Oral History — Ralph Osgood Wells
TUTCHEK: | My name is Phil Tutchek, and I’m here to interview Ralph Osgood Wells. Ralph lives at 130 Pollard Road and is a long term resident and has many, many wonderful stories to tell us, and I’m going to ask you Ralph, first of all how you happened to come to Mountain Lakes. |
WELLS: | My parents were living in Jersey City and my father was looking for a better place for children to grow up, and they’d been out on Long Island looking at homes on Long Island. Picking up one of the New York papers, he saw an ad for these homes in Mountain Lakes. He called up and they described the places and he says, "God, this is too much for me. I never could afford that." The man said, "You won’t know until you come out and see it." |
PT: | Who was he talking to? |
RW: | I don’t think it was Hapgood. Someone in Hapgood organization, but anyway, he came out and saw the property. There was a brook running down the back here, and he fell in love with the brook. I have pictures of what it looked like then. He was impressed. And he bought. He was so surprised to get so much property with the house. |
PT: | Right. How many acres would he have here? |
RW: | Well, the lot was about 110 by 300. |
PT: | Nice size. |
RW: | Yeah. And so he said, "I went out on Long Island," he says, "I could stick my hand out the window and shake hands with the next door neighbor." [Laughs] |
PT: | [Laughs] Like the old Levitt houses. |
RW: | Yeah, yeah. So, that impressed him and that’s why he came to Mountain Lakes. |
PT: | Were they building this house at the time? |
RW: | Yeah, there’s one picture I showed you here. That’s my grandfather standing on the porch. My grandfather was a carriage builder up in Amesbury, Massachusetts. He was one of five brothers and all of them were involved in the carriage industry up there. That was like the Detroit of carriages in those early days. |
PT: | Sure. |
RW: | And he came to Jersey City, I guess he was following my father, and got a job with part of the Wells family that also came here. And then he was also a good cabinetmaker. He and my dad would come out from the city [when the house was being built] and they’d pick things apart. M dad might say: "Where am I going to put my hat and coat when I come home?" |
PT: | [Laughs] So he was able to customize the house a little bit? |
RW: | Yeah. So, they closed the door off of the dining room and made a closet at the stair landing, and went a little ways into the dining room there for a coat closet. And so they worked hard at it and they spent an awful lot of time putting the lawn in and everything out front. They let it settle all winter long until it settled, got smooth and everything, and then Hapgood’s people saw how hard he worked on it. They came along and gave him all the grass seed. My Dad took the bedroom which I use myself even today, the smallest room in the house, and he made that an office where he did these books, these tax assessor books where they’d open up, well, cover the whole table. |
PT: | Wasn’t he elected in the first election in Mountain Lakes? |
RW: | Yeah. |
PT: | And what was the year? |
RW: | 1928. |
PT: | So, the first election, to be held in Mountain Lakes in 1928 and your father was elected Tax Assessor. And who was the mayor on that? |
RW: | Doremus. |
PT: | Did you ever meet him? |
RW: | I don’t believe so. I did work for Mrs. Doremus. In my business we didn’t see many of the men. It was all the women folks that ran the house and everything. |
PT: | How did it happen that your father became the Tax Assessor? |
RW: | That I can’t answer you. I don’t know. |
PT: | Okay. It’s quite an honor to be in the first election, really. |
RW: | I know the name, I didn’t know him, Dayton. Lived on Ball Road, and Bill Lewis lived on Ball Road. And he was the — he wasn’t Police Chief, but he was in charge of the police. Chief Morgan was the first Chief. And Lewis in those days, 46 was Bloomfield Avenue. And the only entrance into Mountain Lakes was at [Crane Road]. |
PT: | Where the two big stone pillars are now? |
RW: | Yeah. |
PT: | That was the only entrance then? |
RW: | Yeah. Because the trolley cars went along the boulevard and went through where the boulevard now continues through to 46. |
PT: | You remember those trolley cars going through there? |
RW: | Yeah, yeah. |
PT: | You ever ride ’em? |
RW: | Sure. |
PT: | What were they like? |
RW: | Well, there was just one trolley car. I’ll get to that. And so, on Sunday afternoon, in those days, 46 was jammed with cars going to Lake Hopatcong. That was the place. |
PT: | That was a big place to go to? |
RW: | Yeah. And on Friday night, the trains go up here, the steam train went up here, and all you could see was white sleeves in the hot weather sticking out the windows, all going up to Lake Hopatcong or getting off in Denville, which is also a lake resort place in those days. People didn’t live in those places year-round |
PT: | That was a summer resort also, in Denville? |
