 Growing up in Saddle Brook N.J. in the early '60s there weren't many social activities available to keep us young teenage boys busy enough to stay out of trouble. There were after school sports of course (baseball, basketball, football, etc.), but the group that I hung with weren't interested in organized school sports. We were far too rebellious to follow orders given by a coach, and to be perfectly honest, we didn't play very well with others at that time. We did have “The Rope“ up until 1960 which was in the woods east of the river and just south of the Rail Road Tracks at Saddle River Road for several years. When the Route 80 overpass was being constructed over Saddle River Road the tree that our rope hung from was taken down in order to make way for the roadway, leaving a void in our social network. Route 80 is an Interstate Highway which came directly thru Saddle Brook splitting the town in two. There was a section being built directly thru the coal pockets in order to connect the cities of Paterson and Hackensack, (you would need to be at least 60 years old to remember the coal pockets). With the highway partially completed it became apparent that a bridge would be needed to allow traffic to travel over the new highway at Mayhill Street. During the construction of the Mayhill Street bridge construction workers would leave large amounts of lumber that they used as forms for pouring concrete on site each night. With this windfall of construction material available, at absolutely no cost to us, our devious little adolescent minds began to imagine a Hut that we could build in the woods, our own little club house, outside the prying eyes of the police department and our parents. We picked out an area on Mayhill Street way off the road in the woods hidden by large trees and heavy brush. Each night we would "borrow" the building material that was left behind by the construction workers and carry it off to our building site. Within a short period of time we had enough lumber to construct a two bedroom home with a living room and a kitchen containing a pot belly stove that we used for cooking and heat in the winter months, life was good. We had no trouble furnishing our little shack. Those of us that built it were able to find some used camping equipment, cots, old tables and chairs, blankets, frying pans, knives and forks, etc. in our basements at home (God only knows where we got the pot belly stove) and before we knew it we had a livable structure. The Hut was used as a daily gathering place and for weekend parties for close to a year. Some of us would stay overnight, and if my memory serves me there was one guy named Joe Salero, that ran away from home and lived in the Hut for several weeks. His only source of sustenance was peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and the left over scraps from our own dinner. Well, all good things must come to an end, and the end of the Hut came abruptly one afternoon when we showed up to find a bulldozer in the woods turning our Hut into a pile of rubble. It seems as though we didn't research our construction site well enough before wasting our hard labor and "borrowed" materials in the construction of our sanctuary. The land that our hut stood upon had been purchased by a company that had plans to build a large distribution warehouse on the very site of our masterfully constructed edifice. It was a sad day in Saddle Brook for the small group of us that saw this project thru from it's inception and labored so diligently to bring it to fruition, I was sorry to see it go, but we did have a hell of a time building and hanging out in “The Hut” during the year or so that we got to use it......... © Jimmy McKee SBHS '65, June 15, 2017 |
The Rope | Saint or Sinner | Brother John's Unusual Request | Wasn't Cut Out To Be A Boy Scout | A Friday Night Party at Mike's
A Brook Tale
Celebration & Inspiration