY! (is what I would say if I didn’t live in Hackensack for the last 32 years).

 

Getting a mention in the program didn’t hurt either:

 

And 30 years after THAT:

 

I have no idea where this one was held, but I DO recall that Dad was active in helping put this reunion together.

 

October 1, 2020

The Teaneck Library might find this interesting. I made a post about my book collection (“Mi Biblioteca”) that included a lot of books/publications about Teaneck and other local towns: https://iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com/?p=11469

 

Of particular interest might be “The Story of the Township of Teaneck” – a bound, typed 1941 master’s thesis at the University of New Hampshire by Evelyn C. Sloat. Whereas the Library has posted all 79 pages of the thesis, I’ve posted all the handwritten material that was included in my copy of the thesis:

 

There’s also a story in that post about a long-time Teaneck resident and man of science named Dr. Morris Waldstein, whom I met when he was an adjunct professor at Bergen Community College in the late 1970s.

 

MARCH 17, 2021

Just found this Feibel’s ashtray:

 

JANUARY 21, 2022

Today I found this Saints Cafe matchbook. Honestly, I don’t recall ever being in the place:

 

 

June 9, 2022

On May 30, 2022, I shot the Teaneck Memorial Day Street Festival on Cedar Lane.

Click on the below title to get there:

2022 – Teaneck Memorial Day Street Festival

 

 

(ignore May 1, 2017 publish date – this was published March 5, 2020)

(this is proudly displayed behind the radiator in my living room)

 

Continuing the long line of serious topics, I bring you the guys who gave me a lot of laughs in the 90s, as they goofed on the videos of many of the rock stars I worked with for 20 years.

They dropped by for a shoot recently and while they were here, I gave them a preview of this project. Butt-head – the “brains” of the operation – provided a ringing endorsement:

 

They were not impressed that I taped every episode except the first one (“Frog Baseball”, which is available online):

……..nor did they care that I took notes on each episode and documented every appearance of them (and creator Mike Judge) on many other shows:

All they cared about was how much useless B&B crap I have.

 

“Plenty! Let’s start with your movie”. I proceeded to tell them the true story about a friend of mine in NYC who went to the movies one day in 1996 and bought popcorn and a soda, which came in containers that promoted the upcoming “B&B Do America” movie. He knew I was into the show, so he brought them home and dropped them off here the next time he visited:

 

 

Next, I showed them a promotional piece for the $14.95 home video and my copy that shows a $16 price tag for a pre-rented video (which I didn’t pay). I was waiting for them to start ragging me out for paying more for a rental than I could have for a brand-new copy…………but then I remembered who the math majors were that I was dealing with:

 

Then I brought out the pièce de résistance (“the WHAT?, uh-huh-huh”, they said in unison).

“The SLINKY! What did you think, dumbass?”

 

“No one else seems to have one of these – I can’t find another one online.”

 

 

“I also bought your intellectual publications that someone else obviously wrote…”:

 

“………….AND the CD of songs penned by everyone but you.”:

 

Late addition: just found this B&B calendar from 2000:

The pictures on the back show the monthly images – well-known “masterpieces” done B&B-style.

 

“Here’s a nice bit of fantasy taken out of the original bag just for this picture. I can’t imagine you guys EVER graduating high school.”

“Oh yeah? Well, uhhhhh……………you play with dolls!”

“Ha! I don’t have to – these dolls play with themselves.”

 

“So what is it with you big stars and Little League? You get in a flick (“Frog Baseball”) or Madonna gets in “A League of Their Own” and you get your own New Jersey Little League district pin?”

