Woody Allen slept here? Dec. 27, 1985


  

Woody Allen slept here.

Well, at least a part of his movie, “A Rose for Cairo” was filmed here, the last great act for an amusement park that has existed here for more than 60 years.

Bertrand’s Island has been abandoned, a ghost town full of memories and relics, partly covered over in snow.

A handwritten note scrawled above the jungle boat ride says, “Condominiums,” more foul than any curse words anyone might have thought to write.

A crude prediction for the old park’s fate. Sixty years ago, it had all the prestige of a Northern New Jersey Great Adventure with trolley tracks running all the way from here to Landing, Pennsylvania where crowds filled the cars and came here for amusement.

Saturday nights, locals claim, were as thick and wonderful as any major sporting event, people dressing up as if for the Easter Parade. Swimming, boating, concession stand playing were merely excuses for people to gather here.

Even in the mid-1970s, fifty years after the place’s construction, people lined up to get in.

But lately, the place has declined. The cost to repair the old wooden rides went through the roof. The wooden roller coaster was the last of its kind and size to pass federal regulations. Its merry go round – recently stolen by Great Adventure – cost &60,000 to refurbish, a price that five and ten cent rides could not afford to pay.

But the thing that really doomed the park as a new generation of upwardly mobile New Yorkers eyed the old resort area as a place to park their McMasions, eyeing the old resort area as their new bedroom community – even when doing so completely gutted the character of the place. They even straightened out the old winding road to make it more convenient to get from these new homes to the highway in their commute to the city.

For years, Bertrand’s Island was a luxury the lake community could afford, a giant play ground for their kids and a place for families to go to on weekends and in the summer. It was a family back yard with a large roof-covered picnic area, a small, but extremely clean beach and concessions so affordable it put other amusement places (especially down the shore) to shame.

It was placed to stretch out and relax, a bastion against over development that plagued other parts of the state.

The condos will destroy the whole character of the place and remove any reason for anyone to come here as the employees used to at the theater chain I worked for as a kid, and my grandparents, who used to drive the winding Route 46 long before Route 80 made the place vulnerable to the New York crowd.

Some believe the new development will put a burden on roads and the already overburdened water table.

But it’s the culture that the new development will murder, putting a stake through the heart of what made New Jersey special.

My family had a lot of fond memories. My grandmother remembered the cotton candy booth she used to pass coming in and going out of the park, she and her sisters begging their mother to purchase some for the long trip back to Hackensack where they lived at the time.

My uncles remember the cheap prices, such as Tuesday night being 10 cent night, meaning every ride cost only 10 cents. The elder boys remember sitting near the beach on hot nights drinking brew after brew as they stared out at sunset and later the lights of the houses from the other side floating on the choppy water.

We – Pauly, me, Rick, Rick’s sister, walked through the ruins of the place today, taking photos until the cops chased us off.

The wrecking crews are expected to start their dirty work in the spring.

 

   1985 Menu

 email to Al Sullivan

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The clock is ticking July 18, 1985

Image
  We’re talking love here – silly fictional love with all the connotations of disaster. I seem to be on the meat chopping block with Safire looking for qualities in me that are lacking in her husband. The fact that there is a husband in the first place greatly disturbs me. All this said, I’m uncertain as to why I haven’t ended this already, except to know she is too much like my ex-wife to pass up without a closer examination. Even the way she thinks: slow, methodical, going from point A to point B. It has only been a week since she blurted out drunk that she wanted me in bed. It seems like much longer. And she hints of something more permanent, suggesting that I might fill in for her husband for a much longer duration. The night before last she suggested I come see her in her trailer, as if she is legally separated from her husband, when in fact she is supposed to be biding time until he finds them both a place to live in Baltimore. This is the same kind of smoke and mir
Read more

Report to the Southern front July 4, 1985

Image
   Happy Independence Day. I went to the eye doctor yesterday and came away with prescription for eye glasses. It seems my excessive use of my computer (as a typewriter) has caused me to lose my vision for distance. Curse progress. But on the other hand, the computer is a blessing – no more carbon paper, or trips to the library copy machine, I can print out all the copies of stuff I want. And once I put together another hundred and fifty dollars, I’ll be able to design our zine on it. Some good news on that front, too. A local left wing radio station in New York City spent two hours talking about how good our zine was, bringing even more suckers into our little realm. I just talked with my uncle Harold. He seems to be doing better in his little man cave in the mountains above Greenwood Lake. He turned out to be something of a hermit. But then all that side of my family have something odd about them. Meanwhile, I’ve registered for college, bound and determined to get my de
Read more

An old nemesis December 11, 1985

Image
    Surisky hated me from early on in grammar school, although “hate” may be too strong a word to describe his reaction to me. I was simply available to him for abuse, Third grade was pivotal for both of us. Prior to that, we were simply feeling our way through Catholic School routine, emerging eventually as whole personalities from the muck of early childhood. He came across as a thug, trying to convey the image of a tough guy. He wore a leather jacket and spiked boots, and snuck into see James Dean movies. Third grade was tough on everybody, including the teachers, who considered us the worst class in the history of the school – even in the safe grades of Kindergarten, First and Second. Two of the three nuns retired after passing us on. But it was in the third grade that we began to work our magic, driving even the stout-hearted nuns crazy. Later, the nuns tried to break our spirit. But we fully represented our age and had the full impact of the 1960s behind us. So,
Read more