Photo of the Day: Milton A. Votee Park, Teaneck NJ

A few days ago, after voting early in Teaneck, I took advantage of the newly crisp autumn temperatures to walk around the township’s Milton A. Votee Park.

I am sure that many of my readers who grew up in Bergen County either walked through the 40-acre park, played in it or drove past it. Dedicated by a former township mayor in 1940, it was renamed in his honor 19 years later. It was constructed with money from the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal federal agency, to help hire workers.

Government assistance enhanced the park, too, including a Green Acres grant during the administration of Gov. Chris Christie that built the current sportsplex, including a 60-ft. softball field, 60-ft. by 90-ft. baseball fields, two basketball courts, football/soccer fields, four tennis courts, and a handball court.

You can see the sportsplex in the background of this photo I took while in the park, as I made a circuit along the walking and bike paths. I gloried in the changing leaf colors and the blanket they formed on the grass, along with a quiet only broken by the sudden steps of two deer off to my right.

Photo of the Day: Sportsplex, Votee Park, Teaneck NJ

Three days ago, while early voting was still available in my state, I drove to the next town over from me, Teaneck, to make my political preferences manifest at the Richard Rodda Community Center. With my civic duty performed, I looked across the lane outside the building and saw a vast expanse of green: Milton A. Votee Park.

With sunlight pouring down that afternoon, I decided to do something I’d never gotten around to doing in my 60-plus years in Bergen County: walk around the perimeter of the 40-acre park.

I was especially taken with this hillside view of the park’s sportsplex, and so I took this picture.

Photo of the Day: Ammann Park, Teaneck NJ

For many years, I passed by Ammann Park, in the southwestern quadrant of Teaneck on the way to and from my auto mechanic. But a couple of days ago, I got out of my car and took in this 5.29-acre open space in this township in Bergen County, NJ.

With the cold temperatures that late morning reflecting what you would expect in early December and with students expected to access classes remotely because of COVID-19, the park was largely absent of the children that normally throng it. The baseball field, wading pool, playground equipment, and benches were unused this particular day. But it felt wonderful just to take it all in silently.

The park was named for developer Edmund Amman, who left this land parcel to the township upon his death in 1937 on the condition that it be used as a public park. It was formally dedicated as a township park in 1966.

Happy 70th to The Rascals’ Gene Cornish!

The Rascals never came away with the money that their remarkable musical run (seven Top 10 records) from 1966 to 1971 should have entitled them to. But the blue-eyed soul quartet can rest secure in the admiration—no, make that the adulation—of fans who can’t get enough of “Groovin’,” “A Beautiful Morning,” “How Can I Be Sure,” “Lonely Too Long,” “Girl Like You,” and a song suddenly relevant again after the initial era of protest in which it was recorded, “People Got to be Free.” Not for nothing were they inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 1997.

As I noted in this post from three years ago, when the band’s multi-media “concert/bio-musical” Once Upon a Dream came briefly to Broadway with the support of superfan “Miami Steve” Van Zandt, Felix Cavaliere, Eddie Brigati, Dino Danelli, and Gene Cornish represented “the other Jersey boys” besides the Four Seasons. More than that, they indelibly influenced not only Miami Steve but also his musical partner-in-crime, Bruce Springsteen.

I was surprised to hear that a charter creator and purveyor of “The Jersey Sound,” Gene Cornish, was born in, of all places, Ottawa, Canada. (He moved at an early age with his mother, a professional singer, to the United States.) It was in New York, while making his own musical apprentice in local clubs and bars, that he befriended Cavaliere and Brigati.

Cornish turns 70 today, and it’s as good a time as any to celebrate not merely this survivor of the Sixties and the record industry but also a guitarist who plays his instrument with unfeigned joie de vivre.  A year or so ago, tipped off by my friend, a musical aficionado named Brian, I caught a show Cornish was giving with assorted friends and associates (including Peppy Castro from the Blues Magoos) at Classic Quiche Café in Teaneck, NJ.

While he has performed a number of solo gigs over the years, I suspect that Cornish may be most comfortable in a group, where he can receive and transmit energy from his musical peers. That was my sense, anyway, watching him on that Saturday night a while back—easily the tightest, most galvanic rock ‘n’ roll show I’ve ever experienced in a small setting. 

The band whipped through oldies such as Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Woman” and Van Morrison’s first hit (as a member of Them), “Gloria." But the real highlight of the evening was when Cornish stepped to the microphone to sing as well as play guitar on one of his signature hits with the Rascals, “Good Lovin.’’

He may be a survivor of cancer and two bypass surgeries, but Cornish plies his instrument with uninhibited youthful humor and joy to go along with the skill that only experience can bring. I hope not only that I’ll catch him again soon, but that you will, too, Faithful Reader.

Photo of the Day: Because I’m Happy

Obviously, this fellow doesn’t mind feeling “like a room without a roof.” At least, that’s the impression I had when I took this photograph a few weeks ago at Coolidge Park in Teaneck, not far from where I live in Bergen County, NJ.

Photo of the Day: Coolidge Park, Teaneck NJ

After exiting from Route 4 in Bergen County, N.J., yesterday, I got out of the car and snapped a photograph of this spot I had seen numerous times before. Coolidge Park is located in the northeastern quadrant of Teaneck between Loraine Avenue and Webster Avenue, south of Coolidge Avenue. It is one of nearly two dozen parks in the township.

Photo of the Day: Gaylord Park, Teaneck NJ

Like countless other motorists in Bergen County, N.J., I have passed by a small tract of land on Route 4 eastbound countless times. Yet it was only this afternoon that--attracted, oddly enough, by the brown, decaying leaves on its large trees--I stopped briefly to look around and photograph Gaylord Park in Teaneck. It is a slight—but, undoubtedly, much appreciated—buffer between residents and Route 4, one of the most insane traffic arteries in Northern New Jersey.

Quote of the Day (Jonathan Franzen, on a High-School Prank From the Past)

“Kortenhof had heard of a high school where pranksters had put an automobile tire over the top of a 30-ft. flagpole, like a ring on a finger, and this seemed to him an impressive and elegant and beautiful feat that we at our high school ought to try to duplicate.”— Jonathan Franzen, The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History (2006)

Franzen, a bestselling and critically acclaimed novelist (Freedom), is my age, so I was intrigued by what of pranks he and his friends played in high school nearly 40 years ago. The question took on even more consuming interest for me because of the mischief created by more than five dozen seniors in Teaneck, N.J.,in the wee, wee hours of the morning a few weeks ago—a break-in that resulted in cops from neighboring Bergen County towns descending on the school, and possible criminal charges that led to a hue and cry, mass rallies by parents on behalf of their boneheaded progeny, and extensive Northeast regional media coverage.

I don’t know which side is closer to the truth in the Teaneck case, the cops or the kids.  I am glad that, following an agreement with the Bergen County Prosecutor, the seniors who are adults in the eyes of the law won’t face criminal charges as part of their permanent record because of this idiotic offense. But even if little was damaged and the whole thing was just a gross overreaction on the part of the authorities, you wish that these teens could have exercised better judgment. Or, since the offenses were so plain stupid, at least they could have used more imagination, as Franzen and his friends did.