Uncommon sighting of a black squirrel in Fair Haven Photo/Elaine Van Develde
It’s not downright nuts, but it’s also not common to sight a black squirrel in the Rumson-Fair Haven area.
Yet, scampering around William Street in Fair Haven, there one was — bolting across the street, darting up a tree and copping a squat to snack on his harvested nut.
They’re not indigenous to the area like the preppie. In fact, the black squirrel is as uncommon here as high hair.
No one seems squirrelly about their rather rare sightings lately. And where the handsome(ish) rodents are known to settle — like Washington, D.C. and the campus of Princeton University, among other places — residents tend to take pride in the fact that they’ve nested in their hometowns.
Evolving from the same species of squirrel as their Eastern gray descendants, black squirrels originally hailed from Canada and can comprise as much as 25 percent of the total usual grey squirrel population, or one in 10,000.
RFH team captains displaying a flyer created for the Bag a Lunch fundraising initiative are Victoria Hempstead and Willis Manelski. Photo/RFH
Bag it.
That’s what members of the Chinese, French and Spanish National Honor societies at Rumson-Fair Haven Regional High School (RFH) recently asked students to do — to “bag a lunch and help a bunch,” as the slogan for the Table to Table charitable initiative goes.
Table to Table provides meals to New Jersey families in need. RFH put $430 in its coffers when students on Oct. 14 brought home brown paper lunch bags and returned them to Bag a Lunch team captains at school filled with the amount of cash they would typically spend on a single lunch.
“I am very pleased with the participation of the RFH students, and the work of our team captains,” RFH French Teacher Christine Berg said. “And I am happy that the money raised will be used to help our fellow New Jersey residents.”
— Edited press release from Rumson-Fair Haven Regional School District
It’s as good as it gets for anyone in the area and beyond — that classic lobster pizza at Val’s Tavern in Rumson.
The pie, as they call it, is pretty simple, yet has been a deluxe gourmet sort of pizza treat for many for decades.
It’s a thin-crust pizza flush with all the normal pizza stuff, but great quality, like the good sauce and cheese. Add to that some Brazilian lobster and, if you so choose, some hot sauce.
While he’s been officially off the job since Oct. 1, the chief’s surreal 38-year career culminated in a lucid award-strewn farewell retirement dinner last Thursday.
Roughly 200 state, county and local dignitaries, police and chiefs from several nearby towns, family and friends gathered at Raven and the Peach in Breckenridge’s hometown Fair Haven to celebrate his accomplishments, honor him with certificates and awards — even the key to Fair Haven — party with him and just plain thank him for his service.
“I just love this man!” a teary eyed Eileen O’Neill, widow of former Chief Bobby O’Neill said as she hugged and held the face of the man she knew as the kid her husband took on ride-alongs and mentored .
There were other mentors, too … former chiefs Ricky Towler, Lou DeVito. Then there was, of course, the chief who started it all for a 5-year-old Breckenridge when he stopped at his house to offer his mom a job as a crossing guard — Carl Jakubecy.
Then there was his mom, Dorothy — the woman Breckenridge credits with giving him the “character” to succeed and realize his dream.
“To have a dream at five years old and to actually see that dream come to fruition … Just being a patrolman and being fortunate enough to rise through the ranks of chief of police in the town where I wanted to do so is truly amazing … It’s more amazing when you go back and look at at our country in the 1960s … there was so much turmoil in the world, so much unrest within our country, there were riots on the street and hatred … there was so much uncertainty …”
Breckenridge’s children, Tyler, D.J. and Whitney, stood before their dad, certain of his success and their pride in him. “There aren’t enough words to describe how proud we are of our dad,” Whitney said.
The sentiment was echoed by D.J., who is now Fair Haven’s Recreation director.
He talked about the respect and pride his father, passing down that “character” his grandmother taught, was grateful, not only for the success, but also for the community in which he was raised. That community, Fair Haven, has always been family to him as well, D.J., a little choked up, said.
“I know that it’s very important for him to have all these Fair Haven residents here in addition to everyone else,” he said. “Because Fair Haven, for my dad, was always family and it always will be …”
Yes. Protecting and serving his hometown family was Darryl Breckenridge’s dream. He’s still living it in its second act. Although now, as he told the crowd, “I can let my hair down … Well, I can let down what hair I have.
“For me to have a dream of that magnitude and to be able to realize it … It’s really amazing. It happened because we are in this country. We have the best country in the world. God bless America. God bless you all.”
Congrats, Darryl, from your Fair Haven family!
Don’t forget to click on the lower right icon of the slideshow to enlarge. We had a few photo tech issues. So, in addition to the somewhat compromised quality of some of the photos, we also apologize for the fact that somehow the entire police department ended up looking like something out of a Halloween movie — all white eyes. Who knew? Officers of the Corn? Sorry!
Chris Bowden, RFH Class of 1976 was the first girl to play soccer on the boys’ team. Photo/RFH 1976 Yearbook
Yes, soccer season has kicked in.
When Rumson-Fair Haven Retrospect shared a photo of the boys’ team from back in the late 1970s, RFH grads challenged all to remember who the first girl was to play on the boys team (since there was no girls team then).
We found her and a photo of the team that year, which was 1975-76. Remember? It was Chris Bowden, RFH Class of 1976. They were playing, of course, in 1975.
So, the Retro Pic of the Day honors that first girl to kick in some girl power on the RFH Boys Soccer team a few decades ago.
Do you remember in which year RFH formed its first girls’ soccer team? We think it was the 1980s. How about 1983? Remember who the captains of that team were?