 

The guys took a bathroom break………..together(!) and took their sweet time. They were apparently admiring something in there that made Beavis declare quite loudly:

It probably had something to do with the 2 unopened rolls of B&B TP I’ve had in there for the last 20 years:

 

The last thing I showed them has been in storage for a couple of decades. Here’s the item:

The box it came in:

The remote:

The extent of their vocabulary (which you’ve heard throughout this post):

And the back:

 

The photo shoot? Only the best for B&B with state-of-the-art equipment:

 

You could tell from Beavis’ final comment as the boys walked out the door that he had a great time:

 

 

LATE ADDITIONS

 

May 8, 2020

 

I recently came across this “Dopes-on-a-Rope” that I forgot I had. I have no idea where I got it (or why):

 

With a name like “Buttzville”, I’m pretty sure that’s where B&B live these days. It certainly looks to be up to their standards and there’s no chance that they’d ever score here. What’s more appropriate than a wood-working factory for two guys who are always working their “wood”?

 

 

August 20, 2020

 

Just found this behind a bunch of other useless crap……………..uhhh, I mean “valuable collectibles”:

 

 

August 23, 2020

 

Ditto 3 days later:

 

 

 

(ignore May 1, 2017 publish date – this was published on March 19, 2020)

 

I’ve already featured the 1951-opened New Jersey Turnpike (https://iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com/?p=9096), so next up is the 1955-opened Garden State Parkway, starting with some of my old postcards.

 

Toll booths:

 

The Raritan River Bridge:

 

This is a pretty boring scene, but the flip side is why I’m posting it. According to the card, the shown metal grating was made by the Borden Metal Products Co. in Elizabeth, NJ, where the card was mailed in 1958. It was sent to the chief engineer of the chemical division of the Borden Co. in Philadelphia by someone named……….Borden. I couldn’t tell you if it was a one-off to a company friend or part of a mass-mailing to everyone in the company by the boss. Either way, it’s a bit less boring that the picture:

 

Two questions:

1. I don’t know anyone who has EVER had a picnic alongside the Garden State Parkway…………do you?

 

2. Who wants gum? (I HAD to have this card):

 

 

OTHER GSP IMAGES (mine)

 

I took this slightly-odd-at-face-value shot on the GSP in June, 1978:

 

Twenty-nine years later, I took this shot on Route 4 in Paramus, NJ, where it approaches the Garden State Parkway overpass, shown on the far right. You can see the GSP emblem on the overhead sign above the word “Saddle”. The story about this shot can be found here: https://iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com/?p=939

 

In December 2015, I was in a moving car when I took this shot of GSP tollbooths:

 

 

Wrong-state GSP errors on eBay

 

New York is the Garden State?

 

“Garden”, “Golden”…………..easy to mix up, I guess (if you’re a moron):

 

 

The Garden State Arts Center

 

You have to take the GSP to get to the GSAC (currently the PNC Arts Center), which opened in 1968. This picture was taken in 1967:

 

An early postcard:

 

A nice evening PC:

(is that a comma or a piece of something between “State” and “Arts”? Neither belongs there.)

 

I shot a bunch of shows there. Here’s the sophisticated crowd at one of them showing their paper airplane skills:

 

Three other GSAC shows I shot, beginning with The Outfield:

If their name’s unfamiliar, maybe this won’t be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4N1iwQxiHrs

 

Great White:

You may know their cover of an Ian Hunter hit (which is much better):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bz61YQWZuYU

 

Meat Loaf

I think the woman sitting on the milk crate and facing the audience was an usher. I also think the reason she looked up was because she started getting hit with drops of moisture from above (Meat sweats profusely on stage).

 

 

Collectibles

 

There’s only one item I still have from my youth that I tried to buy whenever I happened to be in a GSP rest stop back then. The men’s room had a machine filled with useless stuff and the only one I enjoyed was the SWISS WARBLER BIRD CALL:

 

I think they were 3 for 50 cents and they came in this box that’s probably between 55 and 60 years old:

 

I just Googled it and was surprised to find they’re all over the place! Here’s one on eBay: https://tinyurl.com/SwissWarblerBirdCall

 

The best deal I found was 12 for $10.00 (not that I’m in the market or anything……).

 

Other GSP/GSAC things I got on eBay 20 years ago:

Keychain:

(Paterson? Never happened.)

