Subsections below:
Some notes on
relevant evidence, backing up points in End note 3 of the “Huck” entry
A possible offer
under the banner of “New Jersey Combo Plate”
A few little historical
facts to dish out here
A quiz for old-timers
(or for those with rich historical knowledge of the area)
Teasers: Stories of
old-time oddities, sad stories, and creepy stories
[Edits 7/30/13, especially to a part near the end. Edit 8/12/13. Edit 10/20/13. Edit 10/21/13. Edit 1/6/14. Edits 1/23/14. Edit 7/29/14. Edit 11/20/14.]
Some notes on
relevant evidence, backing up points in End note 3 of the “Huck” entry
Preface
First, here are remarks on an interesting column about some
points of historical interest in Vernon
Township, related to
long-nicknamed “Sisco Hill,” that appeared in the edition of AIM Vernon published about July 18. I
should note that, as a matter of general practice (with rare exceptions), nowadays
I choose not to write letters to editors of local newspapers about things I
could shed light on or otherwise address. I used to do this sort of thing for
many years, from 1988 through about 2005, with roughly 65 letters published in
various newspapers, including The New
Jersey Herald, The Star-Ledger, and others. Today, because I don’t address
local issues so much, and because of the convenience of using the Internet, I
choose blogging to do what little I do of this.
With AIM Vernon,
the situation is more complicated: as a matter of principle, and not simply as
a matter of bitterness, I would not
write to this newspaper, because it is produced by the same company that
produced the Argus edition of The Suburban Trends, the Trends itself, and numerous other
papers—a company I worked for in 1996-99, regarding which I’ve already given
colorful stories on this blog and the “Mountain Bear” blog starting in November
2012. More relevantly, AIM Vernon is
highly derivative, is insubstantial, and as a practical, factual matter, is hardly
the first choice for local news in Vernon Township. (This is somewhat the same
reason I played the role in the “official newspaper” issue I did in early 1998,
regarding the Argus.) Long story
short, for reasons both of principle and preference, on points on which I can
speak, it is the appropriate avenue to do it on my blog and not by writing to a
local newspaper, hoping a letter to the editor would be published.
Ron Dupont, the local-history writer based in Highland Lakes,
I generally have no problem with. He has the interest and patience to do
research to write historical columns that I often find intriguing. He, of
course, has his columns appear in AIM
Vernon, and if it weren’t for the practices I just described, I might write
to the paper to make a point questioning one contention in the ~July 18 column by
Dupont, about a “police chief” who served in Vernon Township
from the 1930s to 1950-something. Contrary to this contention’s suggesting the
man was a bona fide policeman as we usually think of such public servants
today, I believe this one in particular might have been an “auxiliary policeman”
who, as it happened, was some local—a local “hick” as a member of my family
might say in over-the-dinner-table moments—who somewhat affectingly wore a
police chief’s hat, for whatever that was worth, and had an old vehicle
inscribed with some designation as police chief, as a photo suggested published
in AIM
Vernon some months ago. In fact, more generally and as I recall from
the early 1970s or so, there used to be “auxiliary police” in Vernon Township—people,
almost like contract-guard-service guards, but who may have been volunteers—who
did such layperson things as help direct traffic at big public events and such.
They were not true police. This may have been what the old-time Vernon “police
chief” whom Dupont referred to largely did.
An aside: in the same column, Dupont referred to
Warren Burgess, who used to man the “animal control” department for years.
Dupont suggests he is still alive and still performing, as a final segment of
his career, the township function of “constable.” With all due respect to Mr.
Burgess—who must be in his nineties now [no, 86]—I think the kind of function that “constable”
Dupont refers to, as figuring in this township, apart from whatever Burgess’s
particular merits are, is about as meaningless as some elderly person with a
honorary title, wearing an odd hat and sitting on a dais at a public event, who
is the first to slide to the floor from his seat because he’s had too much to
drink. In no way can he be called a law-enforcement officer of any substance, not that this was necessarily Dupont's intention. [Update 1/23/14: Mr. Burgess died this month, according to an obituary in The New Jersey Herald (January 14, 2014), p. A-8. It said he was 86. It also said he had been, among other things, "longtime standing constable of Vernon Township," but I still have no idea what this function entailed (reflecting my own ignorance as much as anything else), though I'm sure he did it well by his own lights.]
Apart from all this, to my clear-enough knowledge, it is
simply the case that Vernon Township had
no formal police force, with multiple workers and cars, until 1975, or very
close to that. And at first, it was a small group housed in an old building
on the Vernon Crossing, an old, previously farm-related building that hardly
amounted to the professional “digs” the police would later have on Church Street.
