[ back ]
BACK IN THE DAY - 07/20/2008
(by Bryan La Placa - Webmaster and Argus Managing Editor - July 23, 2008)
Guitar god, hippies, a tornado and German shepherds
NORTH JERSEY – Here’s a look at what was published in Suburban Trends around mid-July over the years.
1958 – Les Paul
North Jersey News, which eventually became Suburban Trends, had a “This is your neighbor” feature in several editions. In the July 15, 1958 edition, famous area resident Les Paul was the focus. His electric guitar innovations and recording techniques heavily influenced the sound of rock ‘n’ roll.
Writer Sandy Watt went to meet Paul and talk with him and his wife Mary Ford, who sang on many hit Les Paul records. They had just returned from a trip to the West Coast where Paul took care of business arrangements with recording studios.
Watt reported that when first entering Paul’s home, one encountered a room used for editing and filming.
“To the right is a huge recording room with lights and enough control knobs and machinery to take the services of a corps of engineers. Set up high off this, is the completely equipped control room. To the left is a TV room, which serves as an office. One complete wing of the house is a movie studio, where they make their films for movies and television. This is really being able to do all of your work at home,” it was reported.
“The rest of the house is utterly charming and gracious,” the article went on.
At the time, Paul’s daughter Mary Colleen was 12 weeks old.
“Boy, she’s wonderful to me,” said Ford. The reporter said, “Her face softened like a Madonna” when cradling her baby.
The article talked about Paul’s early career, playing guitar and harmonica for radio shows in the Midwest, then moving to California, founding the Les Paul trio and working with Bing Crosby and Jack Benny.
“Along with everyone else Les was caught up in the maelstrom of the war, and he was assigned to Major Meredith Wilson, and his duties included making transcriptions of overseas units and accompanying artists such as Jack Benny, Joan Davis, Bing Crosby and the Andrew Sisters,” it was reported.
Ending his service career in 1945, Paul reformed the trio and went on the road.
“Up to this time, Les had never been satisfied with the sounds his guitar made on wax. There was a kind of fuzziness on record, similar to a photo being out of focus. He decided to do something about it,” the article said, retelling the story about how the guitar that many artists feel is the best was born.
“Neighbors of his in a quiet section of Hollywood noted strange things starting to happen,” it was reported.
Paul, who couldn’t read music, was bringing home large stacks of books each week and staying up all night reading them. They were books about sound engineering, physics, electronics, recording and other topics.
He also built a studio out of his garage and one night he had some friends over and they got to talking about, “how wonderful an orchestra would be if all played like one.”
That was when Paul got the idea of playing the rhythm, melody, harmony and background tracks of a song by himself and then laying them all on top of each other so that in the final recording, it really would be an orchestra of one. No one had ever done that before, but it would be hard to imagine recording music these days without laying separate tracks on top of each other.
Mary Ford died in 1977. Les Paul still lives in Mahwah.
Unfortunately, many of the old editions of North Jersey News have become blurred and almost illegible with time, so some sections of the old article on Paul are lost.
1963 – Hippie bashing
“Vivid reminders, some of physical pain and others of unpleasant sights and sounds remain in the minds of 55 campers and 15 counselors of Camp Summerlane at Rosman, N.C., who were literally chased from their campsite there last Friday morning,” it was reported on the front page of Suburban Trends in the Thursday, July 18, 1963 edition.
“Now comfortably located at Camp Midvale, Ringwood (present site of Weis Ecology Center), the group can recall the violence in graphic detail, as they view their buses with bullet holes in the windshields and windows. Physical abuse still shows on some. Counselor George Hall with knife slashes on his back and a blackened eye, others with visible bruises, and jaws that still ache from the pummeling and beating they took,” said the article about the transplanted group.
“It was a group of 25 or 30 teen-aged hoodlums, a group of unemployed young men, who were responsible for the violence,” said the Rev. George Von Hilsheimer, organizer of Camp Summerlane.
The attitude of police was also responsible, he said, for the danger to the children and adults based on false accusations made against the campers and counselors of practicing free love, nudism and listening to lectures on sex.
“After persuading us to stay on Thursday night, we were told by the police officer in charge on Friday morning that we had better leave because he could not guarantee our safety. My question was and is, why did the large contingent of lawmen permit the hoodlums to congregate at the camp?” asked Von Hilsheimer.
According to Von Hilsheimer, the officer gave the group until noon to pack up and leave the North Carolina camp, a deadline set by the hoodlums.
“Can you imagine?” he asked. “Trying to load 55 kids and equipment on buses and cars and be on your way all within the short space of an hour?”
He related how three counselors had been beaten when they attempted to reason with the crowd. The children were protected and evacuated safely, but the refugee campers’ buses were stoned, shot at and damaged in other ways.
One bus was left behind after being disabled by at least 36 shots, said Von Hilsheimer.
Two hours past the noon deadline, the group was led out by a police escort of 15 cars.
“Screaming racists followed, wanting to know about the Negroes in the camp,” said Von Hilsheimer.
“It may be ironic,” he went on, “but the truth is that the Negro children were lighter than the white ones and not so recognizable as colored children.”
