Oral History
Interview with Myrtle Hillman Kingsley by Ruth Harrison for the Historic Preservation Committee of Mountain Lakes, New Jersey, June 11, 1995.
MHK: | My name is Myrtle Hillmann Kingsley. I was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1915. My family moved to Mountain Lakes the spring of 1921, because I had been in kindergarten in Norfolk, Virginia, so we had finished there and then we moved here. My mother thought it was dreadful that it was, oh, the wilderness. Absolutely terrible. And she said — I remember her complaining that the whole house was painted in a henna. She said no way could she move into a house that was in henna. It had to be done. There were no |
RH: | Where’s the house? |
MHK: | The house was what — it has three numbers; it’s the same house. Originally when my father bought it, it was 507 Boulevard. I understand that the 507 indicates that it was the 507th house built in Mountain Lakes. I heard that someplace. The original numbering was done that way. Then it turned into 217 Boulevard West. It was the same thing.Then when the Boulevard extension was put through it was changed to 20 Crane Road, which is what it is now, 20 Crane Road. And a young couple bought it a while back and tore off the side deck and refurbished it so that it — |
RH: | Is that the one that Kay Ryan lived in too or not? |
MHK: | No, Kay Ryan’s was two doors down, just opposite the entrance to Morris Avenue. That’s where Kay lived. |
RH: | Yes. |
MHK: | Now, when we moved in it had not yet been landscaped, and I have a picture someplace of my brother and me and our little fox terrier in a complete sea of stones. Absolutely. There wasn’t one around here. But eventually it was landscaped, and we had a beautiful rose garden on the side, and we planted a couple of Japanese maple trees, and around the north corner of the house we had a fern garden all of which the ferns had been cut out of the woods. They were maiden hair ferns and little fiddle-head ferns and so on and so forth. Of course there was no sunshine on that side.So what else do you want to know? |
RH: | Is it still a fern garden now or are you saying it was all cut out? |
MHK: | Oh, there’s probably nothing but shady — I don’t know what kind of flowers they would have in there. Something for the shade because it’s the north side and that didn’t get sun. But I doubt that it’s a fern garden. Who knows. I haven’t really peeked at it that closely. |
RH: | Well, I should at the very beginning have established the fact that we are here in Myrtle Kingsley’s home, and I am Ruth Harrison interviewing Myrtle Kingsley, and today is June 11, 1995. I should have said that earlier, but that’s all right.Now, when you were here in Mountain Lakes, did you go to the public schools? |
MHK: | I went to — yes. And because my brother — there was no kindergarten. I had gone to kindergarten in Norfolk. And because my brother was just about a year — a little bit more than a year younger than I, he and I went to first grade together. And most of the time we walked, although there was the trolley. And we used to get an hour and a half, I think, for lunch, so that we could walk home and then have lunch and then go back. We went to school from eight-thirty to eleven-thirty and then from one to three.And it was very nice because I had a companion to walk to school. But we were very jealous because some of the children that came from what we used to call the coal yard, but you know, Dixon’s Coal Yard, got free trolley tickets because they lived a certain, I guess two miles from the school. |
RH: | They lived two miles and you lived a mile and a half. |
MHK: | So they got — yes. But you could go to the school, and I know my mother would go every once in a while and buy, oh, 50 cents, worth of tickets. And I think they were a nickel each for the school tickets. And then on really stormy days we were allowed to take the trolley. |
RH: | Now, where was the school? What school was it? |
MHK: | Lake Drive. |
RH: | Oh, it was Lake Drive School then? |
MHK: | Oh, yeah. |
RH: | I’m a little off on some of my — |
MHK: | Lake Drive School was built, I think it was probably 1919 or something like that. Because it was there. It was a silly place really when you think about it. But Friesleben’s had given that property for a school. |
RH: | Who is this? |
MHK: | Griesley Bens. Kitty Hill’s family. |
RH: | Oh, Griesley Bens. Oh. |
MHK: | They lived right across the street there. And he gave it, as I understand it. Anyway, that’s what I was told. |
RH: | It’s probable. |
MHK: | And that’s Kitty Hill’s father. And she’s in the village now. |
RH: | Right. |
MHK: | But as I started to say, I started thinking about it, it’s sort of a silly place for a school, right smack on the water. But nobody ever drowned except Irving Slater and the McEwen boy, and that was in the wintertime. And they — the ice was not thick enough and they were walking their bicycles across the lake. And I think that was when I was in the fifth grade. And they, of course, drowned. And it was after that that they instituted the testing of the ice. And you were not allowed to go on the lake unless the police had tested the ice. |
RH: | I know there’s some rare pictures of early ice skating on the lake. |
MHK: | Well, my brother and I later on would skate from our end of the lake to school. It was — |
RH: | Oh, yes. |
MHK: | You know, in the olden days you didn’t have shoe skates, you had the kind that were like roller skates that you fastened on. So you had good, sturdy Buster Brown oxfords, and you just put the skates on and skated to |
RH: | You put them on with the little clamp? |
MHK: | Yeah, just like roller skates only they were ice skates. You had to have good, strong ankles. And you put them in your locker and that was fine. |
RH: | And wore the same shoes to class. |
MHK: | Oh, yes, to class. |
RH: | That’s great. Well now, in high school, where did you go for high school? |
MHK: | Well, I graduated from the junior high, which is Lake Drive School. It was a junior high, which included the first year of — we had lab and then algebra and all of those lovely subjects. And so I went to St. John’s after that.And I don’t know that very many people are knowledgeable about the fact that Miss Davis, who had been in Osting School for Girls, took over St. John’s. |