Prior to this police force being established in the mid-1970s, in sections of
the township like Barry Lakes, you had to call the State Police for police
service, even in emergency issues. This was certainly true regarding the Joe
Davis/Todd house incident in 1968. And of course, today certain rural parts of
the state still rely on the State Police, lacking a local police force. (Anyone
with substantive information to provide to adjust or complement this can
contact me.)
As for some specific
points in End note 3:
(1) For a version of my typed history of the Barry Lakes
region (I believe there might have been two versions that I typed, but
definitely one had to be in the Barry Lakes country club’s hands by about
1989), see here (2 pp., 780 KB pdf; ignore viewable penciled remarks on document).
(2) For a representation of the passage in the bicentennial
yearbook for Vernon of 1992, this passage edited by Skoder in her role of
producing the yearbook, see here (it’s sideways; 349 KB pdf; you can ignored penciled remark at middle column). You will notice that in the middle
column she has a sentence, “They bought and sold the land piecemeal and granted
deeds to buyers.” This rather pause-givingly truncates the original sentence
(as I’d written it), by cutting off its most significant part, that the Davis
company (the passage also names only Handler
among the partners, when in the 1960s Davis
was the lead partner, not Handler) sold land to prospective homeowners before
the Davis company itself had title to it yet. (This part is in Barry Lakes’ own Web site version of the history.) It’s possible
they paid Walter Keogh-Dwyer for land piecemeal only after they had money for
it from prospective home-builders, buying lots as Davis sold them. This, of
course, suggests a situation of fraud, of a type that would likely gain public
notice if it were done today. To cut the relevant part of the sentence off and
leave what remains yields a trivial sentence and misses the very important
point of the original. (I was never directly involved in production of this
book, and certainly had no idea in 1992 that my old writing on Barry Lakes
history would be used for it, without consulting with me.)
(3) For a set of three business records—invoices and
such—from dates in August, September, and December 1967, see here (897 KB pdf). Another, similar set, from four dates from April through August in
1967, can be seen here (1.1 MB pdf). You may get a kick out of the
cheap prices at the time; I’m not fully sure whether this reflects the going
rates at the time or reflects efforts at “gypping” (dictating cheap prices,
while business was booming) by the Davis company. These invoices/receipts, along
with many others, are in my personal possession. (These were not all there was to
be found in the dusty old room they came from.) My sister and I found these, in
spring 1977, when we were playing around in the building that was formerly a
tavern and, for a brief time in the later 1960s, the office for the Davis
company. You will notice that, most likely due to human error or assumptions in
1967, the Davis
company is referred to several different ways: the “Barry Lakes Constr[uction]
Co[mpany],” “Barry Lakes Const[ruction] Inc.,” and “Barry Lakes Constr[uction]
Corp[oration].” These papers were abandoned in a back room of the former
tavern, along with a big old typewriter, which my sister and I used to type
spontaneously written, humorous poems on the backs of the invoices, some of
which vaguely show through as you can see on some of the pdfs. [Added 7/30/13: The company Davis et al. worked out of, based in Manhattan, was Blue Ridge Lakes, Inc., with business address at 220 W. 42nd St. One of its salesmen was a Mac Talan. This is shown on an old business card that someone gave my mother about 14 years ago. Added 8/12/13: Here is a pdf (~7 KB) of a business card from Blue Ridge Lakes--sorry, it's upside-down. On this you see stamped the name of Mac Talan, the salesman, and it is crossed out with what looks like grease pencil, and the handwritten name R. Blackman, who I believe was one of the three original partners of the Davis et al. company.]
A possible offer
under the banner of “New Jersey Combo Plate”
I have considered making available (for a price) a printed (or
POD? Or e-book?) package, somewhat similar to the Folder Hunt offer (mentioned here in May 2012 and again last September), which would be much smaller than the FH package. It would be called the “New Jersey Combo Plate,” and I’ve had
different ideas of what it would include, but one subset of its contents seems
a natural, if for a limited audience: the Barry Lakes History Packet. [Update 1/6/14: For more thoughts on what this "New Jersey Combo Plate" project might be like, see this entry; look at the note early on about "special codes." I'm not promising there will be something concrete available, soon. Update 7/29/14: This offer is evolving as 2014 goes on; people who receive info in the mail on it should take that as the latest word on it. A print version may be available in November 2014. Update 11/20/14: A print edition is not available, as people on my mailing list have been advised.]
This would include tidbits of information, old photos (some
from my own family and some I’ve copied from other sources), and other fun
items.