 

I think this is also a keychain (the inner ends pull open):

 

Iron-on GSP patch:

 

I had no idea what this burwood(?) dish/bowl was for or why the top has 8 holes, but it’s got the Howard Johnson’s logo, so I know where on the Parkway it came from:

 

I just found another one for sale on eBay and now I know that it’s a nut bowl:

 

I didn’t buy the next two, but found them interesting, starting with another HoJo’s GSP item:

 

and finishing with…………….GSP hankies?

 

 

Lastly, here are the magic coins that helped us traverse the Parkway……GSP tokens:

 

I still have a hundred of them:

 

There must be a better way to present these things (but this ain’t it):

 

I didn’t have all day to fool around with this, so here’s what you get when you have 100 tokens, but no patience, imagination or even a ruler to make things straight:

 

 

We’ve come to the end of the road. I was originally going to combine this with the place the Parkway took me to more often than anywhere else, but that will have to be the subject of the next post.

 

(ignore May 1, 2017 publish date – this was published on March 22, 2020)

(also, this is not the “next post” mentioned in the previous one…………….maybe next time)

 

This happened right outside my window.

 

 

……………………………………………….(ignore May 1, 2017 publish date – this was published on March 25, 2020)

 

From two posts ago:

I was originally going to combine this with the place the (Garden State) Parkway took me to more often than anywhere else, but that will have to be the subject of the next post.

Welcome to the “next” post, which mushroomed in size and HAD to stand on its own.

So – yeah – the Parkway took me to Seton Hall University for one semester in 1965, down to Seaside Heights in ’68, on short hops to Montclair when I was shooting for The Aquarian in ’76,’77, but from 1974 to 1989, it took me to countless shows in Asbury Park, which culminated in two more trips there in 2015 (which you’ll read about later).

 

First, some history:

Asbury Park postcards:

Ever seen a 116-year-old LEATHER postcard that has a photograph of the old Casino attached to the front? AND has sparkles imbedded in the photograph? You have now:

 

Speaking of the old Casino, how about a 1918-dated Casino PC with a clasp that opens up a window in the middle of the image?

 

Fortunately, this card is from the husband. Unfortunately, he can’t spell “Jersey”. Also unfortunately, the card has no stamp or postmark – he never mailed it. But – and possibly, fortunately – he wrote “Love me only Sweetheart” where the one-cent stamp should be and maybe that got it a ride on Cupid’s arrow to the woman. Unfortunately, her address isn’t on it:

 

This is probably the oldest card in the bunch and it’s an Atlantic City card. Because I won’t be making specific posts about other shore towns, I’ve slipped a few in here so they can be shown. The card was postmarked in 1903. And you have to remember that the postmark is no indication of when the card was actually made, which could have been many years before. As you can see from the “Act of Congress” info on the flip side, it may be at least 5 years older:

 

This 1907-postmarked card shows something that used to be a really big deal: the Asbury Park Baby Parade. From the New Jersey Historical Society’s site:

The seasonal Baby Parade was a popular feature of several Monmouth County Towns, but Asbury Park held the biggest. The first Baby Parade was held on July 22, 1890, led by founder James Bradley. 200 children participated and only one won the grand prize, which was a baby carriage. Ten years after the first Baby Parade, about 500 children participated, and every state in the Union except two was represented. By 1910, Asbury Park’s Baby Parade had become the most popular event to watch, drawing 100,000 spectators. The parade consisted for the most part of decorated baby carriages and the prizes were given for the best decorated carriages. By 1919 the winner of the parade was awarded an automobile. With the exception of the Depression and war years, the tradition of the Asbury Park Baby Parade continued until mid-century.

 

Here are two more – both postmarked 1910:

 

This 1909-postmarked PC shows people going wild at an early Rolling Stones outdoor concert on the Boardwalk (produced by John Scher?):

 

This may be the program for the show:

(j/k, JS)

 

Getting back to reality………I’m guessing that this card is c.1912 because it says “NEW Monterey Hotel” and that’s when it was built:

 

This undated card is pretty old – there’s not a gasoline engine in sight (but there IS horsepower):

 

This card’s border tells me that this is probably from the 1915-1930 period and the cars look ’20s:

 

Likewise, this Convention Hall interior PC:

 

This example of ’20s humor was postmarked in 1928:

 

This card from Wildwood has a 1928 postmark:

(is she with the WWE?)