RH: | St. John’s is now what’s Wilson School? |
MHK: | Yes. At that point. Laddey Coatsmere as a boarding — brought some boarding students with her — |
RH: | She rented Coatsmere? |
MHK: | Which is the house next to the Masonic Temple. That big house there. |
RH: | Oh, yes. Okay. |
MHK: | And she brought a French mademoiselle, and she brought an algebra — a couple of mathematics teachers and a science teacher, and several — I think about five boarders with her. And her backers were some bankers in New York, or stockbrokers or something. So she took over that year, and of course came the crash and her backers lost their money, and she retired quickly at the end of the year leaving, according to my mother-in-law, you know, left bills for the school to pay. So that’s that.So then my mother decided that there was too much rowdyism on the Morristown bus, so I went to Boonton High School. That’s where I met my husband, as a matter of fact. |
RH: | He was local, was he? |
MHK: | He grew up in Boonton Park. |
RH: | Is that right. |
MHK: | And attended St. John’s as a grade school and then Boonton High School. So now what do you want to know? |
RH: | Oh, I think that’s very interesting, all of that part. Now, you — |
MHK: | What we did as children for recreation? |
RH: | Yes. What did you do? You spoke about the skating to school, and obviously you skated other times too. |
MHK: | Yeah. Well, of course there was — we swam in Crystal Lake until Mr. Leonard made his private beach down there at Wildwood. |
RH: | At Wildwood. |
MHK: | Which was, oh, so nice because it had sand, and the rest of the lakes had leaves. That’s how I learned to swim, because at Crystal there was a big rock about three feet out, so you could sort of jump from the shore to the rock and then go into the water and then avoid those horrible leaves. |
RH: | I know what you mean. |
MHK: | I came out of there once with a leech and I was scared. |
RH: | Oh, dear. |
MHK: | Somebody said there were still leeches in there, in these lakes, which I never realized it. |
RH: | I never knew of anybody swimming in Crystal. |
MHK: | Oh, we always swam there. It was the best lake. |
RH: | Was anybody up at Birchwood at the time or not? Was there any swimming at Birchwood? |
MHK: | I don’t think so. |
RH: | All of that came later. The ice company still had its remnants of whatever it was doing there. |
MHK: | Yes. Well, later on I guess they did have sort of camping sites for the Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts. |
RH: | Up around Birchwood? |
MHK: | Yeah. Well, just overnight kind of things. |
RH: | Yes. Yes. |
MHK: | But we swam at Mr. Leonard’s Beach. By that time we had a canoe so that you could canoe all the way from our end of the big lake through the canal, which even in those days was not — it was rather smelly, shall we say. |
RH: | Yeah. Yeah. |
MHK: | But then when you got to Wildwood it was — I mean, yes, to Wildwood Lake where Mr. Leonard’s beach was, and you had to pay for that. I mean, you had to join the beach. |
RH: | Well, everybody else had to enter from the Boulevard, didn’t they, to go to Leonard’s Beach? Isn’t that where he had his main entrance to it? |
MHK: | I don’t know. |
RH: | How did you get to Leonard’s Beach? It would either be from Glen or from the Boulevard, wouldn’t it? |
MHK: | It would be just from Glen Road, as far as I know. |
RH: | Oh, from Glen Road? |
MHK: | Yeah. |
RH: | I always visualized Leonard’s Beach being — |
MHK: | Because it was right across from where Wildwood School is now really, where the dam is. |
RH: | Yes. |
MHK: | And then you came up by the end of the dam to the beach. And then where all of those houses are now was the sand beach. And then he had a tower with two low diving boards and a high diving board. |
RH: | Is that right. |
MHK: | And he had a lifeguard there, because we never had lifeguards, of course, at Crystal. |
RH: | No. |
MHK: | No. No. And he had ropes, so that the little ones would be inside the ropes. |
RH: | And it wasn’t all that far from — I mean, it was a couple of hundred feet then beyond the end of the dam. It was not around the Boulevard at all. |
MHK: | No. |
RH: | I visualized that the other way. |
MHK: | It’s where all of those newish houses are. He offered it to the Borough but I guess they decided that he wanted too much money for it, so, which is too bad because it was really a nice place to swim. |
RH: | And I guess they probably had their eye on the Island Beach anyhow for the main area |
MHK: | I don’t know whether they had already developed Island Beach or not. Of course my David was lifeguard at Island Beach for — all through his college career to maintain some money. |
RH: | Well, now, tell me about wintertime. You’re saying about summer. Now, the winter sports seem like so much fun. |
MHK: | Yeah, well, there was coasting. Now, in our end of town we coasted down Pollard Road. |
RH: | Well, this is what I was thinking of because you did it even when I was raising my kids here; they shut Pollard Road off. |
MHK: | And then on this end of town they coasted down what was Addington in those days but is North Glen Road now. And basically that was the winter sports because we didn’t have ski resorts and things like that. But you played indoors. I mean, you played cards, and when we were little we played marbles and jacks and silly games. Do you remember some of those silly games? I was trying to remember what they were. The milkman and all of those other silly things. But for a long time there were no other children in our end of town, and eventually when they did move in, why, they were mostly boys, so in the summertime, why, I played one-a-cat with the boys and kick the can. |
RH: | Oh, yes. Yes, that was fun. I wonder if kids do that nowadays. |
MHK: | No, because you’re afraid of Lyme disease, I think. Hide and seek. So then, you know, there were always birthday parties and dancing class. |
RH: | Oh, dancing class. |
MHK: | And piano lessons. |
RH: | Now, did you have any matriarch running the dancing class who was noted in town? |