RW: | Yeah, exactly. In fact Cedar Lake, the water pipes laid on top of the ground and they shut them off in the wintertime. |
PT: | Did your Mom like the town also? |
RW: | No. |
PT: | She didn’t like it. Why? |
RW: | Well, my mother was an R.N. And of course, when my father started out, they started out in a business actually in Boston. I mean that’s where Liggett started, and he was trans — they merged with Riker Hagerman, and — |
PT: | Liggett being the drug company that your dad worked for. |
RW: | Yeah. And he was transferred to Manhattan. And they looked at houses around here. Mother didn’t like it, she — my mother was from New Brunswick, Canada, farm people that raised potatoes right on the St. Johns River. She had very close friends from that area that moved to West Newton, Mass, which is near Boston, and she lived with them. And she met my father, whose mother was in the hospital in Newburyport, I guess, or someplace. So she was used to being able to go to Boston, and go to the stores. She used to tell stories of Filene’s. Going in the top floor and seeing an expensive dress that she liked and she’d follow it all of the way through. Filene’s had a system where every week it dropped one floor. And she’d follow it down to the bottom floor until [unclear]. [Laughs] |
PT: | So coming out to Mountain Lakes was a little bit too far out in the country? |
RW: | She never drove a car all the time she lived here. She had to rely on a few friends to take her any place she wanted to go. She was active in the Community Church. And was a great crust maker of pies. This group [unclear] in the Community Church, they made about two or three hundred pies. They’d get together once a week and make all these pies, and they’d freeze them, and then they’d have a fair in the fall. And before the fair started they were all sold! |
PT: | That was the Community Church. Was that the active church at the time? |
RW: | Yeah, it was the only church at the time. So, that was the start of our community life. My grandparents lived here with us for a little bit, and then my grandfather he bought a house on Lake Avenue in Boonton. He was very active in the Community Church. My father didn’t have a car, but my grandfather had a car. But he didn’t drive it on Sunday. He walked from Lake Avenue, Boonton, to the Community Church and back. And he always wanted me to go to church with him. He was Head Usher of the church in those early days. He used to put on a tremendous father-and-son roast beef dinner once a year. And that place was mobbed. |
PT: | So, the church was really a center of a lot of the social life here? |
RW: | That’s right. That was everything there was. The Catholics, Benbell, who was a Catholic family all went to Boonton to Catholic church. And there was another family on Dartmouth Road, and they went to Morristown, to Bailey High School, or grade school high school. School. It was a combination in those days. |
PT: | Right. The Bailey Ellerd of today? |
RW: | Yeah. Of course Bailey Ellerd today is in Madison. |
PT: | Right. |
RW: | The Church of the Assumption, that was the Catholic church. It was in the Irish section of Morristown. And so a couple of the priests, Father Barrett and Father Ellerd are buried in the front of the church. So that’s the story of a couple of the Catholic families that I knew. And there was a lot of bitter infighting and like Edris who lived on Morris Avenue, right straight back over here, and he was in the insurance investigation business, and he became Fire Chief. But Worman wanted to be Fire Chief and they fought like crazy over it. |
PT: | [Laughs] |
RW: | And Worman would play dirty tricks on Edris while he was chief. And he’d get to the fire first and start giving orders before Edris got there. |
PT: | Did they have their own fire truck? |
RW: | Yeah, yeah. And Joe Genner was a fire truck driver, and he also worked for Yaccarino’s. |
PT: | What was Yaccarino’s? |
RW: | Yaccarino’s was a grocery store |
PT: | Whereabouts? |
RW: | Where The Market is now. They were quite an outfit. They had two trucks, open-side trucks. You probably don’t remember Cliquot Club, but that was a well-know ginger ale in those days. All bottled goods came in wooden boxes, and they had these hundreds of boxes, and like my mother would call, all these people would call Yaccarino’s up in the morning and tell them what they wanted, vegetables and everything else. And later on the in the morning, Joe Genner, was the driver of the truck, and he would come up the road with all of these boxes, they’d walk into your kitchen and unload the groceries on the kitchen table, and take their box back with them. They were [unclear] on the side of the truck like that so they could pick them all. And then, a bunch of us kids would tease them. And we’d take the boxes and hide them in the woods. |
PT: | [Laughs] |
RW: | But they were a grocery store, and then Bobrow was a meat market next store to them. |
PT: | Again, right down, downtown by the train station? |
