The Tug of the Past

I had a moment of enlightment while reading Richard Russo's novel Bridge of Sighs. He is the author of Nobody's Fool.

When I read the following I knew at once it applied to why I blog about a time long gone. To set the scene this is a father, who is writing an autobiography, responding to his son:

"Mom says you are writing your life story up there."

"Nothing quite so grand as that, I tell him, though it's true I've written far more than I expected to, having underestimated the tug of the past, the intoxication of memory, the attraction of explaining myself, to, well, myself."

When I read the words "intoxication of memory" and "underestimating the tug of the past" I knew Mr Russo had nailed the feeling which I enjoy.

This blog, as I am gratefully able to tell one and all who read it, is my belated attempt to explain to myself some of what went on over 30 years ago. To the many people who have found this blog and sent their kind words, I extend a hearty thank you. It is all I really need to keep bringing up these memories of mine which bubble up at the most unexpected moments.

The bottom line is: I'll keep writing if you all keep reading. Also, please send your old pictures as they are, as the old saying goes, worth a thousand words. Your suggestions for posts are also most welcome.

Cheers!

Summer Vacation

I guess if the President has his way then K-12 students need to beware. Our President is floating ideas about the summer vacation we all just enjoyed. It could be sharply curtailed if President Barack Obama gets his way.

Obama says American kids spend too little time in school, putting them at a disadvantage with other students around the globe.

"Now, I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular ideas," the president said earlier this year. "Not with Malia and Sasha, not in my family, and probably not in yours. But the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom."

The president, who has a sixth-grader and a third-grader, wants schools to add time to classes, to stay open late and to let kids in on weekends so they have a safe place to go.

"Our school calendar is based upon the agrarian economy and not too many of our kids are working the fields today,"

Now let Paul McCubbin offer his view: In my personal experience, the idea of giving school children the summer off from school has always been held in high esteem. It is a time-honored tradition which we have fit into our schedules for a number of generations. I don't see how our economic position would be improved if we robbed our youth of time off to explore during the summer, and disrupted all their parents vacation plans.

How about we just get the parents more involved during the current school year, and not give them one more thing to worry about during the summer months?

As it stands most households with school age children already have two parents working fulltime. Hey, and what about the teachers??? Does anyone think that they are working 40 hour weeks? They never did in Ridgewood when I attended. Let's just all relax and give this entire idea a second thought. Peace.

Jens Larson in the Circus

If you had ever wondered if the rumors about Jens Larson joining the circus after college were true, then this picture should end your doubts. I heard from him via FaceBook and it was wonderful to re-connect with someone from my old Willard neighborhood. He is married and teaches high school in Phoenix since retiring from the circus. Check him out here:

Jens in the Circus

Ridgewood Bags

Long before it appeared that every school boy and girl was wearing a backpack to school, we were carrying our Ridgewood Bags at our sides. These were usually purchased at one of the two sporting goods stores in town, Perdue's or Bernard's.

We filled these bags with school books, gym shorts, gym shirts, and socks. What's more, they were only carried by guys. I don't remember what the girls used for their books, unless they held to that wonderfully, old-fashioned idea that the boys should carry their books. I know this happened because I remember doing it.

We starting carrying Ridgewood Bags to Junior High School because GW was much further away than Willard, and usually was a bus or car ride. The same was true for RHS, which was even further away for us folks who went to Willard.

The Ridgewood Bag was a rite of passage, in our small-world mindset. I think that it meant that one felt confident enough to go along with the crowd. It was much the same as the Varsity Jacket that guys wore in High School when they became a Letterman in a sport.

While I bought into the Ridgewood Bag I never purchased a Varsity Jacket, and I was a 3 Letterman in High School. The Varsity Jackets were more for the Football, Soccer, Basketball, Wrestling, and Baseball guys. I ran Cross Country and Track. The only Track guy I remember having a Varsity Jacket was my pal Kurt, and he was a 3 Letterman for his entire High School career. There were others who had purchased a Varsity Jacket, though for the most part, they had purchased the jacket while earning a letter in some other sport.