MHK: | It was Mr. Rubidge’s daughter. And I was trying to think of her name, and I think it was Nadine Henry. I mean, she was married, I guess. She must have been married. Or maybe she — but it was one, two, three, leap. That kind of thing. I just loved it. I just loved it. But my mother decided ~ that piano lessons were really much better so we stayed with the piano lessons instead of the dancing lessons. |
RH: | Were there several piano teachers in town the way there are now? |
MHK: | I went to a Mrs. Goodwin in Boonton and she — actually, she taught Ruth Clark. Do you remember Ruth, what a gorgeous pianist she was? |
RH: | I don’t really remember that particularly, I was just thinking — |
MHK: | She had been Ruth Cowey, I think. There were several, three girls, that she married them at the — |
RH: | Was she up on — the one that was up on Crestview, that Clark? |
MHK: | No, she married the Clark family that was on the Boulevard. There was Malcolm Clark and Douglas Clark. She married — |
RH: | Malcolm Clark went up to Crestview. |
MHK: | Yeah, they’re down in Daytona Beach now. They were really — they must be 85, at least, and still — I still hear from them at Christmas time. |
RH: | Is that right? That’s nice. They’re very lovely people. That was one of the first houses I went into for — I don’t know if there was a Junior Auxiliary — |
MHK: | Yes. |
RH: | This is post-war that I came. And so I went up there, and I always thought it was a very lovely house. |
MHK: | There was the Junior Auxiliary and the Town Club and the College Club and I guess the Women’s Club and the Garden Club. |
RH: | Yes. |
MHK: | All — |
RH: | Mountain Lakes, I guess, was full of clubs. And you were a member of all of them I’ll bet. |
MHK: | Well, I think I’ve had every office there was around in Mountain Lakes. I got a little tired of them after a while. The only thing I belong to now is the McDowell Club because that’s — let’s see.Oh, the trolley. The trolley was very interesting. The trolley went all the way to Boonton, and I think it ended in Boonton but going the other way you could go to Denville on it, change in Denville, go to Morristown on it, and that was fine, or you could change in Denville and go to Dover and go all the way up to Lake Hopatcong. |
RH: | Now, when you went to Denville, would that be by the train you would go to Morristown? |
MHK: | No. No, this is the trolley. |
RH: | This is the same trolley? |
MHK: | The same trolley. It was much more convenient really than the transportation around now because you have to have a car really to go now. Well, we did have a car, but my mother didn’t take us to school very often. We had to walk which was probably good. |
RH: | Yes. |
MHK: | Or skate. |
RH: | Right. Right. Well now, did your family or did you notice in the town any difference when the Depression hit? |
MHK: | I remember hearing that people were jumping out of windows in New York, I mean, that lost their jobs and so on and so forth. As a matter of fact, you see, then my mother became the borough clerk. I’m not exactly sure what year because Mr. Wynn retired, and so this was the — |
RH: | He had been the previous clerk? |
MHK: | Clerk, yeah. And mother and Mr. Martens ran the office. Then there was the borough engineer, which was Mr. Rubidge. And then there was the police department. And Harry Dennis was the police department. And we used to sort of hear what was going on because he’d come and talk to mother. So we would discover which young juveniles were in trouble, what they had done and what he had decided to — whether he was going to report them to the juvenile committee or whether he was just going to keep an eye on them and see what happened with them. |
RH: | This was before World War II, wasn’t it? |
MHK: | Yes. |
RH: | And they had a juvenile committee then? I thought that was a fairly recent thing, not knowing a thing about it really. |
MHK: | Well, I don’t know either. I just you know, it was just went in one ear and out the other as far as I was concerned. So that — but they were — Mr. Rubidge and Vito, the town, what could you call him? |
RH: | We’ll call him a superintendent, call him |
MHK: | You know, in charge of — |
RH: | Public works. |
MHK: | Yeah, in charge of the trucks and the snow removal and that kind of thing, they did — |
RH: | Shall we give Vito a last name? |
MHK: | I don’t know what his last name was. I think his last name was Vito. I have no idea. |
RH: | No? |
MHK: | It would probably be in some of the old books. |
RH: | It escapes me right now. His sister is — his wife Julia and I were friends more or less for a period of time, and every so often she’ll call me about something. And I was — |
MHK: | That must be his daughter. |
RH: | You think it’s his daughter? |
MHK: | His wife died — |
RH: | Oh, his wife died? All right. |
MHK: | …a long time ago of cancer, because I can remember my mother taking things to the house — |
RH: | Oh, yes. |
MHK: | …when she was ill. So it was a long time ago because my mother died in 1953. |
RH: | Because she’s a contemporary of mine, Julia is Mola. |
MHK: | Mola. |
RH: | Mola. I knew I would get it sooner or later. And — |
MHK: | But he and Mr. Rubidge did design the roads and put in pipes and things because there were so many brooks that were running down. Now, when they put the new sewers in, a lot of people that had nice little pools in their side yard lost their pools because the sewer people just didn’t bother putting the pipes and things back again. And then other people got water in their yards, so. |
RH: | You mean the 1975 sewers or the earlier sewer |
MHK: | No, we didn’t have earlier sewers. |
RH: | I mean the drainage sewers. |
MHK: | I think they were just connected into the ones that Mola and Rubidge had put in. |
RH: | Well, did you have any encounter with Mola himself, with Vito? Did you ever talk with him or have any interesting experiences with him, because he was quite a town character, of course. |
MHK: | Well, no, I don’t think so because he was, you know. |
RH: | Well, he made up his mind very often the way he felt the town should be run, and he ran it that way. |