RW: | Yeah. |
PT: | OK, I didn’t know there was a meat market, too. |
RW: | Yeah. Bobrow lived on Lake Drive. |
PT: | What was the name, Bobrow? |
RW: | B-O-B-R-O-W. And Yaccarino’s, you know where — who took that market over, did so much for the town and the town screwed him. |
PT: | Oh, Bert Murphy? |
RW: | Yeah. He lived in the Yaccarino house. And it’s funny the next owner that took the store over also lived in the Yaccarino house. And that — after Yaccarino’s left, that became a hospital. |
PT: | That house? |
RW: | Yeah. |
PT: | Wow, that’s right up above the market. It’s a beautiful place, and Bert Murphy fixed it all up and then — |
RW: | Yeah. The Yaccarino’s used to go to market every single morning, they had a great moving van-sized truck, and they went to market every morning and picked up all the vegetables and — |
PT: | Where was the market that they went to? |
RW: | I don’t know if it was Washington Market in New York, or one of those places. I don’t know exactly. |
PT: | And brought it all back down here. |
RW: | Yeah, brought them all back here. But later on, a lot of people didn’t pay their bills. And they went broke. So they finally had to close up. There were three brothers and a father, and each one had a different part of the business they took care of, the vegetables and the groceries and so forth. They had John, and Frank, and Neal. So that was where we went. In those days when I went to school we went to Lake Drive School. It was the only school we had. To ninth grade. |
PT: | Oh, and then high school? |
RW: | We didn’t have a high school. |
PT: | So what did you do? |
RW: | We went to Morristown. We had our choice of going to Morristown or Boonton. |
PT: | All right. And if you went to Morristown how did you get down there? |
RW: | We had two school buses. |
PT: | No kidding. I see. |
RW: | When they first started going to Morristown, Public Service, which is a bus company, took them. Then later on we got our own school buses and we had one for the boys and one for the girls. |
PT: | And you and your sister went? |
RW: | Yeah. |
PT: | Was your sister older or younger than you? |
RW: | Younger. And so we went to Morristown to high school. And as soon as I was out of high school, I landed in the business. It was Depression days, 1929. |
PT: | Boy, that wasn’t good timing. |
RW: | Yeah, and I got out in ’36. But after I went to Morristown, boy, I better go down there, to the plant. |
PT: | Now this was the Wells Rug business? |
RW: | Yes. |
PT: | So your father had started that business? |
RW: | Yeah. |
PT: | Okay, so then when you graduated from high school — |
RW: | Actually they started the business on Harrison Street in Boonton, in 1921. They started doing some preliminary rug cleaning on the third floor there. We still have an unfinished attic. |
PT: | So in the house he started doing some of the rug cleaning? |
RW: | Yeah — |
PT: | And then started the business in Boonton? |
RW: | Just with sponges, they didn’t use any amount of water. Anyway, Dad got tired of traveling, he was traveling for Central Oil Company, the East Coast, and so he got tired of it. He wanted to start the — move the business to Morristown. My grandfather, he wanted to start the business with — he helped my grandfather get started in the business, and he wanted to go to Morristown. My grandfather said, "No," he says, "There’s enough business, there’s going to be enough business in Mountain Lakes and Denville and Boonton to satisfy me." Well, when in 1928 my father wanted to go to Morristown, my grandfather couldn’t wait. And so when Dad tried to talk — Dad was as I said a volunteer fireman, and they used to have an annual convention in Atlantic City, still have, I believe, in October or November, some time like that. And they had to go down to those conventions and it was–Morristown and Mountain Lakes it was a social organization. You got to be something to be a member of the Morristown Fire Department. So he met all the outstanding businessmen and town leaders in those days, and they told him, "You better not come to Morristown, you’ll never make it." They didn’t want outside people coming in. And another thing was, when they knew he was from Mountain Lakes — Mountain Lakes had such a bad reputation in Morristown because of credit. None of the stores would do business with them. But my father decided he was coming over. Mr. Glanville, who owned the building where you go, was sitting out in front. He’d shoe horses. He used to shoe as many as 68 horses a day. He’d start about 4 o’clock in the morning. |
PT: | Right in that section of Morristown? |
RW: | Yeah, right in that building. There were two forges there, where he did the forge work. But at that time he had a gas pump out front. And below us there was Ross and Ford, automobile dealers, and then there was another Franklin car dealer further down the street. And then there was a Packard agency way down on Mount Tremble Avenue. So, Dad talked him out of going out of the business and leased the building. And if you were to go in the plant you could still see rings in the walls of the building where they tied the horses. And along the wash floor there you can see them. So, Glanville moved next door where our office is now. I don’t know, is this all of interest to you? |