 

This looking-out-from-the-Convention-Hall-Arcade card has a 1931 postmark:

 

…as does this moonlit Convention Hall/Paramount Theatre image:

 

Another Atlantic City card…………but a really interesting one. I can’t find a definitive date (online guesses range from the ’30s to the ’50s), so I’m going with the second card of the same image (found online) that says “1940s”:

 

Another undated out-of-towner (Seaside Park)………….I’m gonna guess it’s also 1940s (when women wore high heels to play leap-frog in the sand?):

 

This nocturnal Asbury Park card has an 8-24-46 postmark:

 

Time to finish up the non-Asbury Park PCs with our friend Lucy from Margate. The first one looks 1950s and the second one is much more recent (translation: I have no idea when):

 

The last 3 cards are probably ’60s and a bit boring (though having Tillie on the flip of the last one brings a smile to my face):

 

 

Asbury Park items

 

Not many…………..and there’s really only one I consider to be old. I have no idea of its age, but look at the clothing. The diameter is 4.75”:

 

I only knew the Casino Arena for the couple of concerts I attended there, but it was also a roller skating rink, maybe in the ’40s?

 

Jumping to the ’70s (the plate is 10.25”):

 

This 3” x 2” Tillie pinback looks dirty, but all that stuff’s in the original image – not on the pin’s surface:

 

 

The Music

 

“The Sounds of Asbury Park” album:

 

Wanna know what that’s all about? Click to enlarge the back of the album and then click it again for full enlargement to read how the AP music scene came about (to reverse the process, click once and then hit your back button):

Note that it was written by Bob Santelli for The Aquarian Weekly – the first publication I shot for from ’76 to ’78. Bob went on to become an executive of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and is now the founding executive of the Grammy Museum.

Wanna hear the whole album? 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVb7tj4UQlk

 

Here are a couple of music-related Asbury Park bumper stickers, including one for the live S.O.A.P. show at the Paramount Theatre:

 

The below images represent just 20 of the shows I shot at Convention Hall, the Paramount Theatre and the Fast Lane (I don’t think I shot that Casino Arena show):

 

LATE ADDITION:

 

I just came across the negatives for two important shows I shot at the Paramount in ’79 and ’80. The November 24, 1979 one had the non-succinct title of “A Night of Rhythm and Blues and the Roots of Rock and Roll”. According to my contact sheet, the performers were:

 

Mr. Popeye

The Attributes

Garry Tallent

Max Weinberg

Clarence Clemons

Billy Ryan

Norman Seldin

14 Karat Soul

Nick Addeo

 

I selected these four photos:

Mr. Popeye (Kenny Pentifallo)

 

(Left to right and shot from onstage): Max Weinberg, Norman Seldin, Garry Tallent, Billy Ryan, Mr. Popeye, Clarence Clemons:

 

(L to R): Garry, Max, Clarence, Norman, Nick Addeo, Billy, 14K Soul with Mr. Popeye:

 

Clarence waves goodbye as the curtain comes down:

 

 

The other show was the aforementioned “Sounds of Asbury Park” on August 30, 1980. The performers – shown in show sequence – are identified in each picture:

 

Emcee: WNEW-FM’s Vin Scelsa

 

Sonny Kenn:

 

Lord Gunner:

 

Lance Larson:

 

Vin Scelsa and promoter John Scher:

 

Ken Viola:

 

Ken Viola and Mary Glogoza:

(Personal note: among her many duties as an assistant to John Scher, Mary worked the Capitol’s box office and handed me more photo passes than anyone else in my entire career. She’s a real sweetheart and it surprised the hell out of me when she came out to sing onstage with Ken.)