MHK: | They were very good, I must say. As far as the plowing and everything, that was done very efficiently. He was out there in the morning. But I can remember as far as going to school, running to school in a snowstorm or something or other. And my brother and I would get there and then the teachers wouldn’t come. And then they would send us all home again. |
RH: | Oh, gosh, yeah. That’s fun. |
MHK: | So. |
RH: | Now, are there any other people particularly that you remember, that you’re thinking of? How about in church? Were there any church figures that you particularly remember? |
MHK: | My mother had been converted to Christian Science when she was in San Francisco. My father was a sea captain and he met her in Seattle, Washington, when he was the youngest sea captain for the American Hawaiian Lines. And then when they were married he moved her to San Francisco, because I assume that maybe his ship was going in and out of San Francisco.And while she was there — the family had been Lutherans; she was converted by the people in her area to Christian Science. I guess a lot of Christian Science came out of California. So that we attended the Christian Science Sunday school and — well, there was Jack Lee. The Lee boys. The older one was Vernon and jack and Dick. Dick was my age. Jack is older. You should interview him. He’s — |
RH: | Yes. |
MHK: | Jack Vernon died. My father played the organ in the church, so… |
RH: | And in the Christian Science church? |
MHK: | Uh-huh. |
RH: | Well now, wasn’t your Dave a member of the Episcopalian, Saint Peters? No? |
MHK: | He had been a — you mean my husband? |
RH: | Yes. |
MHK: | He had been a Presbyterian, and we basically went to the Boonton Presbyterian Church |
RH: | So you have no particular memories except for — well, it was a very active and still is a very active Christian Science church. |
MHK: | Christian Science, yeah. And there were a lot of people in town, I know that were Christian Scientists but most of them have moved away, I think. |
RH: | But you wouldn’t have had any particular connections with the settled nature of the Community Church, St. James, the fact that they’re such old buildings and they’re historic buildings in town. They were not affecting you particularly. |
MHK: | No. I would go with friends of mine to Christmas, yeah, midnight mass and that type of thing. |
RH: | Yes. Well now, what about the very great center of artistic talent and dramatic talent that was supposed to be in town? Were you ever aware of that, had any dealings with them? I’m thinking about the little theater back in back of the … |
MHK: | Mrs. Robertson’s house, yeah. Not really. I guess it was probably I was too busy. |
RH: | And you may have been too young for them too. They may have had their peak before you were aware that there were such interesting people. |
MHK: | Because when the — well actually, I graduated from Boonton High School and went to American University in Washington, and then of course the Depression got worse, and I, the next three years, commuted to St. Elizabeth’s via the Denville train. |
RH: | Did you have the trolley to get to the train then? |
MHK: | No, my mother drove me. But you could, if you got up early enough, you could get a Mountain Lakes train that was going to go to Dover, and then you got out of the train and took the other train that was — |
RH: | At Denville? |
MHK: | At Denville it changed. And that was |
RH: | That would be quite a hike from your place to get down to the train so early in the morning too in Mountain Lakes. It would be a long haul. |
MHK: | But as long as we had the car, why, that was fine. Well actually — oh, I forgot about that. The first year Catherine Corley and I drove. She had a car. |
RH: | Catherine Corley. Now, is that Mother Corley, Bob’s mother? |
MHK: | No. |
RH: | I always think of her as Mother Corley because Betty Corley was a friend of mine. |
MHK: | I was just trying to think. No, that’s his younger sister. |
RH: | Bob’s father’s sister? |
MHK: | Yes. Yes. And Helen Louise was the older daughter, and then there was Bob, and I don’t know, I can’t remember. |
RH: | Yes. Yes. It was that part of the family. Okay. |
MHK: | So that she and I drove that winter, and then of course — I don’t know, she must have just dropped out of school because the next year I — the next two years I commuted by train. |
RH: | So you graduated from St. El’s then, did you? |
MHK: | Uh-huh. |
RH: | That’s still going strong. That’s a very nice college. |
MHK: | And then I got a job teaching at St. John’s School, which was very convenient. |
RH: | Yes. Yes. |
MHK: | Because it was still the middle of the Depression. |
RH: | Yes. Now, what was the name of the person who was the woman that was such a strong personality? |
MHK: | You mean Mrs. Wilson? |
RH: | Yes. What was her name? She was |
MHK: | Theresa? |
RH: | Theresa was her name. |
MHK: | You know, she was the sister of Mr. Martins [?] who had been the town assessor and tax collector and so on and so forth, and they came from a Germanic family as I understand it, because she spoke German very, very well. There was an escaped person from Germany who had been publisher over there. And of course I still list here Mrs. Wilson talking to Mr Zelig. But he was the best janitor we had ever had. He took pride in what he was doing. But he had walked from Germany to Portugal to get to the United States. |
RH: | Over the mountains. |
MHK: | So that was an interesting — he was a very interesting person. |
RH: | You don’t know what his name was? What was he called? |
MHK: | I’m trying to think. |
RH: | Well, if you think of it later, that’s all right.Now, was Wilson School when you were there, was that mostly a girl’s school or were there boys at that time? |
MHK: | The boys only went through the eighth grade. They never went beyond the eighth grade at any time. But it was a very well-run school. I remember Mrs. Wilson used to greet them at the door and the little boys were to remove their hats and shake hands. A few manners. And the worst punishment of all was if the teacher sent you to sit on the bench outside of Mrs. Wilson’s office. That was a terrible punishment. So now, you wanted to know about some of these things I’ve written down. |
