| All interviews were taped and documented. They are available through the Reference Department of the Teaneck Public Library. The Library is not responsible for the accuracy of the statements nor does it necessarily endorse the opinions expressed. |
| NARRATOR: | Ruth Landrine |
| INTERVIEWER: | Ann McGrath |
| DATE OF INTERVIEW: | May 30, 1985 |
| TRANSCRIBER: | Jackie Kinney (12/1985) |
(I) Now I am going to digress and take you back to the Dairy Queen. Was that a shock when they put that in? Does that involve you at all? Does it bother you?
(N) Yes it does because the kids will buy stuff at the Dairy Queen and they are just about here when they finish and then the spoons and the straws and the containers are dumped either in the front or the side. Every morning I go out and I call it the border patrol. I start ...
(I) Overlooking Red Square.
(N) I start in the back here and I go forward and I pick up all this stuff. Beer bottles, coke bottles
(I) Did you have any say in the matter whether that went in there or not?
(N) Oh no say because you only have a say if they are, what is it, 200 feet away. They were going to put town houses down a few years ago and we had a say in that because we were, our property was I don't know if it is 200 or 300 feet and we went up to the Town Hall and spoke against that.
(I) They are talking about an office building on one of these corners.
(N) They want to put an office building, you know where Laurel Street is, some very wealthy woman, I've forgotten now what her name is, she moved out to California, and she owned all that land. She bought all the houses and she owns it and she's dead now. Do you know this?
(I) I know the story but I don't know her name.
(N) And Larry Spano told me this not too long ago and he said that her heirs want to put office buildings down in there. Well the town won't allow them to put the office buildings there until they make the fire house which is on the property over here.
(I) Has a decision been made on the fire house?
(N) I don't know. That has been kicked around for so long.
(I) But this fire house is closed, isn't it? They don't use the old fire house.
(N) They use the one on Morningside Terrace. That's in operation. And this is what I said to Lawrence just the other day, I said you know, whatever the heirs names are that want to put the office building there, they are not allowed to do it until they make the fire house or put a substantial amount toward it which is on the DeGraw property over here that the town owns now. But I said, how about Glenpointe? No one said to them, you have to put up a fire house and that fire engine is, I can't tell you how many times a day that will go down there to Glenpointe. I am surprised it hasn't gone today since we've been here.
(I) Now is this a bus route? I just noticed the bus.
(N) No, they must be doing work down the corner that they have the road blocked off because the traffic will come through here otherwise. I don't know what they are going to do when they finish here.. I personally hope that they make it a one way street because otherwise the traffic
(I) You mean Gifford?
(N) Yeah, unless traffic coming up from Glenpointe or Leonia or so forth, now they are not allowed to turn and go south on Teaneck Road so anyone that doesn't know where they are going they use this to get there and they think this is a racetrack. Oh, they come through here at a terrific rate of speed and now if that was a one way street, and only the traffic could come out this way, it would be much better. I would personally feel better about it.
(I) Yeah. It would be helpful. Do you shop on Cedar Lane at all?
(N) I don't shop in Teaneck at all. I get, this is off the record here, I don't like the people I meet.
(I) Do you want me to leave this on?
(N) Yeah, you can go on.
(I) Do you have a legitimate reason?
(N) Well I lived in Maywood and the people over there are friendly. We all get along good together. I shop in an IGA. And for instance the other day when I was doing my shopping, Betty, one of the checkout girls, said, Ruth, you didn't get any bananas today. And I said, oh my goodness, do you think anyone in a supermarket would ever tell me that?
(I) It is a matter of knowing people and looking out for one another.
(N) And if I, the other day I wanted, I didn't like the watermelon they had there and I said, Nick, can you cut me a piece of watermelon and meet me at the checkout? Sure enough. And you don't get this kind of service.
(I) You think it is impersonal here.
(N) Yeah. I do all my shopping, my food shopping, in Maywood.
(I) Do you use any stores in Teaneck?
(N) I don't go to any stores in Teaneck. Once in a while when Bunny and I just feel like splurging, we'll go up to Bischoffs and have some ice cream. My husband objects to eating ice cream. My husband is diabetic. He became diabetic many years ago.
(I) So there is a little treat there on Cedar Lane.
(N) But I don't like to go there. You have to walk so far.
(I) Well the parking is a problem.
(N) When I go shopping, I have certain places. For my material, I go up to Bergenfield to Tony's to buy my material. And I am not much of a shopper because what do I need? I have everything. I don't need anything.
(I) Does the town offer you any facilities for your daughter? To help you.
(N) No, maybe if she were younger, when, because they didn't have special education when she was, she is fifty three now and so that's the reason we educated her ourselves.