 

Ben Newberry (Kog Nito of Kog Nito and the Geeks) and Joel Gramolini:

 

(L to R) Gene Boccia, Ben Newberry, Patti Scialfa, Holly Sherwood, Lisa Lowell:

 

Patti and Holly:

 

Vini Lopez, Ben Newberry, Joel Gramolini:

 

Kevin Kavanaugh, George Meyer:

 

(L to R) Kevin Kavanaugh (I think), Gene Boccia, Ben, Holly, Mr. Popeye, Joel, Ernest “Boom” Carter, Lisa, Patti, and Ed Manion:

 

Richie “La Bamba” Rosenberg:

 

Patti, Lisa, Holly, Paul Whistler, Mr. Popeye:

 

Billy Rush, Ben Newberry:

 

Vini Lopez and Ken Viola after the show:

 

My 2015 return to Asbury Park

 

Actually, this is a two-parter: once in November and once in December. I previously posted 13 AP pictures here: https://iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com/?p=2165

I shot a lot more pictures on those two visits and here are the rest of them.

 

This is the event that made these pictures possible (click to enlarge):

 

And here are two pictures from that evening:

 

Two WNEW-FM DJs you may remember – Dan Neer (l) and Jim Monaghan (r) flank John Scher:

 

John and I stand in front of the sign that graced the Capitol Theatre marquee for Bruce Springsteen’s 3-night stand there in 1978. I have a small site just for that event: http://bobleafe.com/darkness/enter.html

(my shirt is a takeoff on the “Sons of Anarchy” TV show that ran on FX)

There was another picture taken that night that I’m in with John, the DJs and other guests that I really would have liked to include here, but the event photographer never saw fit to reply to my emailed requests for it. So much for “professional” courtesy.

 

Somehow, I was up bright and early the next morning and on the boardwalk to shoot as much history as I could. Here are the shots that are not in https://iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com/?p=2165:

 

 

Just a guess, but does this represent Asbury Park’s southern border with religious Ocean Grove?

 

Of the 8 December shots, the first two were taken at the John Scher Tribute gallery showing at Where Music Lives on Cookman Ave in AP. The rest were taken later that day in the boardwalk vicinity:

 

I guess it’s fitting that the Asbury Park pix end with the sun setting behind the Stone Pony.

 

So where are my Stone Pony concert pictures?

I don’t have any.

As I learned early in my career, the most legendary venues are not always the best places to shoot.

I DID go to the Pony once – I forget who was playing – but it had no photo pit……nor should it have one. It’s almost impossible to shoot a show properly without the lateral movement that a photo pit gives you – you’re stuck in one spot.

Can’t see the drummer? Too bad. You’re SOL.

The only place I shot a lot without a pit was the Cat Club in Manhattan because they let me in early to pick the best spot to be stuck in, based on my MTV video research of who stood where in each band. Did the singer hold the mic with his/her right or left hand? That was important info in figuring out where I’d be shooting from for the next two hours.

The other legendary club with the same no-pit problem as the Pony was CBGB – HORRIBLE for shooting a show. If a band I wanted to shoot was playing at either venue, I would find out where else they were playing and go there instead.

So – I went to each “legendary” place ONCE and I have a total of ONE picture to show for it…………but it’s a goodie (and it wasn’t taken in New Jersey):

 

And on THAT note…………….

 

 

(ignore May 1, 2017 publish date – this was published on March 30, 2020)

 

 

OK, so it’s really Hackensack, NJ – the Bergen County seat – with its one-mile main business section, but it could be any Main St. The situation may eventually become much worse, but this is the snapshot of what existed on March 27, 2020. If it DOES get much worse, I’m not likely to want to walk up and down it for two miles again.

This post – actually, three posts due to the number of pictures (be sure to jump to page 2 after the first post) – was made on a local site run by the Hackensack city historian (site ID: “Editor”). I’m the site’s moderator.

http://www.hackensacknow.org/index.php/topic,3922.msg13850/topicseen.html#msg13850

 

 

 

 

 

(ignore May 1, 2017 publish date – this was published on April 1, 2020)

You may have seen the above pic before in the “2019 Collections – Signs of Illumination” post, where I mentioned that “One of the shown brands will be the subject of a future post.”