RH: | What about shopping? Where did you do shopping because there certainly wasn’t a — |
MHK: | You mean clothes shopping — |
RH: | Well, food shopping. |
MHK: | Food shopping you had your choice of going up to Yaccarino’s. They would deliver, which was very nice. I think Tucker’s Market in Boonton also would deliver. But if we went to Boonton there were, I think, three A & P’s, you know, little A & P’s up and down the town. |
RH: | Is that right? |
MHK: | It was not the best town in which to drive. The trolley tracks went right straight down the middle of the road. |
RH: | The trolley went down the middle of the road? |
MHK: | Yes, right on down the middle of the road. The hill was brick with the trolley tracks. |
RH: | Oh, no. |
MHK: | Yeah. And the sidewalks were much wider than they are now because when they took up the trolley tracks and then they took off some of the — widened the whole street, so, to the width it is now. But it was narrower to begin with, which was terrible. And in the wintertime the trolley — you would get in these trolley tracks and hope that the trolley was not coming up until you could get the car — this is my mother driving, not I. But it was sort of slippery. |
RH: | Yes, with the brick that would be very slippery. |
MHK: | But fortunately there weren’t as many cars either as there are now. |
RH: | I think that the road has actually been widened since then too because it’s in my memory that I remember their cutting back the sidewalk on each side about a foot to give just the little extra. I know I was talking to my daughter and I was saying that I was teaching a friend of mine to drive, and she said, “Has she tried Main Street, Boonton yet?” |
MHK: | We always thought that as long as you could get around the park in Morristown that you could drive any place. |
RH: | Yes. |
MHK: | Absolutely any place. So that was something. And in the olden days also they had canal bridges that you couldn’t see what was on the other side of the bridge if you were driving, say, to Towaco or someplace like that. There were loads of canal bridges because there was the canal. |
RH: | Yes. Yes. |
MHK: | One of the things that we used to have an awful lot of were forest fires. Fires and fires. And that was one reason that we had such a gorgeous garden in the backyard, because the whole woods behind our house, which is where — it would go all the way out to Pocono Road, say, burned. Oh, there was a terrible fire. And so we had sunshine in the back. And we had a strawberry bed, we had a grape arbor, we had all kinds of vegetables. Of course also in those days you could have a gardener come and help, you know, take care of things like that. |
RH: | Was that when you were living here or when you were back on North Crane Road? |
MHK: | No, on the Boulevard. It was called the Boulevard. It was early on. Very early on. |
RH: | When did you and Dave move here? |
MHK: | We moved here in the fall of ‘42. And he commuted to the Brooklyn Navy Yard and I took care of the furnace. |
RH: | Oh, dear. That was your chief war experience then, hum? |
MHK: | Yeah. |
RH: | Was there much war activity in town, folding bandages and doing that sort of good stuff? |
MHK: | No, I don’t think so. The worst part of it was, do you remember ration books? |
RH: | Yes, I remember ration books. |
MHK: | And of course I ended up with pounds and pounds of sugar because we never used that much sugar, and you always felt you had to use your — |
RH: | Ration stamps. Yes. |
MHK: | The worst thing was children’s shoes. Using the — because they — of course their feet grew and Carol – |
RH: | Yes? |
MHK: | Well, David was born just after we moved in here, May of ’43, and so then Carol was two. They lived here for quite a while. First Ellen, and Mark came along later. |
RH: | I just, I knew who Carol was. I didn’t know her at all well, but I taught Dave. He was really such a dear. There was something I was going to ask you about. When you were talking about the three A & P’s, now, was it chiefly the Aamp;P where people did grocery shopping? |
MHK: | Well, you had the butcher shop. |
RH: | Uh-huh. |
MHK: | There was a butcher shop and there were — the thing I remember about the A&Ps were those bins where they would have crackers, and basically that’s my memory of the A&P. But there were separate butcher shops too, you know. You bought your meat from the butcher shops or you called Yaccarino’s, and they had very good meat too. But we were discussing this the other day, that it was much more convenient in the olden days. There was the bread man, there was the laundry man, there was the junk man. |
RH: | The milkman. |
MHK: | The milkman, the coal man, the ice man. |
RH: | And you had a knife sharpener coming around? |
MHK: | Yes, the sharpener. And did I say the junk man? |
RH: | Uh-huh. |
MHK: | So that you didn’t have to go out. |
RH: | You didn’t have to go out and do anything. |
MHK: | No. And sometimes they even had vegetable men coming around, and the fresh vegetables that would come down from Hackettstown or someplace like that, from the farms. There were some very nice and fresh vegetables. |
RH: | Well, I remember Rita Murphy saying that when she had — when they were getting to the point where almost everybody was buying their milk at the stores, she said with her gang of boys there’s no way that she could do that because she had to get milk twice a week to keep it — she didn’t have room enough in the refrigerator for all of the milk she needed in a week so she would get it twice, and she said it would have been a terrible chore “If I didn’t have the milkman come.” So she was one of the last people to use — |
MHK: | Well, I had a milkman until two years ago. |
RH: | Is that right? And he was butter and eggs too? |
MHK: | You could get butter and eggs from him. The first milkman was Stickle, and he had his farm out in the valley, and of course it was just pasteurized — raw, pasteurized milk. Then — no, first it was raw milk, then it was turbuline-tested raw to begin with. Then it had to be pasteurized. But we got used to it. |
RH: | And if you left it out too long on the back porch in the cold weather the ice would push the top right off |
