I've been collecting versions of "Summertime" by George Gershwin, on my ipod. I'd made a cd a few years ago with as many versions as I could find. Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald, Janis Joplin, Billie Holliday, Miles, Coltrane, and on and on. But my All-Time favorite has to be Billie Stewart.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xrhcQcAJSI
Summertime's also my favorite season, right up until its waning days, when regret and disappointment begin to replace the high hopes and optimism that seemed to settle in for good right around the first of June. It's probably an emotional hangover from our school days, when we suddenly wondered where the summer had gone, and faced the dreary days of school starting.
But being an optimistic person in general, and thus mandated by nature to look on the bright side, I've adapted by becoming an avid fisherman (because fishing kind of sucks in summer) and an avid football fan, which makes me look forward to autumn.
And I know summertime will be back; it always comes back. Some things, when they're gone are just gone.
I became enchanted with local history in South Jersey because there is so much physical evidence of it here, and not just in museums or official historic sites, but almost everywhere, and to a greater degree than I've seen anywhere else. A drive down King's Highway between Woodbury and Salem, though not as scenic as it was 20 years ago thanks to housing developers, still reveals something about its past every time I drive it. You can almost pinpoint the spot where Elizabeth Haddon, founder of Haddonfield, feigned a problem with her horse, so that she could drop behind the group of Quakers she was riding to Salem with , and have the opportunity to propose to John Estaugh in private. The proposal was immortalized by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his poem "Elizabeth."
Tarry awhile behind,
for I have something to tell thee,
Not to be spoken lightly,
nor in the presence of others;
Them it concerneth not,
only thee and me it concerneth."
And they rode slowly along through the woods,
conversing together.
It was a pleasure to breathe the fragrant air of the forest;
It was a pleasure to live on that bright and happy May morning
The spot's about a mile from my house. I'll show you where I think it is:
Just off King's Highway, south of Mantua Creek
But some things are just gone.
Edith Hoelle is gone, She was the librarian for the Glouscester County Historic Society library, and I used to see her cheerily going to work every day, while I was working on the Hunter-Lawrence House. She clearly loved her work, and wrote a column for many years in the local paper about Woodbury's history, and I thank her for giving me the bug, as well as for being an invaluble source. Much of the history she gathered was by word of mouth, from people in their 80's and 90's when she interviewed them in the 1950's.
One of my favorite articles of hers was about something that is so gone, it seems totally fantastic.
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It was called Washington Park, and occupied 600 acres along the Delware River, just to the right of the Walt Whitman Bridge if you are driving into New Jersey. Its name derived from the fact that Gen. Washinton had rested a night there in1777, when the Howell farm occupied the site.
The Pier at Washington Park
50.000 people showing up on a summer weekend was a routine affair, Coming to swim (gulp!) in the Delaware, ride the "gravity roads," early versions of the roller coaster, walk the 1800 ft. long pier stretching into the Delaware, full of amusements, and served by an aerial trolley for those who were too pooped to walk out to the end. They'd come to hear John Philip Sousa and his band play those marches we all know, and 100,000 came one weekend to hear William Jennings Bryan speak about how the banks needed regulation, and how the rail monopolies had to be broken, not to denounce free enterprise, but to assure its survival.
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A trolley line was constructed between Woodbury and the park, so that the inhabitants of our little town could, for a nickel, be transported in minutes to the c.1900 equivalent of Disney World.
The Shoot the Chute at Washington Park
The park had the tallest Ferris Wheel in the world, at 100 feet. And it was right here, a couple of miles from Woodbury.
But the big attraction was the Electric Fountain. Seen above, its dancing, swaying streams of water would shoot as high as 80 feet, lit by an ever changing spectrum of light. In the center of the fountain was a huge glass stage, operated by an elevator, inside which Actors would enact various scenes from American history, changing sets and costumes up to 4 times in an evening. As Edith tells it, the stage was big enough that when Washington crossed the Delaware inside the glass stage, there was plenty of room for the large boat he and his men were "riding"in.
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If you follow Rt. 130 through Westville, you will see the Texaco oil storage facility to the right. This entire facility sits within the boundaries of what was once this summertime pleasure park.
I'm not sure what surprises me more: How so much physical evidence of history can survive the ravages of time and progress, or how something that was so much a part of local culture could vanish without a trace, making it seem more like a dream than reality.
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