It comes out of a simple idea: some of my stories that I
make more widely available (on this blog), tied to the local area, don’t
require you to know much about this area. It could be Anywhere, U.S.A., except with a hard-bitten New Jersey edge. It’s
just like Faulkner’s corner of Mississippi—you
don’t have to fully know what it’s really like in the flesh to appreciate his
stories set in a fictionalized version of it.
But now, take the small area I live in and am familiar with:
Barry Lakes,
with neighboring Wawayanda
State Park. This area,
like any, has an old history. There are some funny stories, some creepy
stories, and so on. Some of them may be the basis for the more modern tales we (as
retrospective writers) hawk—for instance, a certain sense of Joe Davis’s old company
is in some sense a basis for the novel I wrote (and recently offered with some “ironic”
annotations), The Folder Hunt, which
itself in the 1980s was an important precursor for my other novel A Transient. And of course, this droll
background may not interest you so much as to tip you off—as people tend to get
clued to “be raconteurs” by others’ writing efforts anyway—to being more aware
of your own background: “Hey, if those are the local-history stories he has to
offer, what can I dig up from my own
neck of the woods?”
Anyway, certainly some Barry Lakes
residents might like some of these historical tidbits.
Within the Barry Lakes History Packet, you can see photos of
the old tavern (as it looked in the 1970s) on Ye Olde Tavern Drive (which, you
may not know, has had several names over the years for accidental reasons, and
originally was Ye Olde Log Tavern Drive, complete with the olden spellings).
You can see photos of other parts of the community from the 1960s and 1970s.
A few little historical
facts to dish out here
When Abe Handler ran his development company, as would have
been most familiar to many here in the 1970s, he had old, pre-used construction
equipment (not an uncommon thing among some contractors). He had two old dump
trucks (single-rear-axle things), one a red-cabbed Chevrolet and one a
bluish-green International Harvester (as I did regarding the star truck in the
movie Duel that I “reviewed” early
last here on this blog, I mention the “make” of the trucks and not the “model”—which
in trucks’ case could be a letter/number array and not a name). Both were used
in a way that wore them out; they were maintained enough to keep going, but,
for instance, not all their lights may have been working, and they were quite
dented up, and…
One time the red Chevy was parked briefly across from the
old “office” on Barry Drive North,
and its parking brake apparently was worn out. For about 200 feet, it rolled
across what was the parking lot there at the time (now occupied by a private
home and yard), rolled across Fawn Road, and came to rest in the swamp on the
other side.
Both trucks were fitted with snowplows in the winter, and it
was Handler’s men using those who plowed our roads for a few years. The LCPOA
(an abbreviation for the name of the country club, as run by residents) did not assume that task yet (the
organization formed in 1977, according to the community Web site).
Sometimes Handler’s crew could be so un-diligent in
snowplowing that, once, on our road, when snow-drifting closed off the road at
one end, for some reason the plowing wasn’t done on the road repeatedly, or specifically
to address the drifting. We phoned the office to get a truck to plow our road
open, and, lazily, someone drove a four-wheel-drive pickup they had through the
snow to make ruts, as if that was what would allow us to drive out (which it
didn’t, really).
It was tough living up here for the first 10-15 years of Barry Lakes’
existence.
More indifferent facts: the man-made big lake was formed
(partly, at least) by flooding old swampland or lowland. (This may have been
done by Walter Keogh-Dwyer in the 1940s or so.) For a time into the 1970s, big,
grey, defoliated old trees stood in shallower area of the lake on its northern
and northeastern sides, slowly succumbing to rotting, and dropping into the
lake.
The dam of the big lake, near Barry Drive North—which is scheduled to
be replaced in spring 2014 [oops! I didn't realize this fact was here; see update later in paragraph]—used to have a boat dock built from it, extending
over the lake by about eight or so feet, and (paralleling the shore) about
15-20 feet long. There was a railing on its rear, just over the dam. You could
launch a rowboat or fish from the dock. [Updates 10/20/13, 10/21/13: I did say, above--for locals' interest--that state-required rebuilding of the dam was rescheduled to spring 2014. Now, as I understand, it is rescheduled to fall 2014.]
A quiz for old-timers
(or for those with rich historical knowledge of the area)
Here are some “quiz” questions, to test how well you know
the history of Barry Lakes (and you would have to be an old-timer here to know
some of the answers):
* There used to be a phone booth—I believe it was red—in
Barry Lakes. Where was it?
* One place used to be referred to as the “day camp.” Where
was this?
* There used to be two water fountains, in different
locations, for drinking. Where were they? (Hint: one was at the “day camp.”)
