Name    : 
E-Mail  : 
Subject : 

Comments:
: It's Been Extraordinary: Music, Art, Writing, Advertising, Family, Education, Politics- My Grand Tour

: A ride in the Pierce Arrow 

: On Van Ripen Street the houses are all close together with narrow alleys and walkways in-between. On the other side of the street is a long brick apartment building with rows of windows up to about eight floors. It once was a large open field. The houses on Grandma’s side are mostly three floors high. 

: Grandma told me Grandpa had part of the front of the new house torn down when the workman didn’t follow his building plans.

: During one visit Grandpa took me down stairs to the cellar and into the garage under the house. He walked slowly because of his big stomach.

: "How do you like it? It’s a Pierce Arrow."

: "I like it." 

: The headlights on the front fenders and the silver emblem on the front of the green hood make it special. 

: "It’s really big." 

: I think of how small Mommy’s Chevrolet is - compared. It was a gift, Mommy said, from Grandpa. Daddy doesn’t drive because he drove an ambulance in New York City during the World War and had an accident. Aunt Anna told me he was taking wounded soldiers from a troopship to the hospital. He didn’t get into the Army because of his missing big toe.

: "Get in, we’ll go for a ride," Grandpa says, while holding the front passenger door open. 

: I first sit on the seat, then stand on the floor to see better. He walks around, opens the driver’s door and slowly - with several grunts - steps up on the running-board and slips into the seat. His thick straight white hair seems to stand up into a point on his head as he pushes his big stomach in tight under the steering wheel. He doesn’t wear glasses like Grandma. Grandma says Indians have such good eyesight, they don’t need glasses. He’s part Indian, she told me.

: He looks at me, and pauses, "Maybe your mother should drive? Go up stairs and ask her to come down." 

: I do what he says. She smiles, "You know, he doesn’t drive," she whispers to me. "I’ll be right down." 

: We re-arrange seats with me standing in the back. She slips into the drivers seat with him now on her right. She starts the motor, pushes the long gear-shift and foot-peddles and we slowly move back-ward out through the open garage-door entrance and up a cement-floor incline, out over the sidewalk onto the street. Grandma tells me later this is the first garage ever built under a house in the world. We drive around local streets Bergen Avenue, Sip Avenue, to the Boulevard.

: "That’s Bergen Square," he says, "Peter Stuyvesant Number 11 School... Montgomery Street... West Side Avenue... Hudson Boulevard... a Jewish synagogue I built ... and here’s Journal Square... and the Holland Hotel over there in front of the train station. I designed and built that place and gave it my father’s middle name Marshall Holland Flagg." At Five-Corners he asks Mommy to stop briefly. 

: "There’s my Bank." 

: On the way back he mentions Sip Avenue as one of the oldest streets in the City. I wonder why he hardly ever talks when we’re all together at dinner? Maybe because Grandma’s the life of the party?

: Years later I learn that many of the place names he points to go back more than three centuries when the Dutch and English first settled in Hoboken, Jersey City, Weehawken, Bayonne, Manhattan, Brooklyn and Staten Island. Now Jersey City is populated mostly with Irish, Italians, Poles and Negroes - later known as Blacks, then African-Americans. That leaves only small numbers of English, Dutch, Scottish, Scandinavians, Armenians, Jews and Greeks. Class census counts in the schools show the different categories when hands are raised. One time I raise my hand with only a few others when the teacher says, "Scottish." When she asks about our religion I’m among ten Protestants. About twenty Catholics raise their hands. I count two Negroes and three Jews. I suppose I’m in a minority - and I feel proud about that. One Negro raises his hand when she says, "English?" 

: Grandpa asks Mommy to slow down and pull to the curb along Hudson Boulevard near Journal Square. Pointing, he says, "That’s the back of our house across the lot. See the kitchen window. I bought that lot so your grandmother has enough sunshine to plant a garden."

: We continue on to Journal Square, turn down Sip Avenue, then back to Van Ripen, and into the garage. He thanks Mommy, and she goes upstairs.


Optional Link URL:  
Link Title:         
Optional Image URL: 

 

Hoboken Guide

Featured Link Featured Listing Advertising Program Business name, Web Site Link and a brief description or motto – runs for one month in the Page (or Pages) of your choice. Sales Associates Wanted! GET NJ seeks sales associates to market ads on a commission basis. For more information, e-mail your resume and contact information to sales@getnj.com – Be sure to mention the area of New Jersey and/or the market segment that you plan to serve. GRAVE ROBBER Jersey City Computer Repair 297 Griffith Street, Jersey City, NJ - 201-798-2292 - In the Heights just off of Kennedy Blvd. - Very close to Journal Square and Union City, just five minutes away from Hoboken, Downtown Jersey City, Newport, the Waterfront, Secaucus, North Bergen and Weehawken - Tech support for The Jersey City Mayor's Office during the administration of Bret Schundler - PC repair - Tivos, too!, upgrade, hardware install, software install, data recovery, spyware removal, virus removal, replace hard drive, replace motherboard, copy files from notebooks, backup information from dead laptops Wanted! Used Computers! Used computers bought and sold. Located in Jersey City, NJ - convenient to the Hoboken 2nd Street Light Rail stations and the Journal Square PATH subway station. E-mail graverobber@verizon.net with an itemized list (description) of what you have for sale and the price. Pickup in the New York City Metro area -- minimum 10 units. Secure, guaranteed data removal is available.

For All Sorts of Unique New York City Information, Visit GET NY!