(I) But there is no recreational places for her.
(N) There might be but a few years ago, I mean this went back until she was in her twenties I guess, someone said, why don't you take her out, Ridgewood had, there was some woman her son was retarded and there was an organization and they said, why don't you take her and they would go bowling up to some place and I took her up there a couple of times and she was in her twenties then and then there were young boys in there twenties and older and then they were more interested in this girl than they were in the bowling and
(I) It was uncomfortable, yeah.
(N) You have to be very careful because she is such a child in so many of her thoughts and so forth and yet she is a woman and yet I don't know, this isn't the right ... we shelter her.
(I) It doesn't sound right though, that situation.
(N) And we have, we've sheltered her.
(I) That's understandable. I am just skipping all around now and I want to ask you about the park. Do you remember when the park went in and were you in favor of it?
(N) Oh yes. I remember very well because the Ammon Park, I've forgotten what his first name is, but Ammon who donated that property for there, he was a miser.
(I) I wonder why he did it, tax ...
(N) And his wife, no one saw his wife, I think he was German, I don't know, and he used to get boys from the county or the state or something to work for him and then he had to send them to school but they didn't stay with him long. They'd run away from him. And
(I) Sounds like a good story. How did he come to donate the land? Was he old?
(N) I don't know. He was old. (end of tape 2 - side 1 - begin side 2)
(I) You said your father knew Mr. Ammon.
(N) He knew him but they didn't affiliate at all. He kept very much to himself but how he gave the land to the town, I don't know.
(I) Do you think it is a good park? Are you ... kept up well and ...
(N) I am sure it is a good park. I know when our grandchildren used to come over here why they would like to go down there on the swings. I don't think I was ever down there. When they went down, Lee took them down, our daughter. Of course I know that they play baseball there and they play tennis so it is good to have parks. I said to Lawrence, I wish they'd make a little park over here instead of the fire house and he said, oh no, it is too small. Too small an area.
(I) Aren't they supposed to put something at Glenpointe?
(N) You mean a fire house.
(I) Well no. I mean some recreation.
(N) Oh sure they were supposed to. They were supposed to have a lake down there. And there's been a lot in the paper recently because they haven't followed through with their promises. What they promised to have there.
(I) Let's just see what we have missed.
(N) But you know Teaneck as it used to be when I think back, oh dear, it was delightful because my grandfather Demarest where the Demarest/Brinkerhoff house is, that was home to me up there and there were barns and smokehouse, an outhouse down in the back.
(I) And stables there were around here somewhere. Someone had horses that they showed their horses. Do you remember who that was?
(N) Oh, that was up on Queen Anne Road. They had, they brought horses over from out west up there. They had it was like almost like a horse farm up there. I didn't know much about it.
(I) That was a long way away.
(N) Yes. But my grandfather Demarest, what I always was delighted about there, when you left the house and walked down where there was a spring there that his grandfather had made. It was about it was a boxed in spring and it was about half the size of this room and it was all sand bottom and it would boil up you know with the little springs that were in there and he, it was watercress and mint was in there and he would just crush that mint and it would smell so nice and then he kept snails and goldfish in there to keep in clean and then the water would go out from there and go down and then from Uncle Walter's, what's that dining place up there now, I can never think of the name of it, there's a restaurant on Teaneck Road, well anyhow
(I) Way up you mean?
(N) No, just up the other side of Copley Avenue. Well this side of it there was another, a brook that ran down and that brook ran through in back of Uncle Walter's place. Now Uncle Walter's place was the first house north of the Demarest/Brinkerhoff house and the brook ran down through Uncle Walter's chicken yard, and then it joined with this brook that came down from this spring and then that went down and joined another brook that came down from just this side of Holy Name Hospital and
(I) Yeah, that goes near the school.
(N) And just on the other side of Teaneck Road from Holy Name Hospital, the other side of Teaneck Road, there used to be a mill there, a grist mill, and I remember when the mill was there and then that water ran down and joined this other water that came down from two other brooks and then when it got down this was all fresh water, and then about in that direction from here, the tide water, the salt water, would come up and meet and the tide water, the salt water, would meet the fresh water.
(I) The marshes were salt water.
(N) Oh yes.
(I) Oh my gosh. I can't believe they emptied it.
(N) And the vegetation was so different. See these are the things I used to love. The vegetation where the fresh water was was so different from the vegetation where the salt water met. Where the salt water met, then you'd get the cattails up in there and other kind of killies that were fresh, that were salt water and the other fish that came down, they weren't they would just go so far, they were fresh water and the tide would come in and come up that far and that was as far as it went.
(I) What a difference now.
(N) And these are the things that I love to think about with the changes and it never could go back that way and then when they dried out the meadows, it was just like walking on concrete instead of walking on something that gave.