PT: | Yeah, because this is how the Wells Rug Company really started, established itself over here, right? |
RW: | Yeah. So, getting back to my high school days, I’d go down to the shop, and if you didn’t have anything to do, I’d beat it over and talk with Mr. Glanville. I’d sit on a box there while he was sharpening axes and stuff like that, because they were very — I only saw a couple horses shoed in those days, and he’d tell me stories of the old days. And one of the stories was down on the Ford estate, down on Mount [unclear] Avenue which is now a Catholic retreat house. House of Loyola, it’s called. On Saturday afternoon all these Irishmen would go down there and they had cockfights on Saturday afternoon. |
PT: | [Laughs] And couldn’t get caught. |
RW: | Yeah. But my father had a bad feeling with him, in later years, because he wouldn’t do something for the rent we were paying and everything. He sort of got pretty touchy. But I liked the old man. He was a millionaire, and he lost every penny in the stock market when the crash came. So he lived as a miser. He had a big home up the top of the hill, which is now law offices. I would see him later on in the afternoon walking up that hill, and every once in a while if it was convenient, I’d put him in the car and I’d ride him up. And he liked me. I went to school with his granddaughters, and his father — he had five kids, and two of them were dentists. And he put all these kids through college except one. And he ran out of money for that one. And the two that were dentists, we used to go to the one’s home up on Mill Street, I can’t remember the side street. We’d go there Friday night after to have fun, and they’d dance and everything else. So later on, in 1947 I think it was, Mr. Glanville died and the plant became part of the estate. My father wanted to buy the place. He got a pretty good deal, because the sons, they knew me. And so we moved into it, but the youngest son was so bitter that he didn’t get anything out of that. He come up here to Norell’s, a barroom up on Denville, which is now where the Japanese restaurant is, and he raked me over the coals. Or, I’d meet him half-drunk at Paul’s Diner later on in the evening, and he — the place was crowded. That was a landmark for us on a Friday and Saturday night, Paul’s Diner. |
PT: | Paul’s Diner. |
RW: | That was someplace in those days. I mean you couldn’t get in it sideways. |
PT: | No kidding. Let me ask you something. You mentioned going to school at Lake Drive School because that was the school here. That was the first school here in Mountain Lakes? |
RW: | Well, no I guess it was Sunday school — yeah, that was the first school to my knowledge, yeah. |
PT: | And was it being built when you moved here, or was it already — |
RW: | I can’t answer that. Almost have to be, although the church, you know everything revolved around the church. We had a church — first church was on Dartmouth in the Castle house there, and then they moved around a little bit in the area and I think they also leased stores down here further down from Yaccarino’s from what history I’ve read. But we used to go over here and go to Edrises, across the way. On rainy days she’d take us to school. We’d go to the school, walk to Lake Drive School in the morning, come home for lunch, and I’d go back after lunch, and then walk home afterwards. |
PT: | How many kids were in a class at that time? |
RW: | About 35. |
PT: | Oh. |
RW: | Yeah. In fact, there was one year, they had so many kids when I was in fifth grade they couldn’t take care of them all, so we had a split session. We went — half of us went one month in the morning, other half went in the afternoon. I’ve often thought this town could have done that more often. |
PT: | Did they have sports programs at that time, too. |
RW: | We had a baseball team, and we played at Neafie’s Field. |
PT: | Where? |
RW: | Neafie’s Field. |
PT: | Where’s that? |
RW: | Where "the Village" is. |
PT: | Okay. Before they built all those homes. |
RW: | Yeah. |
PT: | When was that? |
RW: | It had to be in the thirties. Because we played baseball there, and Mr. Milkey was coach. He was music director. |
PT: | Okay. So you had a band also? |
RW: | An orchestra. |
PT: | An orchestra, yeah. |
RW: | Every Friday morning we had to go to the third floor of the school, and listen to [unclear] program on music appreciation. |
PT: | Was that fun? |
RW: | It was all right, I mean they also taught us how to dance up there, too. And I never did learn. |
PT: | [Laughs] What were the dances then, waltz? |
RW: | Fox trot, waltz, namely, so– |
PT: | Well, it was the social graces, at least. |