The future has arrived.

Of all the brands in that post – https://iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com/?p=8452 – raise your hand if you thought it would be Black Death Vodka……….hmmm, I don’t see any hands.

So why am I championing something with such a horrible-sounding name – especially in the middle of the Coronavirus pandemic? I’m not. I’m just mentioning something that came along in the late 80s and never gave me a hangover, which was rare.

The fact that Guns ‘N Roses guitarist Slash endorsed it and I shot a lot of GNR shows didn’t enter into it, though I DID find it funny, given the top-hat connection. There’s a video about that – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS9XDKBFRJw&feature=emb_logo (if you have 13 and a half minutes to waste).

A couple of years later BDV was gone. My understanding was that the government claimed that the skull was a symbol for poison, so BDV had to go (don’t tell the Feds, but I DID write somewhere that BDV was my favorite poison of the early 90s).

Since it was now banned (and has since come back in some form), I decided to gather as much BDV memorabilia as I could find and I found a LOT of stuff – some of which I had no idea even existed.

I’m guessing you’d like to see it all, so here goes:

 

T-SHIRTS

I know I have a BD Vodka one around somewhere, but I can’t find it, so here are two others I have: a Malt Liquor one and a Tequila one (front and back):

 

COFFINS

Yes – you could buy BDV in its own coffin! They’re pretty rare…………I just found two on eBay offered for $250 EACH (one of them is cracked down the center of the front)………….and I have 3 of them in very good condition:

 

Here they are open. I’ve placed 3 different-sized BDV bottles in them:

 

I seem to recall something about fake BDV coffins. I don’t know if I have any of those, but there ARE significant differences in them – mainly the latches. Two of them close on the left side and one closes on the right. No two latches of mine look the same, except for the fact that they’re a bit dusty:

 

I don’t exactly keep them hidden…………..they’re on my kitchen counter and are highly visible when you walk in my front door:

 

KEYCHAIN

Is there ANY product that doesn’t have its own keychain?

 

CASE/BOX

I don’t imagine there are very many BDV cases around:

 

THESE THINGS EXIST?

There are 3 things that I had no idea existed: Black Death Vodka in a can, Black Death CIGARETTES(!) and Black Death rolling papers:

 

Or – if you prefer – here are the Slashified photo versions (his Les Paul has been replaced by an inferior – but more colorful – axe……….and I’ve found a new use for the whammy bar):

 

THE STASH

I have about 30 empty BDV bottles, plus 5 unopened tiny ones and most of the other goodies stored in a cabinet………………..which reminds me: they all have caps (someone’s selling an empty BDV bottle for $200……….without the cap! If someone pays that much, think what all these could be worth WITH the caps.

 

Here’s one of the little 50ml bottles with its birth certificate:

 

I haven’t dug into that cabinet in years and was surprised to find this old bottle:

 

I wonder what THAT’S worth (considering it has about an inch of sediment in it, probably nothing, Bob).

 

 

On an unrelated note, HAPPY APRIL FOOLS’ DAY!

 

AND on a very belated note (2 years later), look what I just found in the back of a closet:

Not the best-looking cap I’ve ever seen……………can you blame me for burying it?

 

 

LATE ADDITION:

Well, look what I found two-and-a-half-years later under a pile of clothes in a closet:

 

 

(ignore May 1, 2017 publish date – this was published on April 10, 2020)

                Yes – I’m the mayor, I’m the captain…………….and I’m packin’.

 

There’s no rhyme or reason to any of this, so – with a couple of exceptions – I’m just gonna post these items in the alphabetical order of the folders they’re in.

“Badges” worked out well for an opener, so it’s on to:

 

BERGEN COUNTY PIPES & DRUMS:

 

E PLURIBUS UNUM:

 

FIREFIGHTERS:

My mother grew up in Williston Park, L.I. – right next to Albertson and she was quite impressed with this. The rest of the world? Not so much.