{I) Did you know how they did that?
(N) Yes, they had some kind of big tubes just like you might say vacuums and they sucked it up and up near where Demarest Avenue is now, well up in that area there, they pumped all this gook out into there and they pumped it and pumped it I don't know how long. I mean months that they did that. To dry it out.
(I) They didn't have to put fill in.
(N) I don't, no, where they put the fill in was when they put 90 and 95 through. Then they brought fill in. I think they brought that from the Palisades. They cut through up there. Well not the Palisades. The top of the hill there. They cut right through the rock and then they came down and they brought it on conveyors and day and night that thing was going. Oh, the people from Leonia objected to that because they were crushing stone. Do you remember that?
(I) I think I might. I've been here twenty four years. It might have been before that. I remember them building the highway.
(N) It was before then. I know my father ... remember when they cut through there, they made that cut through to bring 95 through. They had to cut right through.
(I) 95 wasn't there when we came.
(N) Route 4 went up further but they did that.
(I) Let me ask you what you think the best flowers would be to grow in Teaneck?
(N) The best flowers? We have flowers probably their ancestors were brought over from Holland. They were called porse flowers. They are a jonquil.
(I) Can you spell it?
(N) Paus I guess. Paus flowers. And they came from my great grandfather's farm and they are just like a jonquil only they are full. They are not like a daffodil with a trumpet. They are just full. And we still have them. The best flowers?
(I) What else do you grow here?
(N) I'll take you out in the garden. We have columbines and we don't call them forsithia, we call them forsythia, and
(I) This looks like mountain laurel.
(N) Yes, my mother brought that down from up in the woods somewhere and of course that's not a hybrid, that's a native one.
(I) Are there any other native plants that you have?
(N) Oh I have poppies, oriental poppies that my mother planted over fifty years ago. I'll take you out in the garden and show you them.
(I) How about roses?
(N) I don't have many roses. I used to have them. I am getting
(I) Tired?
(N) No, not tired. I never get tired. (walks away from machine) ... looks as though he was going to have a pump put in.
(I) Just wait a minute. We are talking about a well. This house always had Hackensack Water and Ruth is telling me about the possibility of a well.
(N) I think Papa had it in mind that he was going to have a well drilled. Because there are certain holes in the cellar but then Hackensack Water came through at that time so he connected with Hackensack Water down on Teaneck Road.
(I) Do you know your neighbors, most of your neighbors?
(N) Now? Yes, the neighbors across the street, they are a young couple. She's an artist, they have a little girl, and they came from Pennsylvania down toward Philadelphia. The neighbors in the back, they have three boys and then the neighbors across the street are Indians. The next ones are Phillipinos. The next ones are blacks. The next are Italians. They've lived here for a long time. I guess that's it.
(I) Do you like this diversity of people? Do you enjoy living among all different races and
(N) No.
(I) Well you all seem to get along.
(N) Yeah, we get along. These people that have the real estate, he's Italian, you know, Italian descent and he has a dog. The next people have a dog.
(I) That's how you meet. Right?
(N) And the way I go out in the garden and the dogs are looking at me so when I go shopping, I buy dog biscuits and every morning when I go out to feed the birds, the dogs are waiting there for, to get their dog biscuits. If I go out in the yard, there is not a sound. When you and I go out there afterwards, then you will hear the dogs barking. You don't have to say a word. They know. So they are good watchdogs.
(I) That's nice.
(N) And across the street, I don't know if people are there or there or anywhere, right across, two young girls, they raise some kind of miniature poodles, white poodles. Lovely girls. And then Wood, he is a policeman, he lives accoss the street there. Otherwise, I don't know anyone else.
(I) Well that's a lot of people... Do you ever go into New York?
(N) I used to. I wouldn't think a thing of it. But I don't like to go to New York now.
(I) What would you go in for theater, entertainment or shopping?
(N) Go in for shopping because you have big shopping centers and if I wanted to go to Macys or Gimbels, I'd go into New York. I don't go to shows. I used to like to go to the Music Hall. Lawrence isn't one for shows. But I'd take the children in to the museum of natural history and go to visit like the Cloisters or just visit the Empire State Building or what have you but I wouldn't even think of going, I wouldn't even go on a subway today. I'd be scared to death to go on a subway.
(I) Well I think we've covered
(N) Turn me loose in the woods and I am all right. No fear at all. Have my compass and that's all. But don't turn me loose in New York City.
(I) Well let's, I want to thank you very much for
(N) Let me show you Grandpa Demarest's. . .
(I) I'd like to see these pictures and I am going to conclude the interview now with just a great big thank you for your time and patience.
(END OF TAPE)
