Washington's Crossing State Park, Picnic Area, Hopewell NJ
This is one of the pictures I immediately said YES! when
finding. Many Burg folks attended a picnic or 2 up at
Washington's Crossing State Park. It was referred to by
all the folks I knew as Washington Crossing, no "s" and
no "State Park". I can smell the hamburgers and hot dogs
cooking on a charcoal grill...hey look a game of quoits
over there...there are Dad and Mom talking about the news
of the day to friends and family...there is the cooler and
if you don't get a soda quick you will have to put your hand
way down in the ice to get a Diet Lime Soda...better have
the can opener...make one big opening on one side of the can
to drink thru and one little opening on the other side so it
lets the air out and makes it easier to drink...over there
is a game of baseball for the kids...we might go over to
the Nature Center and see Mr Hoot the Owl in his cage..we
might go on the color coded nature trails..yes Mom I will
have some more Potato Salad...
Its so fitting I found this picture on a sunny Sunday afternoon
because that was the day we did these things most often.
Oh what fun we had in summers long ago:)
Remember?
3 comments:
Time to get married and I found a house on Hollywood in Bromley. Sadly that was not to be. With a stroke of luck we found a tiny cottage right across from the park.
Funny, when you move out there to the bucolic bliss and feel you have left the city behind, what could possibly go wrong? One afternoon shot after shot rang out. A fellow escaped from the "Workhouse", a place of my former employ, and got the gun of a Hopewell officer and many shots were exchanged. A few weeks later a fellow was hunting in my back yard and when asked to leave, he wouldn't and it got testy in a "Mexican Standoff" till the Park Rangers arrived.
Oh, the irony, welcome to the country city boy!
We did have a lot of good years there. A few times, "my yard" saw overflow from an over crowded park. Nice folks, just please don't litter. How could you toss a few families with kids?
Skip
My Dad Ed MacNicoll was born in
Washingtons Crossing:)
Mack, ask your Dad if he knew the Niederer (spelling ?), family of that area. They founded the Eggomatic (egg grading), a big Hopewell Company. My cottage across from the park was said to have been built for one of the Niederer boys home from World War II. I was a few doors up the hill from the Esso. Your dad will remember that.
My uncle was a Pearl Harbor survivor and managed that gas station back in the 1950's.
I'm sure he knew Jim Abbott from the canoe rental. He was a wonderful old fellow and a few times we salted the hill during ice storms. He would fill the back of an old Jeep and I would sling salt out the back.
Many kids from the Burg and any part of Trenton; heck that was "wooing and sparking" at it's finest on a summer day. Asking a girl to go canoeing on the canal and renting a canoe was just short of marriage.
Ask you Dad how if he ever took your Mon for fine dining on the river at "Filthy Williams" or better known as Dirty Bills.
Skip ... you spark to many memories
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