Von Hilsheimer further stated that he felt the issue of segregation was the real one, and that the accusations of nudism and free love were built up and invented to camouflage the real issue.
When last seen by Suburban Trends, the newly arrived campers and counselors were comfortable at their new location at Camp Midvale. They were reportedly “orderly and well-behaved,” in this newspaper’s estimation.
For protection, they had two large German shepherd dogs on leashes. The dogs patrolled the grounds every night. Although friendly to people they knew, the dogs were reportedly dangerous when they encountered strangers.
“We’ve heard that some small college in this area planned to picket our camp. But we don’t care. Let them picket,” said Von Hilsheimer.
This group was eventually run out of Ringwood too. They were repeatedly harassed until 1966 when their main building was burned down. The campers said it was arson, but Police Chief Roy Van Tassel wouldn’t cooperate in the investigation.
The camp had been the subject of suspicion, and even got the attention of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, because of alleged communist teachings going on there.
1993 – Tornado!
A tornado tore through Pompton Lakes on Saturday, July 10, 1993. The front page of the July 14, 1993 edition of Suburban Trends featured a picture of a tree that was twisted out of the ground and flung onto a neighbor’s roof at the intersection of Romain and Lenox avenues.
An estimated 200 trees were reportedly sucked out by their roots when a tornado passed over the borough.
Veteran reporter Dorothy O’Connor said, “There was no warning.”
The tornado came and went in less than 10 minutes, and left a big mess. But because of the community’s experience with flooding, residents knew how to work together to clean up after a natural disaster.
O’Connor said that a “swirling green cloud hop-scotched across the borough.
“Those moments held terror when a tree on Midland Avenue crashed down on the rear portion of a car as five passengers scrambled out just in time to escape serious injury and when another tree, ripped from the ground, smashed down on a neighbor's home at the intersection of Romain and Lenox Avenue; horror of potential tragedy evidenced by a branch that had crashed through the back window of one car like a spear, piercing an empty baby seat,” she reported.
Patio umbrellas were sucked up from tables “flying like parachutes in reverse.” The roof of R.T.S. Imports on Wanaque Avenue was peeled off and three windows of the Lakeside Avenue Salvation Army were blown out.
“It sounded like an army of banshees had attacked Romain Avenue,” wrote Editor Howard Ball.
Two days after the event, experts confirmed what the residents already knew – that a tornado had struck their town.
The tornado never actually touched down in the borough and was officially placed in the mildest category of tornado, but it still left quite a mess that was taking days to clean up.
Mayor John Murrin, who toured the borough with representatives of the National Weather Service, said, “There was evidence that many trees had not been blown over – they would be laying straight in the direction they had been blown – but the roots were twisted out of the ground. There was a tree on Midland Avenue, about 40 inches in diameter, that had been lifted out of the ground, twisted 3/4 turn and dropped.”
Murrin was at home during the eventful Saturday afternoon. He had just settled in with a sandwich in front of the television when a bulletin came across the screen warning of possible severe thunderstorms.
“Then the fan blew out of the window upstairs. I looked outside and the wind was unbelievable. The sky was green and black,” said the mayor.
Minutes later, after the storm had passed, the mayor went outside.
“I looked up and down Lincoln Avenue and could see trees and limbs down everywhere,” he said.
At Police Headquarters, Murrin and Capt. William Baig began coordinating emergency procedures. Initial efforts by police, fire and rescue personnel were aimed at determining the extent of injuries sustained by residents in the storm, but no one was seriously injured.
Next, teams of emergency workers were dispatched to locations where live wires were reported down.
Fire Chief Al Bruno said, “All of the agencies in town really pulled together very well — emergency management, police and fire department, the Department of Public Works (DPW), Municipal Utilities Authority — it was one big team effort, not individuals working separately.”
A DPW official said that it would take a month for his department to clean up the mess and asked residents to do their part. Several residents were reportedly helping out by going outside after the tornado and taking saws to all the downed trees and limbs.
1998 – ‘Valley of the Dogs’
The owner of 28 German shepherd dogs, which were found tied to trees in a deeply wooded mountain area off Interstate 287, had one week to claim ownership of the animals. In doing so, however, the owner would face charges of animal neglect.
The alleged owner was already in trouble for an earlier, similar incident. After that affair, he was prohibited from breeding dogs, and was not allowed to keep any more than four dogs of the same sex or neutered.
The dogs that were rescued from the woods were found less than 2,000 feet from the suspected illegal breeder’s home, said Riverdale Board of Health Attorney John Barbarula.
A year before, several dozen German shepherds had been removed from the breeder’s property, dubbed the “Valley of the Dogs” after state and local officials executed a search of the tract “and found dogs scattered across the landscape, tied to trees and in makeshift shelters,” it was reported.
During a July 2 inspection of the residence, Patrolman John Peine said he noticed the breeder walking out of the woods on his property with a feeding bucket in hand. A short time later, the breeder drove off the tract, but Peine followed the trail from which the man had emerged and approximately 1,500 to 2,000 feet away found a new “Valley of the Dogs.”
[ back ]