MHK: | The top with the cream out, yes. And then of course much later when we were here it was the homogenized milk which I don’t know whether it’s good for you or not, but it was so nice when you could whip the top of the.. |
RH: | Yes, you could do your own cream whipping. Yes. Yes. |
MHK: | So now I buy 1 percent, is what I buy now. |
RH: | Well, we buy skim. |
MHK: | I know, my daughter does too, and I decided, no, forget it. I still like the 1 percent. But let’s see, what else? |
RH: | Yes, what are some of the other things that were particularly … |
MHK: | Oh, when we were a little older there were the Celebrity Series and things like that that were — the College Club — sponsored by the various sundry organizations. We had marvelous performances. Well, we had Paul Robeson and the Trapp Family Singers and Voyerman. I’m trying to remember some of them. But they were all really very, very good performances. |
RH: | Was that under the McDowell Club, the Celebrity Series, or was that a different group? |
MHK: | No, the College Club. |
RH: | Are you having as much trouble getting used to saying AAUW as I am? |
MHK: | I still — |
RH: | I still want to call it College Club. |
MHK: | I still call it the College Club. But I resigned from the College Club when Carol joined the College Club. I thought, I never liked belonging to anything that my mother belonged to, so I thought, well, I don’t think Carol would have liked it. So I resigned. I belonged to the College Club. |
RH: | Well, it’s a very nice group of young women. I’m feeling like a matriarch in the AAUW, and the League of Women Voters. But that’s all right. They don’t mind. |
MHK: | As I said, the only thing I belong to now is the McDowell Club, and I keep thinking, well, maybe next year I’ll resign from that too. |
RH: | Well, they do some very nice programs. |
MHK: | They have some very nice programs. |
RH: | And they’re nice people. We have a discussion group, a great decisions discussion group, and we always skip on McDowell Club day because so many of the members are members in the McDowell Club. |
MHK: | Actually, it has more members now than it has had for quite a while. We even have some men. I guess they’re all retired men. |
RH: | Yes. Yes. Well now, there was such an active glee club in town. |
MHK: | A men’s glee club. |
RH: | Yes, a men’s glee club. |
MHK: | And you always got dressed up. |
RH: | Yes. Yes. Was Dave in the glee club? |
MHK: | Evening gowns and a tux for the men. |
RH: | Oh, really? Did Dave sing in the glee club? |
MHK: | No, he didn’t. He didn’t sing. We went. He didn’t sing. My cousin sang, Bud Lewis, but then it suddenly — after people got so busy that they wouldn’t have time for the rehearsal. I remember Jack Green always sang, and he died awhile back. |
RH: | Well, the other group, there was an orchestra around, definitely a symphony orchestra that used to play here at some time. |
MHK: | Well, that probably came in under the Celebrity Series maybe. |
RH: | Well, I remember seeing Jane Dellenberger play in some group. Of course she was so good on the cello she was practically professional. I think if she wasn’t professional, she … |
MHK: | Yes, my father always said they had to buy two tickets when she was commuting to college because she had her own cello in one seat in the train. |
RH: | Yeah. Well now, one of the other things, were you conscious of how people commuted to work because — |
MHK: | Oh. yes. Most everybody went on the train. And there were many more trains than there are now. |
RH: | Oh, yes. |
MHK: | And most of the people, I guess, took the 7:20 or 7:30. Then there was an 8:06, and then most of us who were going into New York just to shop or something like that would take the nine o’clock train. And talk about going through the flood plain. They had a drought for seven years and they built all of those houses, but before that when it rained if you were on the train and you looked down there at Lincoln Park and that area, you could see the water, absolutely. And then after the drought people — |
RH: | Built there. |
MHK: | Yeah. It was terrible. But the worst part of commuting, or going on the train to New York, to Hoboken, was going through the tunnel before they had the electric trains. You know, the smoke was just — oh. |
RH: | Oh, really? I didn’t know that they took the smoking trains through the tunnels. |
MHK: | Oh, yeah. They didn’t have the diesel or the electric. I don’t know when … |
RH: | Did you do clothes shopping in New York? |
MHK: | Well, if you drove you would drive to Morristown and shop at Epstein’s, and I remember Epstein’s when they had one of those you put the money in and it would scoot up. |
RH: | Oh, yes, the containers going up to the central desk up on the top floor? |
MHK: | Up on the top floor. |
RH: | And then the pressurized container coming back down? |
MHK: | And then Mrs. Epstein, I guess it was up there, would send it back down again. |
RH: | That was fun. |
MHK: | Fascinating. A very nice store. And then of course there were some stores also in Boonton. There was Lou Dell’s department store. Mostly they sold dry goods. |
RH: | Oh, I see. |
MHK: | Sheets and towels and that kind of thing. Then there was Zucker’s which is down just below the State Theater. That was — that’s still a store. And Mrs. Zucker, she was a very aggressive sales woman. She would hardly let you out of the store … |
RH: | Well, is that the place where they eventually had the children’s store, the children’s clothes in it? |
MHK: | They have — well, they had a Buster Brown shoe store. And the son-in-law ran the shoe store, Harry Pearl, and he was married to one of the Zucker girls. And then there was Mrs. Zucker, and they had — yeah, they did have children’s clothing and shirts, men’s shirts and all kinds of things. Actually, a semi-department store really.But her daughter, her younger daughter who was very attractive married Dr. London who was a dentist in Boonton for a long time, so. And Mr. Zucker was, I guess, an entrepreneur, should we say, because he owned all kinds of those buildings in Boonton, and then when the Depression came I guess managed to not be able to keep up the mortgages and things, so he lost — I think he owned Pilgrim Apartments and the State Theater and some of the stuff down Main Street. You know they lost it all. |