 

 

GARDEN STATE GAMES:

 

THE GREAT MAPLE LEAF AND EAGLE ROAD:

“CN” is the Canadian National Railway.

 

LAKEHURST:

Lakehurst is where the Hindenberg disaster occurred in 1937. It’s also where some friends and I would go circa 1971 when they had surplus sales in a hanger.

 

METAL FINISHING:

 

MORRO BAY:

A cool little Pacific Coast town that I visited twice in the 80s and home of Morro Rock – the Gibraltar of the Pacific. Pix of that can be found here: https://iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com/?p=770

 

NOVA CAESAREA:

This is actually another name for “New Jersey”. Don’t believe me?

http://westjersey.org/wjh_nova.htm

And that’s why this commemorative item for New Jersey’s Tercentennial has that name on the 1664 side.

Related: Another NJ Tercentenary item……….this one in .925 silver:

 

PORT AUTHORITY BUS TERMINAL:

 

RUSSIA:

 

SCHRAALENBURGH (what?):

Blame (or praise) our early Dutch settlers for this one.

 

SETON HALL:

 

SPORTS MEDALS:

If this is for a high jump, why is a naked sprinter shown on the front?

 

 

OK, so it’s not a sports medal……….

 

TETERBORO:

Never heard of Bendix Airport? Teterboro’s name was changed to Bendix in 1937 and back to Teterboro in 1943 (you HAVE heard of Teterboro Airport, right?). Any-way, this is pretty rare.

 

U.S. SENATE:

A friend of mine gave these to me.

 

VILLAGE OF BERGEN:

I don’t know why I have two of these.

BTW: this village was in Hudson County – NOT Bergen County.

 

WEATHERTRON PIONEERS:

I never heard of them either……..but it DOES have that Davy Crockett look that no child of the 50s can resist.

 

 

    THE OUT-OF-ALPHABETICAL-ORDER EXCEPTIONS:

 

Picture #2 should explain the near-headliner status of this 101-year-old coin:

(no relation that I know of)

 

And for the grand finale, I give you both sides of a VERY patriotic-looking troy ounce of .999 silver, encased in plastic.

The front:

 

Y’all ready for the flip?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yikes! Talk about packin’………..

 

 

 

 

I think we’re just about done here. What more is there to say, except………

 

 

STAY SAFE!

 

…….and in the words of every stripper in the country with a lisp:

 

(ignore the May 1, 2017 publish date – this was published on April 17, 2020)

 

THE HUDSON TUBES

Before the Lincoln Tunnel (1937), before the Holland Tunnel (1927), there were (and still are) the Hudson Tubes, which opened in 1909 and in which trains ran/run between the Hudson Terminal/World Trade Center in lower Manhattan and Jersey City, NJ.

This commemorative medallion celebrates the opening of the Tubes (“Three minutes from Broadway”):

 

This 1920 sheet music – seen in an earlier post (https://iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com/?p=6696) shows all the happy bigwigs rushing into the new river-crossing of choice. If you’d like to read the song’s pro-New Jersey, anti-prohibition lyrics, click the link.

THE HOLLAND TUNNEL

I don’t have many Holland Tunnel items – not my favorite tunnel.

This postcard shows the inside of the Holland Tunnel. It looks similar to the Lincoln Tunnel, but how much tunnel variety could you expect between 1927 and 1937?

