Simple Summer: Guarding a Sea Bright Dawn with a Friend

On Monday morning, I’m going away with my friend …

It may have been a Saturday in the Sandpipers’ famed song Come Saturday Morning, but it sure looks like this Monday captured at Sea Bright’s sunrise today by longtime Fair Havenite and Knollwood School teacher, Andy Dougherty.

When morning has broken on a final summer’s day, nothing compares to the serene veracity of the moment, especially when shared with a childhood friend.

The softness of the vivid colors, the loud silence, the magic in the clouds’ formations, the whole world inside each droplet of a wave’s crash. The hush frozen in time in a minute’s worth of snapshots.

The simplest of moments atop a lifeguard stand with a best friend. Saturday or Monday, the awakening calm of the dawn, the moment remains, many of them …

“Just I and my friend. We’ll travel for miles in our Saturday smiles. And then we’ll move on. But we will remember … long after Saturday’s gone.”

The simplest of summers. Remember the moments. Savor them. Exhale with a smile.

Fair Remembrance: Rides & Reunions

On the historic year without the Fair Haven Firemen’s Fair, we offer a look back at some classic moments of the past five years, since R-FH Retro has been roving the grounds freezing snippets of time.

To anyone who has grown up in the Rumson-Fair Haven area, the fair is a reuniter, an end-of-summer community anchor, a generous memory giver. So, on the year without the fair, here’s a look back at the more recent past and best of moments among friends who became family in a place called home. Take the ride with us …

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Fair Remembrance: The Fair Art of Candy Apple Making, Cotton Candy Spinning & Ice Cream

This Retro Pic(s) of the Day story was originally published on Aug. 25, 2015. It is being run again in honor of the Fair Haven Firemen’s Fair, which would have been running this week. On a historic summer without the fair, we remember how some fair traditions got started, like lost fair art of candy apple making, waffle ice cream sandwiches. Then there’s the art of spinning cotton candy, something that was formerly mastered and commandeered by the late Millie Felsmann, also the champ of candy apple making. This is how they did it and continue to do it at the fair … Until we meet again at the Out Back in 2021 …

When it came to cotton candy — that fluffy spun light blue and pink sugar on a cone that melts in your mouth, on your mouth and many times on your hands, too — Millie Felsmann was the pro at the Fair Haven Firemen’s Fair.

Don’t get us wrong, here. We know that Millie also commandeered the candy apple making. Yes, Candy Bennett was there, too — for many hours a day, making and selling those candy apples, apropos name and all. And, in another Retro Pic of the Day from 2015, we touted her as the candy apple lady.

Well, she was — she was Candy, the candy apple lady. Yes, Candy had a lot do do with those candy apples — but Millie was the boss. She, along with her troupe of kids and Candy, Betty Acker and Mrs. Frank, started work on those apples as early as 6:30 a.m.. And, even further back, to 1965 or 66, Mrs. Topfer made those apples, too.

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Prosecutor: Cops Plead Guilty to Criminal Mischief; Targeting Citizen After Complaint

An Asbury Park police officer and a former city Special Law Enforcement Officer, Class II (SLEO-2) pleaded guilty on Tuesday to charges that they vandalized vehicles belonging to a citizen who filed an internal affairs complaint against them, Monmouth County Prosecutor Christopher J. Gramiccioni announced in a released statement.

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Fair Remembrance: Food To Go Now & Then

It’s something to steep in … the thought of any sort of Fair Haven Firemen’s Fair food. Many do all fair week long. This year the steeping is limited to visions of fried seafood combo, steamers and clam chowder dancing in their heads. They’re the kind of dreams a seasoned fair goer needs to dive into.

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Fair Remembrance: Ode to Opening Night of The Fair Haven Firemen’s Fair

The bustle is hushed. The night remains still at the firehouse grounds. Trucks are in their place. There are no empty carnival rides, no tents, no fresh, sweet scents of cotton candy and fried fish wafting through the air. No one is cooking in the kitchen. All is quiet. Lights are out. A beacon in the mind’s eye casts shadows of decades before. The ghosts are all there, snuggled together on their grounds. They still came home. They are everywhere as we remember opening night of the Fair Haven Firemen’s Fair, which would have been this Friday BB, on a historic year without the fair ...

The night is still. A light is on. Trucks are out of the bays. Cartoony faces and ghosts in empty seats on unassembled carnival rides stare back in the dark. Someone’s cooking at the Fair Haven firehouse. It’s fair time.

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Prosecutor: Former Cop Charged with Theft, forgery

A former Ocean Township Police officer was charged on Thursday with theft by deception, two counts of forgery and other related charges in connection with a forged document he submitted to secure a  $425,000 loan to purchase a property on Borrie Avenue in Brielle in July of 2019, Monmouth County Prosecutor Christopher Gramiccioni said on Monday.

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