Hackensack, NJ Community Message Boards

Wysocki used to be called Bank St. I worked at MotorAge at 20 Bank St. in 1977. I remember a grouchy old man who owned a used car lot across the street next to a bar. he always complained if we parked our cars on the street near his lot. I never saw any cars sold from that lot, just a bunch of old junk stored there. I think his name might have been Teddy?

Though it called itself a department store, I always considered M H Lamston a five and dime. It was located on Main between Berry and Camden. It was my first real job. A step up from mowing lawns and delivering papers. I was 15 when I was hired, nobody ever asked my age. I did not have to provide documentation. Boy how times have changed. I worked in the luncheonette after school and on Saturdays. The luncheonette was run by an older couple (the Clareys?) and mister Clarey was meticulous about a "griddle press?" that he cooked grilled cheese sandwiches on. That thing had to be kept spotless. He left at 5 and it would be our job to clean up after closing. He would inspect it in the morning and if it wasn't up to his standards, boy would you hear about it. I remember a time he and his wife were on vacation for 2 weeks.... well you can guess what happened. That griddle got a light wipe down after each day. When he came back he was furious. I heard he spent the whole day cleaning that thing... practically had to use a chisel. There was at least 4 or 5 of us that were responsible for it, so nobody got fired. I remember I hired on in early November. They gave out Christmas bonuses based on time of employment. I received a nice card and a check for $1.10. I appreciated the card and thought it very humorous that they even bothered to give me a bonus.

The first fast food resteraunt I recall was "Goodies" or "Goodys" on Essex street just west of rt. 17. Got to go there once or twice a year. Back then fast food was a "treat" and not the American diet. I recall Dugan's trucks with the Entenmann's products. I recall the old ice cream trucks with the roofs cut off them and the driver in white uniform. We used to only buy from the Good Humor truck because Pied Piper had "ants in their ice cream". Don't know where that came from or why we thought that. We also had the milk man and the metal milkbox on the back steps. It was my job to bring the milk in and I remember several times I tried to be lazy about it and carry 2 bottles at a time in 1 hand by the plastic handles. The glass bottles would clank together and there would be milk and broken glass all over the steps. It's a wonder my mom didn't kill me. She always warned me and I continued to do it. Jeez, how stupid can you be as a kid? 

This was down the hill and around the corner from where I grew up. I recall the "carriage boys" changing skin color every few months, black then white then black then white.... very few of the paint jobs were professional. At some point they were finally removed entirely.

I recall the barn. Do not know the history of it. We climbed into it one time through a second floor window accessed by climbing a fence and a tree. We always thought it was haunted by a cow that died there. Then again we thought everything was haunted. I recall they used to store maintenance equipment there, mowers, tractors, gardening tools and such. I think there were even trucks parked in there. It may have supported several city parks. I remember the merry go round in that park, would get about 40 kids on it, some kids pushing from the inner portion and really get that thing cranking. Inevitably somebody would lose their footing and get thrashed like a Ben hur movie. Oh the humanity... and fun!!!

The year was about 1972, I was about 13 and some of my buddies and I discovered a basement window down in a window well where the plywood had been removed. This house was a wonder to explore. The basement did have a 2 lane bowling alley. There was also a movie projector that hung from the ceiling. We communicated to the various floors through a laundry chute that we would yell through. The kitchen was huge with 2 walk in refridgerators. The dining room had beautiful paneling. There was a wing of the house on the ground floor that was a library/parlor. Stained glass windows throughout the house. The second floor had several bedrooms and bathrooms. I recall 1 of the bathrooms had a built in sauna, kind of like a metal box you would climb into and close the doors with only your head exposed. There was also a scale built into the floor with the dial built into the wall. The third floor appeared to be servant quarters as it was accessed by a smaller stairway and also a spiral staircase that if I recall correctly ran from about the kitchen area to the 2nd and third floors. It was dirty and a lot of books were scattered about, but was not yet stripped of fixtures and plumbing. We used to bring other kids there and tell them it was haunted. We would bring them in the bathroom and somebody would be hiding in the sauna and pop their head out, the frightened kid would then jump back, land on the scale and the dial would start moving. By this time they would be so freaked out we would say "follow me" run down the hall into one of the bedrooms, ducking to the left while the room seemed to make a natural progression to the right. Problem was if you went to the right, it was actually a wall of mirrors. It was hysterical to watch kids crash into the wall. While we had fun in there, even at this young age, I realized this house was very special and always hoped that somebody would restore it. There was also a very large garage on the property. I recall it had an office or something of the sorts (chauffer's quarters?) built in. Also it had motorized garage door openers, very old, probably one of the first such motorized openers. I recall a building in the back, built into the hillside, just a door and what looked like bunk beds with sand in them. Somebody used to say they were slave quarters. Thinking back on it, I'm sure it was a root cellar. I had visited the mansion about 5 or 6 times that summer and then never again, but it made a huge impression on me both because of the fun we had there and the architecture and oppulance it once had.