The pure Track guys were usually low-key, especially that select few who did nothing else but run. It's not that we didn't admire and respect the Varsity Jacket because we did. As I recall we were probably thinking more about the weather, and how to stay warm during our Track practices in sub-freezing weather and torrential rains. The Soccer and Football guys practiced in the rain and endured the same heat we did, but they never practiced in January at Veteran's Field, and had to wear long underwear, hats, gloves. I am sure they would have done it if Coach Sweeney or Coach Bennett had asked, but they were never called upon to endure these elements. Maybe this gave them more time to contemplate the aura which surrounded the sports in which they participated. These were the same guys who dressed in ties on the day of games, and were urged on by Cheerleaders who wore their uniforms to school to remind us that there were Football and Soccer games about to be played.

For those of us who participated in Cross Country races and Track Meets the necktie was optional, and the Cheerleaders never showed. This was fine with us because we all knew that Cross Country races and Track Meets did not lend themselves to the sort of excitement which the Cheerleaders produced. This all made for a different mindset among the Track guys. For the most part we knew that nobody was going to urge us on during our events, except our closest friends and family. It's not that it wasn't important to us. We just understood the world as it was. We knew all too well that our events paled in comparison to the Saturday crowds with hotdog vendors which the Football team had behind them.

We Track guys reveled in our individualism and enjoyed those quiet satisfactions which came with a turkey sandwich from the deli near Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. We raced in all kinds of weather and lived to tell about it, as the cliche goes. If you had seen us run the Eastern States Championship race in 1976 in a monsoon, you would understand what we endured that day at Van Cortlandt, and how we had fun in our own special way despite everything.

Stickball

Living next to Willard School did have a few advantages. One was the ability to view the playing fields and stickball court from my bedroom window. The "court" as I call it was basically a wall built in the early 1960s that was probably erected to keep balls from bouncing off the teachers cars in the adjacent parking lot. People used one side for practicing their tennis stroke and kids like me and my younger brother used the other side for stickball. We played so much baseball as kids that my brother's left arm became so strong that his very first season in Tiny Tim League (8 and 9 year olds) he overwhelmed all the kids he pitched against with straight and true fast balls. He has always given me credit for this but it was largely his own talent and the good fortune of living next to a very active schoolyard.

In Spring and Summer it was baseball and in the Autumn we played football. Soccer wouldn't become popular in Ridgewood until the 1970s and, now it is played with a passionate intensity once only known by baseball and stickball players in town. The soccer Moms and Dads have produced leagues for the Spring and Autumn, plus road teams which travel to other towns for soccer tournaments. Kinda hard to imagine that for stickball. In fact, I don't know if there any other stickball courts in town. If my memory serves me none of the other schools have a wall with the proper dimensions for a game. Of course, you could always play against the school itself, which we did when the older boys were using the court. Though playing against the school was not the same and often times the janitors would tell us to stop for fear we would break a window.

Amazingly enough the wall we used for our games still stands and the last time I looked a batters box to determine balls and strikes was still visible on the wall. Hard for me to say if they play as often as we did. There are so many other sports and activities to draw kids attention that it wouldn't surprise if stickball was a lost art.

Graydon Pool 2009

     The following article is from today's NY Times. I've always liked the look of Graydon and my family spent many happy days swimming there, but times have changed. The cost of keeping this charming reminder of a simpler era just doesn't make sense in our current economic climate. The article cites the fact that there are only 3000 members, and that this number is down from 6000 in 1999. I wonder how many people were members in the 1960s and 1970s?