 

75 years after it opened, we have this:

 

THE LINCOLN TUNNEL

The caption seems to imply that this is a photograph of the approach, but it appears to be an early mockup that’s sitting on a table somewhere before the tunnel got its name. The caption also got the state wrong:

 

Prior to the tunnel’s opening, this fold-out brochure was created. This shows the first two pages:

 

This rendering takes up pages 3,4 and 5:

 

Page 6:

 

This commemorative envelope was postmarked the day before the tunnel opened:

 

These two large photos – one fuzzy and one semi-fuzzy – appear to have been taken at the dedication ceremonies:

 

This is the commemorative medallion for those ceremonies:

 

This was published by Creative Educational Society in 1940:

 

Inside the Lincoln Tunnel:

 

Outside the Tunnel:

 

Variations on a theme: the NJ approach

 

So where does all that toll money go? Into a locked Lincoln Tunnel money bag that looks like it says “P.A.N.Y.A.”, (I can’t make any sense of that.) It probably says, “P.O.N.Y.A. (Port of New York Authority) – its original name from 1921 to 1972, when it became The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey:

 

You may have noticed that all the images are from the New Jersey side. I DO have one from the New York side, but somebody screwed up big time on the flip side’s caption…………they even got the decade wrong:

The cars shown are from a time closer to the tunnel’s opening in 1937. But the caption is from the 50s (its mentioned subject opened in 1951).

To prove that these aren’t two different cards, look at the diagonal crease in the upper right corner of the top image and find the corresponding crease in the upper left of the bottom one.

Oh, I think I see the problem! Look below that upper left crease…………..this is a HoJo card that was probably NOT sold at a Lincoln Tunnel HoJo rest stop.

 

Well, it may turn out to NOT be the super-rare error card I thought it was. I just checked eBay and there are FIVE of these being sold – and all have the error. Four of the sellers didn’t notice it and the one who did acted like it was supposed to be there.

 

 

 

(Ignore May 1, 2017 publish date – this was published on April 24, 2020)

 

Way back on March 10 – a whole six weeks ago – I posted a picture on a local site I moderate of the first person I saw outside my living room window wearing an anti-virus mask (http://www.hackensacknow.org/index.php/topic,3922.0.html). I mentioned that I hoped it wouldn’t become commonplace, but that I had a feeling it would.

Unfortunately-prescient little buzzard, aren’t I?

The thread was titled, “Masked citizens – the Coronavirus” and it’s become the repository for everything local that’s Covid-related, including local notices, cartoons and the “Coronavirus on Main St, Anytown, USA” post on this blog on March 30.

When it came time for me get a mask, I immediately went to Old Reliable – eBay – and researched hundreds of offerings. Most were from China, but buying from the country that sent us the problem was the last thing I wanted to do. After a while, I found one that seemed OK from a seller in LA for $9.99 with free shipping.

I bought it on April 3 and it was to arrive by April 13.

It didn’t.

It still hasn’t.

A good friend had mentioned to me that she was making masks and hooked me up (Thanks, E!). Meanwhile, I found out that the company WAS from China and had scammed eBay and thousands of unmasked U.S. residents (over 2,000 at last count).

You know how it’s a bad thing when you get a negative feedback on eBay? I checked this company’s feedback page and, as of this morning, they’ve received 278 negative feedbacks in the last month! And all with the same complaint: no delivery, phony USPS tracking numbers that all lead to info that the packages were last scanned on April 8 and never made it out of……………..Dayton, Ohio?

I’ll get my money back, but – jeez – how slimy can a company get? And shame on eBay for also getting scammed.

So with that problem “solved” and my face covered, I suddenly realized – out of nowhere – that I had a mask back in the 80s that would be perfect: it fit my face from the nose down and it also fit my profession and my personality.

The only pictures I have of it (and of me wearing it) were published in the 1986 post here, which I began by writing about a legendary guy (and friend) in the music business  and then going right into the mask: https://iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com/?p=726 – trust me……….you don’t wanna miss these pix.

I knew I never threw it out, but hadn’t seen it in ages, so I spent yesterday afternoon hunting it down………….and found it!……………but it’s not quite in the same condition:

 

I guess if you were stuffed in a drawer or closet for the last 34 years, you’d be a dehydrated hard lump too.

I’ve searched high and low online for another one…………….nada.

So if you happen to know where one might be for sale or if you have a sure-fire way to re-animate this hard lump back into a soft rubber mask (most of the online suggestions are iffy), please post it in the comments.

Thanks and DO maskerbate safely when you’re out in public.