Ridgewood Outdoors

This post courtesy of an old neighbor from the Willard School area, Jim Schoneman:

Yesterday was the first time I took a serious look at this facebook site ((Ridgewood Expats)) and in the last 24 hours my mind has been flooded with memories of my years growing up in Ridgewood. I started kindergarten at Willard in 1961 and graduated RHS in ’74. I haven’t seen a discussion topic talking about my most vivid memory of Ridgewood so I thought I’d start this one. I’m talking about the beautiful and rugged countryside that we lived in.

I spent lots and lots of times roaming the pockets of woods hunting with my homemade slingshots and fishing the Ho Ho Kus brook. The first fish I ever caught was at the duck pond. It was one of those big goldfish that some well intentioned but not so forward thinking soul decided to stock in the pond. Those goldfish ended up infesting the entire watershed. It was kind of funny because when they got into the streams you could see them from a mile away.

My favorite area was the Ho Ho Kus Brook behind Hoffman’s Pond. I’d ride my bike down to the horse farm and get to the stream by walking right through the horse farm property and using their gate to get to the woods behind the house. The woods were full of wild rhododendrons and oak trees and the ground was always covered with a thick blanket of oak leaves. It was never any problem to gather a couple dozen big, fat wiggler worms just by brushing away the leaves. Now, armed with our Zebcos and fully loaded with bait we’d walk down to the stream and fish. We’d fish off of the old wooden bridge. We’d fish the first dam and then walk down to Cole’s Pond and fish that. Then we’d fish the second dam (down by where the tennis club now is). Sometimes we’d fish the stream all the way down to the spillway in Ho Ho Kus. Lots of bluegills, bass and eels, plus the occasional rainbow trout. I’d throw the eels on my little brother. That was always fun. Sometimes we’d find a huge bullfrog and we’d dangle a bare hook in front of its mouth and he’d jump at it thinking it was a fly. Sounds cruel, but that’s what boys do.

My dad had told me that he had heard that the Ho Ho Kus Fire Chief made a deal with the state fisheries department to have a couple of giant trout planted in the stream by the Ho Ho Kus Fire Station. I tried fishing around that fire station fairly often and one day I hooked one of those monsters. I had him on for all of two seconds. He nearly ripped the pole right out of my hands.

I found my pet pigeon, Walter, under the steel high bridge in Ho Ho Kus. I was fishing the stream and there, sitting on a rock in the middle of the stream, was this little puffball. It was a baby pigeon only a couple weeks old that had fallen from his nest on the bridge. I took him home and after a while I taught him to fly (yes I did) and then let him go. The problem was that he didn’t want to leave, so I built him a nice cage where he could sleep at night and I'd let him out in the morning. He lived a grand life for about a year and a half, until he was hit by a car. Walter was famous in my neighborhood around Willard School. He’d fly up to the school and watch the kids play. My mom got called up there a few times to retrieve Walter because he’d land on the field in the middle of a soccer game or he’d sit on a windowsill looking in on a class. My mom, bless her heart, would walk up to the school and call for Walter and Walter would fly down and land on her head. Then she’d walk home with a pigeon on her head.

I’ve got so many more adventure stories that I could tell, like the time I took a bunch of my friends to crawl through that tunnel that led to The Hermitage (which was just an old, abandoned building back then). I got them scared pretty good in there.

Hope I didn’t overextend my welcome with this long post. I was just wondering if anyone else had memories of the beautiful countryside we were blessed to live in back then.

Does anyone remember hiking Devil’s Path?

That was a scary path to walk on. There was a bridge upstream from the first dam but someone burned it up. I remember fishing off of it one time and I caught a bluegill and as I was reeling it in a pickerel came out and took the bluegill. The funny thing about that was that the pickerel was hiding in a couch that someone had thrown in the stream. Since that time I've had lots of fish come and bite on a fish that I'm reeling in, but I can't say I've ever caught another fish that was hiding in a couch!