Tim Lee, Director of Undergraduate Admission at University at Albany, SUNY, discusses the admission process with parents during the Interactive College Admissions Committee Workshop at RFH. Photo/RFH
Roughy 100 Rumson-Fair Haven Regional High School (RFH) students recently participated in a forum dubbed Interactive College Admissions Committee Workshop.
The Oct. 8 presentation offered an insider’s view into the college admission process.
The Fair Haven School District marked its recent Week of Respect with activities and new initiatives designed to encourage kindness and acceptance.
The state-mandated week-long designation, featuring respect-inspired activities from Oct. 5 to 9, showcased Laraine Gaunt at Viola L. Sickles School on the first day. Gaunt kicked off new yearlong initiative dubbed It’s OK 2B Different.
The namesake of Church Street in Fair Haven will soon be gone.
The steeple of the longstanding Episcopal Church of the Holy Communion at the corner of the aptly coined Church Street and River Road is still standing, but most of the house of worship has been demolished.
As part of a Planning Board-approved subdivision plan, the demolition of the six-year-shuttered church on a .54-acre parcel, the last renovation of which was deemed a “do-it-yourself project by a very adventurous (group of) builder(s)” in the late 1960s by Rumson builder Kolarsick attorney Brooks Von Arx, began on Tuesday.
As of 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, only the front quarter of the church remained.
Von Arx had said that razing the church was warranted to make way for the unanimously board-approved three-home subdivision because the structure was found to be in disrepair and lacked the architectural integrity or historic background to warrant preservation.
Along with the church, a two-story dwelling and former nursery school on the site were demolished.
The with no historic or architectural integrity to warrant preservation, will now be razed, as will a former nursery school, sanctuary and two-story rectory dwelling that sit on the site.
A church has sat at the location since the late 1800s, thus the namesake street.
Rumson dad and RFH alumni Doug Borden got an unexpected treat today while starting his morning at Sea Bright beach — with a porpoise, one could say, or, more likely, a dolphin.
Sun shining and weather still mild enough for a beach stroll, he got to Sea Bright at about 8:45 a.m., just in time to catch a school of bottle-nosed dolphins swimming their way south in the ocean.
“I would say dolphin, I just say porpoise so no one confuses them with the Mahi Mahi dolphin which is a fish,” Borden said.
He videotaped it. Take a gander.
Thanks for sharing your morning moment by the sea with us, Doug!
No, the scene just never gets old for many. It’s that scene, or one or a few of many, from one perspective or another, soaked up from the banks of Navesink River by the Fair Haven Dock.
The sun was shining brightly on Monday. Warmth enveloped — both temperature and tone.
Harvest Fest Co-Chairs Christine Hayden and Kim Kennedy and Sickles School Nurse Nora Navarro and her daughter Sophie display information and ideas for the Teal Pumpkin Project
Photo/Fair Haven School District
Knollwood School fourth-grader Christine Longley does her best to grab a stash of Boo Bucks in the Blizzard of Dollars.
Photo/Fair Haven School District
In case you hadn’t heard or weren’t there, the Fair Haven School District’s annual Harvest Fest was held, despite the threatening weather forecast, last weekend, but in a slightly different venue — the all-purpose room at Knollwood School.
The packaging and ingredients for Seed to Sprout’s Raw Cashew Collard Wrap Photo/Elaine Van Develde
By Elaine Van Develde
There’s nothing like the wrap — of anything, really.
It represents a feeling of accomplishment — in a way. In show business, “Its a wrap!” brings on a sigh of relief and some celebration. In other circles, such as food forums, it prompts some speculation and, yes, satiation.
When you have an option of choosing a wrap to eat, for instance, it often represents several ingredients you like wrapped up in some sort of flour tortilla or variation thereof, a/k/a wrap.
A lot of area eateries offer a wrap version of a favorite luncheon-meat-and-cheese- or salad-stuffed something or other.
Then there are those who like to eat it raw — the wrap and its contents. For them there is such a thing as a collard leaf-stuffed vegan variety. And they have it at Seed to Sprout in Fair Haven.
As Lucille Ball said in her Vitameatavegaman commercial on I Love Lucy, “It’s tasty, too!”
So, as the first in Rumson-Fair Haven Retrospect’s I’ll Just Pick weekly series, the pick of the week is the raw cashew collard wrap from Seed to Sprout — and from a non-vegan who really relishes a big fat meaty sub for some lunch solace on a bad day.
This wrap, enveloping the taste buds with a creamy, crunchy vegan catch-all, features a mash of organic raw cashews topped with alfalfa sprouts, shredded carrots, tomato and mixed with extra virgin olive oil, lemon juice, apple cider vinegar and filtered water. Then there’s a nutritional yeast additive.
And, of course, the whole thing is wrapped up in a collard leaf. Call it a foodie Collard Patch doll.
Call it that, because even if you’re not a vegan, you may want to adopt this lunch lifestyle change.
It’s a cashew hummus sort of splendor all wrapped up and ready to healthily munch. Really.
Seed to Sprout opened a few months ago in July in the Acme Market shopping plaza, off River Road (officially 560 River Road, though), in Fair Haven.
Rumson-Fair Haven Regional High School graduates Cara Pescatore and Alex Mazzucca own and operate the eatery, which is a second location to the original in Avon.
The menu is replete with all sorts of all-day organic vegan breakfast dishes: granola and yogurt parfait, sprout breakfast bowl and avocado breakfast sandwich.
Under the raw header, there’s also a sunflower burrito wrapped in collard and raw pizza.
There are also lots of grilled sandwich goodies, that are not quite what they sound like, such as the bacon cheddar melt, which features coconut bacon and not your average cheddar. The grilled avocado sandwich, RFHers tell us is a favorite, too, not to mention the seed salads and rice bowls.
Seed to Sprout is open from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Dinner is served at the Avon location on Thursday nights.
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