RW: | Yeah, that was our first year high school, ninth grade. And they taught French and algebra that year. |
PT: | Any Latin? |
RW: | I don’t think they taught Latin. They did when we went to Morristown. But Miss Phelan, you may have heard that name. |
PT: | Miss Phelan. |
RW: | Yeah, lives in Boonton. She’s about 100 years old, still living. And Miss Dunn who was secretary of the school. She’s still living in Boonton. |
PT: | They were some of your teachers there at school? |
RW: | Well, Miss Phelan was my French teacher. I took French that one year and that’s all. When I went to Morristown, knowing that full well I wasn’t going to college, I transferred to the business course. They had one of the ten best in the state in those days. So I went to County and everything and senior year we took care of all the finances of the school and everything. I know bookkeeping and accounting systems. |
PT: | So it was a pretty good education? |
RW: | Yeah, it was. Although the head of the department said to me one day, he said, "You lack stick-to-itiveness." |
PT: | [Laughs] |
RW: | So, his son was also a teacher that I didn’t know at that time, down in Springfield. I got to know him later on, active in business and everything. I’d stop and have coffee down at South Street Luncheonette there every morning and he’d come in there and we got to know each other. And I told him then, about his father telling me, "Lack of stick-to-itiveness," said I’d been in the business ten years and I was still there. |
PT: | What was Mountain Lakes like at that time? Was is a friendly community? What did you think about, you know, just the town itself as it grew? |
RW: | Well, yes it was a very friendly town. The people up on the hill were a little higher. We were always considered the other side of the railroad tracks down here in those early days. But in this neighborhood we had a good time. And we did things that later on the town took over. |
PT: | Like what? |
RW: | Well, the first thing, Mr. Edris you heard me talk about. He’d come out on a Friday night, and this was during the Fourth of July time. And he’d come back with a whole carload of fireworks. |
PT: | Oh gee, where did he get those? |
RW: | I mean in those days you could buy those things, you know. |
PT: | Oh, okay. |
RW: | And so there wasn’t a house next door in those days, this was a big empty lot. So we set out on the road and he set up all these fireworks, and the whole neighborhood would show up for the fireworks. |
PT: | So that was the beginning of it in Mountain Lakes, I mean right down here in Pollard? |
RW: | Yeah, and so Edris became very successful and then he built a big house up on the lake on the point, the big white one? And committed suicide. |
PT: | Oh. |
RW: | Because the business failed him, and his son came along and brought it back and made a very successful career of it. |
PT: | Oh, okay. That’s a sad story. |
RW: | So, I say, we were all in the neighborhood for the most part, all lavatory men, and as you spoke earlier, we all did our own work. Now, I didn’t have much money, and I did a lot of things to make money. I shoveled snow, and mowed lawns, and stuff like that. And then in the wintertime, or the fall, when that was all done, I’d make lead soldiers. I had the molds and the lead and everything. I’d paint them and mount them on cards and sell them. And all the families would give them to the kids for Christmas presents. |
PT: | That’s great. What a nice idea. |
RW: | And things like that. And then I raised plants to sell. Everybody liked me because I had the initiative to go out and work. [Laughs] As I say, they were all wonderful friends. Mr. Larlee who lived across the street, he had three sons. Mr. Larlee was a great Yankee fan. And so he’d take us to a double-header on Sunday at Yankee Stadium. |
PT: | How did you get into Yankee Stadium from here? |
RW: | The Larlees had a car. We’d go down 46 to Montclair and go down Prospect Street and continue by Mountainside Hospital, go through Secaucus… in those days the pig farms stunk like hell — |
PT: | The pig farms. [Laughs] I remember that. |
RW: | Sometimes Mr. Larlee would take me in during a business day, right along with Howard. And we’d go into — Bell Laboratories was on West Street in New York in those days. One of the things that I never forgot was when he took us for lunch, and they had a cafeteria there. I couldn’t believe a company having their own cafeteria. It was huge. And from there, he’d take off and we’d go to Yankee Stadium. |
PT: | That’s fun. |
RW: | Anyway, Howard and Connie Peeks who lived down on Intervale Road, and Bob Ackerman who lived up there, a couple doors up, whose father was with Park and Company. They got a Model T Ford, and we’d take off and go camping. |
PT: | Where would you camp? |
