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BACK IN THE DAY - 07/06/2008
Good sassafras and murder
NORTH JERSEY – Here’s a look at what was published in Suburban Trends around Independence Day over the years.
1963 – Old Wanaque
Here’s a weird old article that I’m just going to include verbatim because it’s so kitschy and old:
Not from the pages of fiction or fantasy, but from a very real past, episodes are recounted of life and times in what once was the tranquil hamlet of Wanaque.
Tranquil it was, and so it remained, until 1915, after the First World War began. The great change came about when the DuPont Company bought a sizeable tract of land and broke ground for a large powder (or explosives) plant.
With most of Wanaque’s inhabitants of working age already employed, it left very few local people available for DuPont to hire, so they had to be transferred here from other areas.
Special Train
From Passaic, picking up passengers along the way, a special train ran on the Erie Railroad, bringing workers to Wanaque to work in, and expand the powder plant. Back and forth ran the trains, as three shifts of workers poured into the little town each day.
Job seekers came in droves, and when there weren’t enough hours in the day to interview them all, the applicants slept in barns, other out-buildings or even on the ground, so that they might be first in line the following day. To the 500 inhabitants of Wanaque, the scene was a strange and confusing one, with the many unfamiliar faces and people, whose names they didn’t know.
In the short span of time the population spiraled to an unbelievable 15,000. For its staff, and the out-of-towners to be permanently employed at the new plant, DuPont built a development of about 30 new houses.
First known as Lower Village, it was later named Haskell, after the president of the DuPont Company.
Melting Pot
With the great influx of people came all kinds of nationalities.
The little village hardly knew what to do with so many people and the people hardly knew what to do with themselves.
But, the idle sought amusement, and they finally ran the gamut: drinking, fighting, stealing and gambling — even murder.
Frank Parry, who was Wanaque’s first chief of police and until that time had relatively little law enforcing to do, gathered a force of eight policemen.
When the antisocial behavior reached its peak, …18 DuPont guards were sworn in as special policemen to help keep law and order.
The station house, located in the firehouse, included two jail cells. At times the cells were both occupied when lawbreakers needed to be placed within their confines. If prisoners were to be held, Parry had to wait until they were sent on to Paterson for imprisonment.
Places of amusement for the many inhabitants to go during leisure hours were almost nil. There were no movie houses, pool halls or the like. The Junior Mechanics Hall, the only public building where crowds could gather, was kept busy and dances were held there frequently.
Bored due to lack of other forms of entertainment, the lower element of the population took to gambling in the barbershops and Wanaque’s four saloons thrived.
Cards, Etc.
Card playing ran rampant and drunken brawls were not an uncommon sight. On one such occasion, a man was found murdered. Whether or not his assailant was ever captured and brought to justice is still said to be unknown.
Though there was no curfew, women and children remained off the streets after dark.
But the local gentry tried to live their lives as normally as possible. There were two churches, the Wanaque Methodist that was built around 1700, and the Dutch Reformed, which was built about 1859. The congregations were not large, since few of the local residents saw fit to attend the services of worship and other church activities.
After the powder plant was built and in operation the class of people improved, the local residents say, for many laborers left town and went on to other jobs.
Things were different than they had been. The population had certainly grown, and instead of the three stores carrying groceries and general merchandise which existed before the advent of the powder plant, now many of the residents had turned their front parlors into small places of business. The confusion seemed to subside, and life settled down to a more normal pattern.
Industry Not New
It wasn’t that industry was new to Wanaque. It had been an industrial town since 1850, when a man named Scharett opened a spool factory there.
In the same year, Peter Brown started a gristmill and Bill Hieker began operation of a sawmill. During the 1860s there were two iron ore mines.
Those years were filled with quite some activity and action, too. Abram S. Hewitt, a very influential man in the township, which included Bloomingdale, Pompton Lakes, Wanaque and Ringwood, operated an ore mine in Ringwood. The ore had to be transported from the mine to the steel works on the Ramapo River at Pompton Lakes by mule team.
Hewitt used his power and influence toward getting a railroad put through to facilitate transportation of the iron ore.
He succeeded, but the little township had to buy $85,000 worth of bonds toward this great effort. Feelings seemed to be mixed, as to whether or not the residents wanted the railroad at such a price. The road was completed in 1868, and the last bond wasn’t paid off until 1913. After the entire debt was paid, Hewitt had a new school built, to show his appreciation.
In 1880, a paper plant was built by R. D. Carter, which caused one of the first "booms" in population. Wanaque’s 64 houses now increased to 150, and by now the inhabitants numbered about 500. Yes, even before the DuPont plant began, there was a powder plant in Wanaque, where Laffran-Rand made smokeless powder.
'Good Sassafras’
True, they’ve seen a good many changes in Wanaque since first it was inhabited by the Indians several centuries ago. Perhaps the greatest change of all took place when the Wanaque Dam was built. Because of it, the paper mill, located beneath where the dam now is, closed in 1920. DuPont closed the powder plant in 1930.
The lovely park, with its neatly kept lawns and gardens, with the tremendous dam as a backdrop, serves to beautify the area, which must formerly have been sooty and dirty. The town’s old original Indian name of “Wynockie” was never officially changed; it just seemed to happen over the years. But it meant “good sassafras” to the Indians, and today’s population of more than 8,000 seem still to believe in its meaning.
