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

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