RW: | Well, Charlie Varga went with us one year, and so he was — they were going to Rutgers, Howard was, and Charlie was studying farming. And they had to put in so much time on a farm. So he lived in Pennsylvania, I can’t remember the name of the town now. But he lived in this old place that was about 100 years old. And we started out with this car, we didn’t have any roof on it. And it started to rain, and we’d rig up a canvas to go over the top of the vehicle. Anyway, this storm became severe, and we had to hole up a day at his place and we were heading for Atlantic City. One year, the year before we did this, and we went down to Lavallette and camped right on the beach. You could do that in those days. And then the next year we went to Atlantic City, and Atlantic City was under water. We couldn’t swim. We couldn’t do anything. So we got a place to stay in Brigantine. They had circus out there in the steel pier. And we went to the circus this one afternoon, and the whole Edris family that lived over here was there. |
PT: | [Laughs] |
RW: | And with them and us there, we had the audience in there in hysterics, because Mr. Edris and the kids, they were a riot. My mother being an R.N., she took care of the kids like crazy. Anything ever wrong, they always came over to see Flo and get fixed up. |
PT: | Now, did your mom work as an R.N. when you lived here? |
RW: | No. She did for while just before the war. She worked for a Dr. Weiss that had a place where now is a county park. Esso took it over when the war came along to hide a lot of their, to keep a lot of their financial background under cover. And she worked up there for a while but she never worked in a hospital. We had — getting back to business a little bit, and the hospital. Dr. Ward was the main surgeon around here. Everybody, the women loved this guy. |
PT: | Where did he live? |
RW: | He lived in Morristown. And he had an office in Morristown. And how we started going to him was, that Larlee had a son who had a ruptured appendix. They had to rush him to Morristown Memorial where Ward was there. This was the old hospital, over on Spring Street. So he met Ward. Well, my father had scratched his knuckle on — we had a fire room in the building there, with all stuccoed walls and everything. And he didn’t pay much attention to it, and it got infected. He first went to Dr. — I can’t remember his name, but we had a family doctor at that time who lived in Boonton. My mother didn’t think he treated him right. It was one night the thing blew up on him, so she called Larlee, and Larlee says, "Come on, I’ll take you over to Morristown. I’ll get Dr. Ward." And she watched Dr. Ward lance this knuckle, and she said, "You’re the first doctor I’ve seen that’s not afraid to go deep enough to get the infection." And she fell in love with the guy, I mean, for his professional experience. Well, we got to know him and we did a lot of work for him in his home.
He had a couple homes. But he was left a lot of money to build his own hospital, and so he took over the Yaccarino house and we were hard up for business. There was a laundry in Morristown called Collins Laundry, and my father took over picking up laundry for Collins Laundry. We handled Denville, Boonton and Mountain Lakes. We got this account with Ward at the hospital where every Tuesday I’d come over here and get a truck load of laundry and clean it and get it back to him, you know. So that was the story of a real friendship. I carpeted his first office where the doctor’s complex was down in your neck of the woods, down there at the entrance of Mountain Lakes. |
PT: | I know where you are, yeah. |
RW: | That was his first office set-up. And then he and Dr. Williamson and a couple of others formed Riverside Hospital. |
PT: | Oh, so that’s the start of Riverside Hospital, Dr. Ward and some partners? But you said the Yaccarino house was a hospital at one time? |
RW: | He made it over into a hospital. |
PT: | And how long did he have that as a hospital? |
RW: | Oh, about a couple years. And later on he went to the Hoppy house, and set up where they just ripped the house down and put a new house on. And that’s when he went to the office on — |
PT: | So with his inheritance and his money he started, eventually he started Riverside. |
RW: | Yeah, but Dr. Ward made a fool of himself. I mean, after patient work wasn’t on the ball, he got kicked out of Morristown Memorial and he went to Orange Memorial. And we still stuck with him because my father got [unclear] fever, and nobody knew what it was. And he was in Orange Memorial for about six weeks, and they finally found it was a disease — in those days we got raw milk delivered to the house. |
PT: | Is that how you got your milk? |
RW: | Yeah, yeah. Came from Rockaway Valley. Stickle was the name of the company. So he got over that finally and I had to go down there, I was just a kid and I was running the business. The first job I ever got, big job I ever got, was Jersey Central Power and Light Company. Main office was on South Street in Morristown. I got a call, I came down after high school. Mrs. Gerard was running the office. And she says, "You have to go down to Jersey Central. They have to have an estimate on cleaning all the carpeting, the rugs down there." |