RH: | Well, now, something else in Mountain Lakes, when we were talking about where to shop, did many people — you said they would take a nine o’clock train. Did many people go into New York to shop? Now, I drove into Montclair, so it was just as easy to get a bus up at the corner or a train and I would be in there in half an hour. This is an extra half hour out here. Did many people frequent New York shops and New York plays? |
MHK: | Yes, we would go to Wannamacher’s and Best’s. But you probably only did it, what, spring and fall? |
RH: | Yeah, probably so. So that’s — |
MHK: | But we went to New York fairly — sometimes to get on my father’s ship because that was fun to do because he was going back and forth from New York to Hamburg. |
RH: | That was basically the west coast to the east. |
MHK: | Yes, his ship was one of the first ones to go through the Panama Canal, so. And then of course he was in the World War I, the Navy, as a captain in the Navy. And after that, why, eventually he — we were in Norfolk for awhile, and then he got the position with the Hamburg American Line and was going back and forth. And then at the end of the second grade we, my brother and my mother and I, went over on the Resolute and spent — well, we came back just before Thanksgiving. And we had been in Hamburg all of that time. |
RH: | About what year would that have been? |
MHK: | The end of the second grade. So that would have been ’22, ’23. The summer of ’23. |
RH: | And Europe had recovered from World War I and hadn’t gotten into World War II. |
MHK: | Some of the children were nice but there were some little boys that would go behind you and say Auslander, Auslander, Auslander. They did not care for the Americans really. And it was when they were having that terrific inflation, they would close the shops every noontime and change the prices. That’s how bad it was. And my father used to bring the food from the ship to the house which — to the housekeeper to make us oatmeal and stuff. I remember going to the shop with the housekeeper, and the milk was in open containers like that. You had to boil it. |
RH: | And ladle it out — |
MHK: | They ladled it out and she took it home and then you boiled it. |
RH: | Were they still doing that in Mountain Lakes at the time? |
MHK: | Did what? |
RH: | Were they still doing the open milk and ladling the milk in Mountain Lakes? |
MHK: | Oh, no. No, this was in Hamburg. |
RH: | Yes, I know. |
MHK: | No, we had bottles from the beginning as far as I can remember. We had — oh, the thing about the coal man. Most of these Hapgood houses were designed with the coal bin in the back of the house, and which was fine if you were facing the lake. And the coal man could shoot it in; otherwise, the poor coal people carried it in this container on their back. |
RH: | And brought it around the back side of the house. And there was one of those big slides that they would dump it into? |
MHK: | They couldn’t, no. |
RH: | They couldn’t even use the slide? |
MHK: | No, they had of course it cost a little bit more to per — but most of the houses, my mother’s house was, and this house, when we moved here, the coal bin was in the back of the house. |
RH: | Well, I remember these nice wide slides coming in that would go right on down. |
MHK: | Oh, yes, we eventually switched and had a hole cut in the front, and they could put that in, but — and we put a stoker in. But the coal got so bad. it was full of nails. And Mark was teeny tiny, and Dave as usual was away. And I woke up and he was yelling for his two o’clock bottle and I thought, oh, gee, it’s cold. So I went to the basement and of course the stoker had jammed and the fire had died. So I had to backup the stoker and see what was what, build a new fire. Mark is screaming bloody murder. And if I couldn’t identify with my pioneer ancestors I’d just lie down there on the floor and collapse. |
RH: | I remember you saying earlier with Dave being down in the shipyard during the war you were left to cope with the furnace. That was what you meant by the furnace? |
MHK: | No, this was later. The other one was the one you had to shake down, which, you know, the trash man would come and take all of the ashes. As a matter of fact, the neighbors would come and say, “Can we borrow your ashes to get in and out of the — |
RH: | Of the driveways? |
MHK: | …driveway?” |
RH: | So you had a coal burner for a long while then if other people down here needed your ashes. |
MHK: | And I guess it was after that that we put the oil burner in because that was probably ‘54, ’55, because Mark was teeny tiny. He was born in ‘54. |
RH: | Well, were you ever aware of the effect that the Hapgood houses had — the size of them, or didn’t it even occur to you because it was such a normal thing? |
MHK: | No. I don’t think our house was any bigger than the house we had lived in in Norfolk. |
RH: | Is that right? |
MHK: | And of course that was convenient. I think we must have had a maid because I remember at one time somebody was talking about somebody was poor white trash. |
RH: | Well, I think in the time you and I grew up it was pretty standard for most people to have a maid. |
MHK: | I think even here for a while we must have had one when I was teeny tiny, you know, we must have had somebody because I can remember on Sundays you’d have early dinner and then quite often we would go to Miss Cornell’s Tea Room, which was where Tommy’s Citgo is now. And that was — |
RH: | Miss Cornell’s, like Hazel Cornell? |
MHK: | Cornell, yeah. |
RH: | She had a tea room? |
MHK: | Well, I don’t know whether it was Hazel Cornell, but it was Miss Cornell’s Tea Room. |
RH: | Oh, is that right? |
MHK: | And we would have Sunday night supper quite often down there. That was a treat. |
RH: | And that was before the days of Paul’s Diner, of course. |
MHK: | Oh, yes. |
RH: | Because Citgo is the one that’s next to Paul’s now, or right in that area, isn’t it? |
MHK: | No, no, no, down in Dell’s Village. |
RH: | Oh, Dell’s Village Citgo? |