"When she was growing up in Ho-Ho-Kus, N.J., in the 1980s, Melinda Cronk and her friends envied the kids in nearby Ridgewood for one simple reason — Graydon Pool, the languorous green park and 2.6-acre natural swimming hole that was Ridgewood’s blissful monument to suburban summers. In the year before the 100th anniversary of Graydon Park — its pool was established in 1929 — it’s easy to see why. With its sandy beach, its fieldstone walls and particularly its sand-bottom swimming hole filled with 3.8 million gallons of spring water, Graydon Pool seems like an idyllic throwback to a less hurried version of suburban life. Ms. Cronk still thinks of Graydon as a magical place. But, alas, she no longer thinks it’s a practical one. She lives in Ridgewood but does not pay the modest dues to join Graydon. And, after three years of study, the village task force she heads has decided that the only way to save Graydon is to plow it under and replace it with a more familiar symbol of summer, a blue concrete pool. The result has been an increasingly nasty battle, lawyers at the ready, pitting Graydon loyalists, many, but not all, of them longtime residents, versus advocates for a concrete pool, many, but not all of them, younger families new to town. It has turned into one of those litmus tests of modern life and particularly modern parenting. The Graydon loyalists, who have organized a group called the Preserve Graydon Coalition, say Ridgewood would betray its heritage if it opted for a new pool. “If they do what they’re planning, it would be just another thing lost to the wrecking ball of suburban sterility,” said Mark Ferraro, a lawyer, whose grandfather was a lifeguard at Graydon. Ms. Cronk said that, nostalgia aside, people in town have deserted Graydon in droves for more conventional pools in nearby towns. In Ridgewood, a village of about 25,000 people, membership, she said, had dropped to less than 3,000 now from more than 6,000 in 1999. She said surveys of Graydon members and nonmembers showed that too many people view Graydon as unsafe and unclean. Younger residents in particular want a thoroughly disinfected pool with clear waters so they can always see their youngsters. In a 2008 letter, the State Department of Environmental Protection recommended that the town change to a real pool, she said. “In its heyday, that beach was packed,” said Ms. Cronk, co-chairwoman of the Ridgewood Pool Project. “I wish it were not like this, but it’s just not being used. We’ve got to face the reality of changing times, and every path we walked down led to a bona fide pool.” Graydon’s problems, by some measures, began in the mid-1990s when the state first eliminated and then sharply curtailed the chemicals used to keep the water clean. There were problems over the years with clarity, algae and geese. Timothy Cronin, Ridgewood’s director of Parks and Recreation, said that Graydon is now as clean and clear as it’s been in the nearly three decades he’s worked in Ridgewood, with clarity of 10 to 12 feet. Still, he doubts that’s good enough for many parents. “When I drive past the schools in this town, you wouldn’t believe the number of parents who drive the children to school,” he said. “My parents never drove me to school. I took the bus or walked. There’s just a higher level of concern on safety issues now. Maybe they don’t want children walking to school because of all the articles you read about pedophiles.” Even among the parents at Graydon, there were differing views. Tanya Lee, who has lived in town for 15 years, said her four children regularly use the pool and love it. “A lot of the people who complain about Graydon never go to Graydon,” she said. But Jeanette Venizelos, a five-year resident with two small children said it was time for a concrete pool. “I grew up with a real pool,” she said. “And when people say this is a pool, I say this isn’t a pool, it’s a duck pond, a chlorinated duck pond.” There are many cross currents. Last year, a child drowned, a 14-year-old boy from South Korea who had been in the country for two days and was in a deep area he was not qualified to be in. The pool’s safety record is comparable to other pools — Mr. Cronin said he believed there had been two other drownings in the pool’s 80-year history — but the one last summer only deepened the concerns. Graydon proponents point to a modest vogue for natural pools, saying Ridgewood wants to destroy its pond just when it would be in tune with contemporary green sensibilities. Art Wrubel, chairman of the village historic preservation commission, said the commission was adamantly opposed to a concrete pool that would destroy any part of the existing pool and has drafted a letter to the council saying any changes should “improve upon Graydon’s natural and historical landscape.” Then there are financial issues — costs of building a new one or addressing dwindling revenues from the old one. Both sides say they are Graydon’s real defenders. The pool project’s report is billed “Restoring Our Village Landmark.” Advocates say a concrete pool, sensitively built and respecting the park’s distinctive natural setting, is the only way to return it to the community gathering place it used to be. The swimming season ends Labor Day, but the battle is just heating up. The council is considering a request for proposals for a new or updated pool. The Preserve Graydon Coalition plans a show of force for a pro-pond presentation to the council on Wednesday. A pro-pool group, Fix Graydon Now! — headed by a longtime Graydon member, Leigh Warren, who has reluctantly come to believe that Graydon will never lure back enough people in its current form — plans a show of force in opposition. 'I’m told there will be a police presence,' one of the pro-pond organizers said ominously." E-mail: peappl@nytimes.com