PT: | That’s a big job. |
RW: | Yeah, it was for me that day. Now then I went down a few days later and they said, "You got the job." So Mr. Peck, who was head of the Jersey Central’s offices there, was also president of the Morristown School Board. So when I come to graduate from high school, he congratulated me, and wished me luck in my business. But those are some of my personal — |
PT: | Where there any social clubs in Mountain Lakes? |
RW: | Well, one of the outstanding social clubs was the Glee Club. And that was a fabulous outfit. |
PT: | Where did they sing? |
RW: | Community Church. |
PT: | From the Community Church? So you were talking about the Glee Club. |
RW: | Yeah, and Mr. Houston was head of the Glee Club, director. And they’d have a concert maybe twice a year. And when they had a concert, it was formal. Everybody went in black tie. That’s what gets me today. The nicest things that you could think of in Mountain Lakes or any town. Blue jeans. Gee, that gets my goat. |
PT: | How did you get in the Glee Club? Could you just volunteer? |
RW: | I didn’t get– |
PT: | No, but how did anyone get in? |
RW: | Yeah, you volunteered. Mr. Milkey again, who was head of music in Mountain Lake was also a director later on in years. But, no one wanted to work that hard, keeping it going, and it faded. And the MacDowell Club, which you probably have heard of, that’s the oldest club still in existence. That started in 1915, and in order to be a member of that club you had to be a musician. You had to play an instrument or be a singer, or something like that. That was because they couldn’t go to New York, or everything. I guess they had concerts every so often, too. Either that or most of that was held in their own homes. The Watts family was a great musician family, Llewellyn Watts and — |
PT: | Was that Skip Watts’ family? |
RW: | No, that was Skip Watts’ uncle, Llewellyn Watts. Then Mr. and Mrs. Hendricks, who lived almost opposite Llewellyn Watts, he was a conductor. So, Mountain Lakes was pretty well versed on music in those days. Then you had the Women’s Club that formed later on. I guess some of those organizations have started up again. But the McDonald is the oldest one. I worked on the history of that. We got a book here that Marcella Baldwin, you know her? |
PT: | Sure, sure. |
RW: | She wrote this. And I take her around. We go to places that do the printing and stuff like that. And identify some names that nobody knew. Dave [unclear] who lived on Larchdell Way. Up on the hill, Pauline Fredericks, who I didn’t know, it was before my time, she was an outstanding performer in the arts in Mountain Lakes. But apparently they had some wild parties up there years ago. |
PT: | [Laughs] |
RW: | This town was–no one ever thought of building a lake community and having a year-round community. And even in those early days there were a lot of people that just came out here for the summer. |
PT: | That’s right, and then they’d lock up the houses and go back. |
RW: | Right, yeah. |
PT: | Did you use the lakes when you were a kid? |
RW: | Yeah. I once swam from the cove all the way down to the Club. |
PT: | Oh, really? Was the Mountain Lakes Club here, or did they build that while you were here? |
RW: | No, that was the first big building in town, and that burned down on New Year’s Eve. I can’t remember what year. I walked up to the cove and you could see that place on fire. It really burned. |
PT: | You were a kid, huh? |
RW: | Yeah. |
PT: | But they did use the lakes then? They had boats out on them? |
RW: | Oh, yeah, yeah. In fact, in the wintertime, we had more ice skating than I’ve ever seen in later years. We had two fellows, McEwan, who lived down on Pollard Road, and Streeter who lived on Morris right near Midvale. And they took bicycles and went out on the lake and went through the ice, and drowned. And that was the start of putting a flag up on the lake, a white flag with a red ball in the center. Harry Dennis used to test that lake, and make sure it was safe for skating. And then in later years, everything went to pot. They wouldn’t do it anymore because the insurance, people sue them, or something. But on Sunday afternoon there’d be 300 people at least on that lake, skating. |
PT: | Three hundred people, boy that’s terrific. |
RW: | Yeah. I mean, it was crowded and there was always a hockey game going on. They’d put rocks out there for the goal. Then we had Dr. Ribble who was a dentist, he lived up on Crestview in one of the big homes. He had a daughter, Betty Ribble, who was in my class in school. When she went to Morristown, she couldn’t stand it, because of the blacks and Italians and stuff like that. She wasn’t used to that. They only had one Italian family, Marsettis, who were barbers, down where Lionel’s train station is and the store up above there. So anyway, they took her out of there and she went to private school. And she later became the number one model in the United States.