MHK: | The corner. |
RH: | Oh, yes. |
MHK: | The corner there. |
RH: | I’m in the other direction. I’m out on Route 46. |
MHK: | Oh. Oh, no. Tommy’s. It was Kelly’s and then Tommy bought him out. |
RH: | And there was a tea room there? |
MHK: | It was a tea room. |
RH: | There is no shopping of any other sort in that area, was there, before Dell’s was built? |
MHK: | No, Dell’s Village. The Dell Senior is who had had a store on Main Street. A very nice meat market and vegetable store. Financed it. They were there for a while where he actually was, and now the Foodtown, they were there. But then they, I guess, sold out to somebody else. I don’t know who runs it now. But they were the original people. That’s why it’s Dell’s Village. |
RH: | Yes. I see. |
MHK: | Because it was from Del Signores. |
RH: | When would that have been done, ‘do you know, when Dell’s Village as a shopping center with a lot of stores in it? It was post World War II, was it? |
MHK: | Oh, yes. I was trying to think when that would have been. Probably the end of the ’40s. |
RH: | Yes, I have no particular recollection because we lived over in Lake Arrowhead and were Denville oriented, so I really wasn’t aware about what time that would have come in. |
MHK: | Yeah, I don’t know, because Dave and I lived in Rockaway and I was teaching at Wilson School. Of course I shopped either in Rockaway, or — before we moved here. |
RH: | Yes. |
MHK: | And I was used to Denville, so I would shop — go back to Denville. There was a Stop and Shop. There was an A&P and a Stop and Shop and all kinds of things. |
RH: | There was a Safeway there too in Denville. |
MHK: | I don’t think I ever shopped in the Safeway. But I think the Stop and Shop turned into a roller skating rink after a while, which was sort of weird. |
RH: | Yeah, well, they had the space for it, I guess. |
MHK: | Of course. |
RH: | Now, so many people considered the community center, the neighborhood center, the Dell’s Village nowadays. Was there any one place in Mountain Lakes, any place in Mountain Lakes that you can think of where people gathered regularly? What did they use as a main gathering place? |
MHK: | Just people’s houses. |
RH: | Just people’s houses, because their houses are large enough to do that. I think that’s — |
MHK: | You asked about recreation. Well, a lot of people had tennis courts in those days, and most of them are now covered with a house. They sold off the side. And we never really had tennis lessons but we read the books and then we batted it back and forth and back and forth. Then down behind the garage (which was called Hamilton’s Garage in those days) there was a stable. He had stables. So we used to go horseback riding too all up through the Tourne where they still had all of the roads from the ice-cutting days. And so that that was — and you could babysit for 25 cents an hour, and you would sit for four hours, and then you could horseback ride for an hour. That was a dollar. And |
RH: | Isn’t that fun? I had no idea about that. |
MHK: | Oh, yeah, that was fun. And then when I was a little older I used to coast — Peggy Eggert lived in that house up at the end of the corner of — across from the Shell’s house, the Eggerts lived there. And she and I would coast from where the tower is down the road into her driveway in the wintertime too. That was fun. Well, we had parties. |
RH: | But in the house rather than a neighborhood area I think this is probably the tradition that is very surprising to many people who come from outside to know how gracious people are in opening their homes, their large homes to gatherings. And I know when I lived in my big old Laker, why the most I ever had in it at one time was 150 on the first floor, and believe me, we were packed. |
MHK: | I’ve had quite a few people here from |
RH: | You would be able to — yes, probably about the size of our house. |
MHK: | This is a small Mountain Lakes house. |
RH: | Is it really? |
MHK: | Yeah. We enlarged the porch. It makes it a very nice size room. And when I was in the Lake Drive School the library was that little room that was eventually, I think, became a teacher’s room. And when you went in the door and up the stairs there was this little room, and that was the library. And it was actually the only library in town at that point. And I think eventually it moved down to where Evelyn’s Hairdresser, I think that was built. But that was — you know, we spent hours reading and we had a Victrola when we were little, bubble books, and we’d play that. And Caruso. I still have some of Caruso. Madame Schuman Hyman. |
RH: | Yeah, I know, every Sunday we would … |
MHK: | The Voyagers. |
RH: | The only thing mother would allow us to play on our Victrola was Caruso and Gally Curcher records. |
MHK: | That was Sundays. So that I still have some of those. |
RH: | Do you now? |
MHK: | I don’t know what to do with them. And I have so many records. |
RH: | Well, you ought to get together with Betty Shell. I’ll tell you about that after we’re finished because she she’s been having so much trouble because Emil has very unusual tapes in jazz, and probably records too. I mean, he’s been a jazz collector for a long, long time. |
MHK: | Ellen says her husband collects old, what are they, 78s? |
RH: | 78s. |
MHK: | But it’s a chore to get things like that to England. My youngest daughter is married to an Englishman, so it’s difficult to get things back and forth. |
RH: | You get to be a world traveler. Well, is there anything you would like to particularly give us a memory for? This has been delightful. Well, unless there are some other things you particularly want to have a memory for us, this has been delightful. |
MHK: | I think I’ve covered pretty much everything. I have here the summer, swimming, Leonard’s Beach, canoeing, horseback riding. I think I’ve covered all of this, skating, coasting, tennis, reading, birthday parties. |
RH: | That was fun. |
MHK: | I think we covered it pretty well. |
RH: | Well, I think this is delightful. |
End of Interview
Transcribed previous (unknown), scanned by Andrew Bulfer, and edited by Margarethe Laurenzi of the Historic Preservation Committee for typographical errors, January 2007.