Bridge Views: Fort Lee Road, Take Me Home

Palisades Amusement Park, The Jersey Shore, swimming and crabbing in the Hudson River, running through backyard sprinklers, the Good Humor Man in his white uniform, rides around the block in Leo Ippolito’s garbage truck, catching lightning bugs in empty pickle jars, running around the neighborhood with your friends all night long while your parents sat clustered in the neighbor’s yard—all  these moments of summers past come rushing back, reminding me of all that was right with the world as I watch my children play in my own backyard afraid to take my eyes off of them for fear that they’ll be swallowed if I look away.

The older I get, the more I remember coming of age during those free-wheeling Fort Lee summers of the 60s and 70s. Vacations meant going down the shore to share a week or two stuffed into a small bungalow with countless aunts, uncles and cousins, and man it was a BIG deal. I'm sure that all of us in Fort Lee partook in the some of the same summer rituals.

The first Saturday morning of every August, my old man would spend what seemed like an eternity loading up our used white Ford Falcon station wagon with suitcases, bags of food, pots and pans. He always wore that aggravated look on his face as he tried to fit everything into the car’s wide cargo area. His expression always seemed to scream, “I figured out how to survive the jungles of the Pacific in World War II, but I can’t figure out how to get all this crap into the car!”

It didn’t help that me and my brother, loaded on sugar from a hearty multi-bowl breakfast of Quisp and Quake cereal, were running around the car like crack addicts in need of a methadone hit.

Our drive to the shore was always interrupted somewhere along the Garden State Parkway by some car malfunction. Either the muffler fell off, and we watched in horror while my father played chicken with on-coming traffic to retrieve it, or my father would sternly order us to immediately evacuate the car because it was overheating to the point of explosion. There must be some photo floating around of me, my brother and old man running along the shoulder of the Parkway screaming as smoke volcanically surged from the hood of the Ford Falcon. Somehow water, twine and duct tape always fixed the problem. Still, we soldiered on somehow arriving at the beach house by noon for two glorious weeks of sun poisoning, ear infections, junk food hangovers and vertigo from inhaling the mosquito-killing DDT that blew from the big truck we would chase down the street.

If you grew up along the Hudson River you most likely swam in it on hot summer days. You were probably taught how to swim by Bunty Hill, a Fort Lee-born Hudson River fixture, Palisade Amusement Park Life Guard and Olympic trainer. He taught me to swim in 1968, possibly when the river reached its most toxic level. As my little head bobbed between the floating flotsam, Bunty would encourage me to take a mouthful of river water and gargle it in an effort to teach me to understand how salty the river was that day. (More salt--easier to float.) Every time I watch a PBS special on how filthy and disgusting the Hudson River was in those pre-EPA days, I cringe in horror. But I truly believe that when I die, my body will glow neon colors from all the phosphorous poisons I willingly ingested on Bunty’s command.

Summer evenings in Fort Lee meant running unsupervised around the neighborhood as our parents sat on their green and white nylon folding lawn chairs sipping gin and tonics and whiskey sours from green Grecian highball glasses. There was no fear of danger, only the need for more ice. How many of you remember those metal ice cube trays with the steel handle that froze to the ice and, if your hands had the slightest bit of moisture, would stick to the ice as painfully as Flick’s tongue stuck to the flagpole in A Christmas Story. Our ice was regularly tinged with the blood of beasts because my mother always stacked meat on top of the ice trays.

We had no schedule to be overscheduled by. Except for a pocket transistor radio, there was no other technology we carried with us. We were free to roam, explore, discover, imagine, pretend and grow. We were free; so wonderfully free as we rode our bikes around town without helmets; without care.  

I can still hear the distinct sound that the boys’ bikes would make after they clothes-pinned baseball cards to the spokes of their wheels; the cards clacking louder, louder, louder with each push of the pedal as we followed them to their stick ball games. Every house had a traceable history; every store had an owner we knew by name. As teenagers, we spent sweltering nights pool-hopping at the Mediterranean, the Horizon House, Park Hill Terrace on Linwood Ave., or crossing the Palisade Interstate Parkway to sit with our feet dangling over the edge of the cliffs with our six packs and our friends. Manhattan floating before us like a mirage; its bright lights drifting like broken shards below us on the slow moving current of the Hudson. Selfishly believing that this moment, this time in this place with these people would never, ever end.

And all of it—flaming Ford Falcons, mangled mufflers, toxic rivers, sweltering nights, boys and their noisy bikes and, most of all, my old man’s aggravated look—were golden moments taken for granted; gone as quietly as dandelion wishes blown away in the soft summer wind.