1968 – Gun politics
They’re talking a lot about guns again because of the recent SCOTUS ruling that allows the federal capital’s citizens to have guns like the rest of the country.
In 1968, the country was reeling from gun violence after Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were both killed. People started getting serious about guns.
We experimented with allowing a reporter to have an opinion column. Here’s a look at an opinion on gun politics from 40 years ago. Reporter Noni Jones submitted this piece:
All this talk about gun control has – like most current events – forced people to polarize their opinions.
Either now you must be in favor of mass armament or you must protest everything from Thompson submachine guns to aerosol bombs.
Somewhere between the Neverneverland just east of California and the Twilight Zone, occupying most of the territory west of the Hudson River, is what was once known as “middle ground.”
This nervously held area has also been referred to as the ignorant masses, large uncommitted numbers, and “have no opinion.” That last term is used mostly on Take-It-Yourself tests on television.
Just because I hate to see little furry animals wiped out with a shotgun designed for use against a charging Tyrannosaurus does not mean that I don’t enjoy shooting a pistol at a target – a paper target.
My having frothed at the typewriter when sporting columnists knock people about gun control legislation does not mean that I’m going to conduct a house-to-house search for anything more lethal than a fly swatter.
It just means that I think that there are too many people shooting other people.
It just means that I think too many people who are buying bullets should be spending their money for a good psychiatrist.
And most of all, it just means that like most people, I think that "Something Terrible Is Going On In the World Today And Why Can’t Someone Do Something About It?"
I am a direct reasoner – subtle forms of argument have always escaped me, as did sines and cosines in math.
People buy guns and shoot them at other people (post hoc), and so we should make it more difficult for people to buy guns (ergo propter hoc), so that fewer people can go around shooting them at people.
Sound good? I thought so too, but "post hoc ergo propter hoc" happens to be the definition of a fallacy in logic.
Excuse the expression, but this shoots down any hope of direct reasoning.
The whole problem could be blamed on “Just Too Much, Violence In the World Today” – as one man found out when he was forcibly ejected from a local bar for refusing to agree to that fact. Like a bloodied martyr, he stuck to his guns.
(Oh shoot — there goes another violent expression. Actually, that brings up another point — whether the National Rifle Association wants to admit it or not, guns and like weapons have penetrated even our vocabulary.
Typical expressions of Americans are shot through (groan) with sayings like: “faster than a speeding bullet," “Roy Rogers and Trigger," "...he rifled through the drawers," "...Pistol-Packin’ Mama," "...you’re fired," and “...muzzle that dog."
And human nature being what it is, if gunpowder had blown up in its inventor’s face instead of eventually being packed into silver bullets for the Lone Ranger, the controversy now raging would be to ban crossbows.
I still think, despite post hocs and ergo propter hocs, that there are too many people shooting other people and I intend to blame it on those aforementioned sporting columnists, who insist that it’s all right because it’s at least in line with the Constitution, which gives everyone an equal opportunity to be tried for murder.
1988 – Family murder
A woman who was allegedly stabbed by a man and died in Franklin made our editor remember Butler women that were allegedly shotgunned and killed by the stabber’s brother.
“The death by stabbing and strangling of a Franklin woman creates echoes of a double slaying which rocked Butler 10 years ago. Franklin Police and the Sussex County Prosecutor’s Office are investigating the alleged murder of Viola Ascencio, 30,” it was reported.
The body was discovered by the victim’s 10-year-old son. Her husband, Santos Ascencio, was questioned by Franklin Police but was not detained. He is the brother of Wilfredo Ascencio, who 10 years ago was jailed in the death of his wife and mother-in-law.
According to Sussex County Prosecutor Richard Honig, a preliminary finding by Sussex County Coroner Dr. Corrie May showed the cause of death in the current case to be massive bleeding, which resulted from multiple stab wounds.
A secondary cause of death was strangulation.
The tests are used to show if there were any other possible causes of death, such as poisons. Honig would not comment on whether there were any suspects in the case but said that there have been no arrests and the incident is still under investigation.
Santos Ascencio was working the 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. shift at Newco Printing in Newton when the body was discovered. He rushed home and then was taken to Franklin Police Headquarters where he was questioned at length and released.
In the Butler incident, Wifredo Ascencio allegedly shot his wife, Rita, and her mother, Ruth La Mont, to death during a domestic dispute. He testified that he was drunk at the time.
The shocking deaths led Morris County to establish a system of response for battered women. Rita Ascencio allegedly had been asking for protection from her husband.
She had begged a battered women’s shelter for sanctuary, but they had no room due to a lack of funds. After the deaths of Mrs. Ascencio and her mother, funds were collected and a more adequate battered women’s response was instituted in Morris County.
Wifredo Ascencio allegedly shot himself with the same shotgun used on the two women. He was indicted by the Morris County grand jury. After a trial, he was found guilty of manslaughter and sent to jail.
Wilfred Ascencio testified he had been drinking heavily the day of the killing. One account said he told a person in a bar that he intended to do violence to his wife, but they passed it off as alcoholic bragging.
The director of the Jersey Battered Women’s Service recalled Rita Ascencio’s plaintive plea for help in an earlier Suburban Trends article.
"My husband is becoming abusive again. He says if he can’t have me back he will kill himself and others." That was her plea just hours before she and her mother were gunned down.
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