Cooking Up ’50s-Style Fun on Starvation Island

It’s all fun and island-hopping games until they have to start a fire.

Yes, there comes a time when end-of-summer Rumson island-hopping coolness sets in, parents rang the unheard dinner bell and a bunch of hungry, wayward, marooned kids try to cook that fish they caught and toast their own little buns.

Cooler nights setting in is a reminder that someone has to start the island home fires and keep them burning — especially when you’re a kid purposely stuck on an island.

These Fair Haven kids played that scene out many times in the 1950s. They’d tell their parents they were headed to the river only to disappear for hours after hopping into and rowing their boat ashore on Starvation Island of the Rumson shores, so goes the tale of many. But this one comes directly from one in the photo, Kathy Robbins (left). Her firestarter cohort is Jan Baron.

And, as she told R-FH Retro, these two weren’t even sure they actually ate what they cooked — that is, if they ever got that fire started. There’s no flame here, just a couple of cool girls trying to take the chill out and grill … or something like that. There were clams and fish on the menu, Robbins said, but not a sign of them in this photo.

And, judging by the flameless fire pit, that just may be a good thing that dinner was never served. It may have been served with a side of salmonella. Or not.

So, here’s to cooking up some fun and the non-filling of gullets on Starvation Island!

Your Rumson-style island adventure?