Casting Call: Are You a Star?

Clara Maass Medical Center Foundation is looking for local residents who were born at Clara Maass Medical Center, Clara Maass Hospital, Lutheran Hospital, or Newark German Hospital to help us kick off our “A Star is Born” campaign.  Nominations may come from any source including family members (parents, siblings, cousins, grandparents, etc.), friends, or self-nominations.

The lucky winner(s) will have his or her name and birth date etched onto the “A Star is Born” wall (located in the Maternity Center at Clara Maass Medical Center) and will be featured as part of our “A Star is Born” advertising campaign.

Thankful for growing up in old Belleville

I’m thankful for growing up in old Belleville. New Jersey, that is, not Ontario or Illinois or Michigan or Kansas or even Belleville, Paris. I’m thankful for growing up in good old Belleville, New Jersey.

I’m thankful that I spent the first ten years of my life growing up in the same house my father grew up in and that his father built nearly a hundred years ago in Belleville, New Jersey.

First Communion, Gless Avenue.

I’m thankful for the second-floor four-room cold-water flat we shared those first ten years on Gless Avenue.

I’m thankful that my father’s mother lived downstairs from us for a while, even though she spoke words I never understood and usually scared the daylights out of me.

I’m thankful for grandma’s cats that wandered aimlessly and lived mostly in an abandoned car in the yard – just like in the famous play. And for her chickens, which somehow got along just fine with the cats.

I’m thankful grandma owned our house and the house next door and the land where her grapevines and gardens grew like a rich forest all the way up the hill to Newark Place.

I’m thankful for grandma’s scary basement, and the coal furnaces and the days when thunder roared inside our house as the coal man filled the bin through a side cellar window.

School 10 students surprise Belleville scribe

Visiting his elementary after 45 years kindles memories and opens hatch for current batch of students to hear neighborhood history.

Veterans are different from you and me

"For those who have fought for it freedom has a taste the protected will never know"
Engraved on a Vietnam War era Zippo lighter.

When I sat with them, it took me a long time to find a place to sit.

These guys were nearly my age, mostly a tad older, Vietnam War vets. I couldn't figure what it was that kept telling me not to sit at this table, or at this table, or even at this table, as I walked the circle of tables set up around the theater in the center of the Vietnam Era Educational Center in Holmdel, N.J.

Korea was called the forgotten war. Vietnam was the let's forget it war. But that's not it for these guys. They seek their own. Who else would understand? No movie can bring justice to the reality.

But here we are with a small piece of war trivia, a simple Zippo lighter, a borrowed collection of them here, in a fitting place, outside the New Jersey Vietnam Veterans' Memorial.

Remember the pretzel guy on Saturday

Pretzels!

By Anthony Buccino

A

s the Indian Summer bids a hasty retreat while eventide arrives sooner and sooner, the novelty of the new school year quickly wanes.

The fall fashions have already made their flash in the school hallways, children wonder will this outfit be too warm for school or that outfit too cool?

This is the time of the school year when the older kids look forward to the big game on Saturday.

Nowadays, families struggle to be everywhere for each child’s Saturday games. That is why there is so much talk about cloning. First we start with sheep, then cattle, then mom and dad. It’s the only way to be everywhere at the same time.

In simpler times, like when I was in high school, there was only one game in town on autumn afternoons. First, we’d shoo the terrible terra-dactyls and dactylettes, then the field would be ours. 

Continue reading

Yellow Cracker School Days

(biscotti yellows of the peanut butter)

By Anthony Buccino

T

hat distinctive smell of pizza and french fries on Friday mornings always signaled the school week was nearly over.

A few minutes in the lunch line, and one or two classes, and it's onto the weekend.

Not only the children felt this way, but some adults went to four years and more of college, got certified and are allowed to cram an adult meal into their gullets in 20 minutes or less.

Now, that's dedication.

As one who brown-bagged it 99 percent of the time, I often pitied the bus kids who had to buy the hot lunch in the school cafeteria. Theirs was an endless stream of mystery meat in brown gravy with vegetables no one could identify. 

Continue reading

Penny candy at the corner store

From the earliest grades to grad schools everywhere, when that end of school bell rings out the day, children queue, nickel in hand, to be the first to reach the candy counter at the corner store.

By Anthony Buccino

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a child, after a long day of school work, must be in want of penny candy from the corner store.

Growing up, it seemed, every neighborhood from Belleville and Nutley to Bloomfield and Montclair, New Jersey all the way to Ashtabula, Ohio, and beyond had a candy store within a block of every school.

Dog Hair Here, There and Everywhere

Here's something about dog hair, it's like pollen. You don't ever see it moving on a breeze until it gangs up on you and forces an explosion in your nose. 

Sometimes you can move a piece of furniture and find yourself asking your dog, "Is there another dog in here? One that's been vaporized except for his fur?"

Don't expect your dog to answer you unless you say one of the magic words such as cookie, treat, knot chewy, walk or ride in the car. And of course, no matter how smart your dog is, he won't be answering your question. All he wants is another biscuit.

There are ways to deal with dog hair here, there and everywhere.

Italian-American roots in Belleville, Nutley

Growing up on the border line of Belleville and Nutley, the children in my neighborhood along Meacham Street knew that when we grew old we would speak Italian. It was as obvious as all of those gray-haired relatives who came to call spoke the dialect.

On Gless Avenue where I grew up, we had a few Polish families and there was one woman who only spoke Greek. Otherwise, the family names up and down the block, which was half in Nutley and half in Belleville, were virtually all Italian: Lardier, Dimichino, Gingerelli, Troino, Francisco, Bonano, Buccino, Cerami, D’Ambola, all the way to the dead end....

Continue reading

September 11 memorial ceremony

The Township of Belleville will hold a ceremony at the township’s Sept. 11 memorial. There will be readings and other observances to honor the memory of the three Belleville victims of the attacks.

There will be readings honoring the families  of 9/11 victims, and a performance by the Chorus of Communities Choir.

Sunday, Sept. 11, 1 P.M.
Belleville Memorial Park - Franklin Ave. and Chestnut St.

For more information, additional township observances

Each flag pole at the memorial honors one of the victims of the September 11, 2001 tragedy at the World Trade Center. Two Belleville residents and one former resident - Antoinette Duger, Harry Ramos and Harvey J. Gardner III, are honored. 

The pavers at the memorial are in the shape of the Pentagon, which was also attacked on that day. Additional plans at the site are expected to use more pavers to present an outline of the twin towers.

Scoutmaster Gerry Doherty and scouts from Belleville Troop 350, sponsored by Fewsmith Church, volunteered on Saturday planting flowers around the memorial's bordering cherry blossom trees.

*******************************************
Copyright © 2011 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Photos and content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.
Please visit Old Belleville

Carnival