* The current beach, which is the only one in Barry Lakes,
used to be known as “Beach 2.” There used to be a “Beach 3,” at the far
northern end of the big lake. There was a parking lot there, along with a lot
containing a bathhouse (with bathrooms) and a swing set. (These latter have
long been replaced by a private home.) “Beach 3” was eventually abandoned; it
was never as popular as “Beach 2.” Now, where was “Beach 1” planned to be? (It
was never built, and a good thing.)
* This goes way back. On the old land Keogh-Dwyer last
owned, which was made into Sunset Ridge, there used to be a gas pump, visible
from the road. Where was it? (This isn’t trivia, because it you know where it
was, you know something distinct of the layout of Keogh-Dwyer’s place, viewable
from the road, which was fairly different from what’s there now.)
* Barrett Road now starts just beyond Hickory Drive. It used to be that the
paved section of Barry Drive North
ended just north of Wagon Wheel
Drive. What ran from there to Hickory was, in effect, part of Barrett Road (when
it was all a dirt road!). Then, the township realigned, filled in, widened, and
paved the section of main road from Wagon Wheel to Hickory. In what year was this done
(approximate is OK)?
Teasers: Stories of
old-time oddities, sad stories, and creepy stories (with a few “quiz”
questions)
Dr. Livingston’s house. Now in a location within Wawayanda State Park, where was the three-story
house that Dr. Livingston had built? What was one weird thing about it? (That
is, did something grow up through it?)
The Kazmar house. You may know that there used to be three dirt
roads running more-or-less parallel down the mountain from the Barry Lakes area
into New York State, which reflect there used to be a mining community on the
mountaintop: Barrett Road, Iron Mountain Road, and (old) Wawayanda Road. (Today, Barrett Road is entirely paved, if
not re-engineered; and the other two are paved roads on their parts within New
York State, but either are entirely unusable as roads, or only existent in
part, in New Jersey.) On the section of Iron Mountain Road in New Jersey, there
used to be numerous houses that were inhabited at different times within what
is now Wawayanda State Park. There also, not really on any road, were used
houses on the edge of the big lake, just south of the area of the big dam and
the old smelting furnace (the latter houses were originally used, I believe, by
employees of the New Jersey Zinc Company, which for years in the twentieth
century mined timbers for use in mines in Franklin off land that is now in the
park). Apparently, from the 1960s through the 1970s and a little beyond, some
of the dwellings in the park were grandfathered, with owners allowed to live
there until they passed on or moved. Then, one by one, the houses may have been
demolished. One of the last houses still intact until at least the mid-1980s
was called the Kazmar house. Do you know where it was? (I have a photo of it
when it was still standing, but uninhabited.)
An old barn that burned. The old “mule barn” that used to be
near the still-standing smelting furnace in the Wawayanda park burned down in 1986. I may
have a photo of this barn; and I do have a story about who was alleged to have
burned it down, or suspected of doing so.
A man who died in the park on a hot summer day. [Corrections done 7/30/13.] A man who was a
resident of Warwick Township in New York State, who lived on Wawayanda Road on the New York side, used to jog into the park (uphill a
good part of the way). According to old news clippings I have from The New Jersey Herald, from late July 1988, he was Hudson Ansley, age 69, and he was identified as a cellular biologist working in cancer research, and he worked for Technicon Instruments Corp. in Tarrytown, N.Y. One hot July day in 1988, he jogged up into the park,
and disappeared. A search was conducted over about 10 days. His body was found in a small ravine
containing a stream, I believe off the old Wawayanda
Road in the park (on the New Jersey side). He had apparently started
having a health crisis, went into the ravine to cool off, and died. It was
found he had methamphetamine in his system, I believe [this latter detail I don't presently have a clipping about].
Ferber’s gardener’s house. There used to be an inventor named
Ferber who owned about 1,000 acres of forested land that was eventually bought
up by the state park. (From what I was told by a park superintendent in 1987,
Ferber invented a way to get the ball of a ball-point pen into the tip of the pen
during large-scale manufacturing without the ball’s binding.) His modernistic
house was located in what is part of the park, on the West
Milford side (I saw this house a few times when working in the
park as a ranger’s assistant in 1987). This house was reachable off Cherry
Ridge Road, what is now probably of the condition of a hiking trail within the
park at the West Milford end, and runs as a trail for some miles through much
of the Sussex County part of the park, and eventually links up with a
still-used road in Highland Lakes, Cherry Ridge Road, which is off Canistear
Road. Ferber’s gardener, who apparently was in charge of maintaining the
forest, used to occupy a house near the Highland Lakes
end of Cherry Ridge Road.
That house was later used by park rangers to live in. It was later torn down.
Do you know where it was?