You’d see her out skating so bundled up because she didn’t want her face to get ruined. For me, going to Morristown was an education in itself, mixing with all the kids that we had. Like I took typewriting. I didn’t take shorthand but I took typewriting. And we had dual typewriter desks where it was two typewriter desks to a table. And Alice Satchel was black, and she was next to me, and she became an accomplished musician, pianist, later on in life. She was a nice gal. We got to know a lot of them that way and it was helpful to me in business later on. |
PT: | Well I guess then a lot of the kids from Mountain Lakes who went down into Morristown, that was a — they learned to mix more then. |
RW: | Yeah, yeah. And Mountain Lakes took up a good part of the honor rolls. They had honor roll boards in the senior hall, with the names of all these people. Even when I was there those boards were still there, and with names of Mountain Lakes fellows there. |
PT: | I had a question for you. Since your mother came out here and she was used to shopping in Boston. Where did she go to shop when she lived here? |
RW: | She didn’t. I mean, a lot of the shopping was Sears Roebuck by mail. |
PT: | By mail? |
RW: | That was the big thing in those days, Sears Roebuck. They had an extensive catalog. My father liked their men’s shirts. They made a seven-button shirt that he liked, and he liked the collars. |
PT: | So you wouldn’t go down to Morristown or anything like that? |
RW: | If my mother went to Morristown she went with somebody who took her. At Christmas time we used to take the bus to Newark. We’d go to Bamberger’s to see Santa Claus. One of the — it still sticks with me today, Betty Robinson, who lived over on Morris Avenue, she was a very good friend of my grandmother’s. She would take, at Christmas time over to Greystone, those people made a lot of stuff they sold at Christmas time. They made rugs, too, and they were the heaviest ungodliest things you ever saw. They weighed a ton. |
PT: | You must have known, because you cleaned some of them. |
RW: | Yeah, they were only about four by sixes, but they were heavy. Anyway we went over there. As I look back on it, why my mother ever took us as kids over there, because I went through there, and all I ever remember is those people, poor people, sickliest, screaming and hollering for all they were worth, and saying silently, you know. Man, I still remember that to this day. You were talking about the trolley cars. I mean, my mother bought stuff in Boonton, because we’d take the trolley car and go to Boonton. We’d get our hair cut, we’d go to the dentist, we’d go to the doctor. |
PT: | So that was sort of like your downtown, then? |
RW: | Yeah, right. That was our main thing, we’d get in the trolley car and come back at dusk or just dark and the conductor would holler the streets so we’d know what street to get off at. And of course we had to get off at — |
PT: | There weren’t any lights then. |
RW: | No, I don’t remember. We had to get off at Crane Road and walk home from there. Then I like to tell the story about going to Lake Hopatcong on the trolley. |
PT: | How long did that take? That’s a pretty long haul. |
RW: | Yeah, they made pretty good time. You had to go, see you had to go to Denville, and the Boonton line, or the Mountain Lakes line went from Denville down to Mechanic Street in Boonton, that’s as far as it went. Turned around and went back and forth. |
PT: | And then turned around and came back. |
RW: | Yeah. And you’d transfer, if you wanted to go to Morristown, you’d transfer and go to Morristown, and you could go as far as Irvington on the trolley, then you had to transfer to another trolley from there, and it went down under ground into Penn Station. But the other way it went up to Mount Arlington. Then there was also railroad lines over there that–Orange Mountain Ice Company took all the ice off the lakes, Crystal Lake, Birchwood — |
PT: | I was going to say, didn’t they cut ice and bring it into town for the refrigeration? |
RW: | Not for here, but they took it down to the [unclear], Newark way. |
PT: | Oh, okay. Well what did you use here? |
RW: | Dixon’s. |
PT: | Oh, Dixon’s delivered? |
RW: | Dixon’s had ice up in back of their house out in Rockaway Valley. You know that house? |
PT: | Sure, yeah. |
RW: | Well, they have pond up in back. There’s a pond down near the road, but there’s another lake up in back. And they used to cut their own ice, and then they warehoused it on the corner of Lake Avenue and Main Street. So that was another story. Decker delivered the ice. And every morning in the summer time he’d come up here. The ice- box was out there. As I said, my grandfather put a pipe so it went down through the floor, they didn’t have to empty the water out of it. So he, Decker would come here and we’d take the ice and throw it out in the woods. |
PT: | [Laughs] |
RW: | We’d ride him like crazy. Then in those days, Dixon’s were in our back yard here. The railroad, they used to — the oil used to come on the tank cars on the railroad, and they’d unload it here, and they had six huge tanks out in my backyard. And I knew Bill Dixon pretty well. We were customers of theirs, and they were customers of ours. The whole family. |
PT: | So basically, everybody pretty much used oil out in those days. Anybody have coal? |
RW: | Yeah, we did. |
PT: | You had coal, too? |
RW: | Yeah, that’s what we all started off with. What happened that was that everybody had coal, and they delivered the coal. That was a huge coal pocket. They had egg coal and chestnut coal and pea coal. |
PT: | This is Dixon? |
RW: | Yeah. |
PT: | Oh, so they started with coal and then went into oil? |
RW: | Yeah, yeah, then they also sold ice and wood. |
PT: | And wood, too. |
RW: | And we got all of it from them. |
End of Interview