Local Life

Retro Fair Haven Snow Storming

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Gene Reed shoveling snow in Fair Haven circa 1960-61
Photo/Pat Reed Wright

Call it a snow storming at the shove-wielding hands of a Fair Havenite and vet in the early 1960s.

The vet was Gene Reed and he was always ready and set to go plow through the drifts to the sidewalk on Parker Avenue with his trusty, lone shovel, donning his World War II U.S. Air Force jacket from his Japan tour days. These were those days well before the invention of the individual snow blower and its popularity.

Oh, the snowblower was actually invented in 1870 by Robert Carr Harris, patented as the Railway Screw Snow Excavator. The first practical prototype was designed by Arthur Sicard in 1925 and sold as Sicard Snow Remover Snowblower. These were truck-propelled blowers. The smaller, individual home snowblower didn’t become a constant burr in most snow-covered neighborhoods of suburbia until about 1962.

For Gene and most in the Fair Haven of the early 1960 or 61, as his daughter Pat tells R-FH Retro, shoveling was the way it was done. And it was never considered a very big deal. Dads usually got up, suited up and shoveled after a snowfall.

Gene Reed’s family got a snapshot of the 60s snow scene. Gene was a pilot in the U.S. Air Force at the end of World War II. His last posting was in Japan, daughter Pat said. At home in the U.S., Gene was an entertainer on cruise ships and was also a cruise director. In that capacity with several different cruise lines, he entertained and saw the world.

His daughters, Pat and Kathy, ended up as entertainers as well. Kathy is producer of Kathy Reed Productions and Murder on Cue Mystery Company. She has acted and sung in, directed and produced countless productions nationwide and right at home at the former Barn Theater in Rumson as well as the well-known former dinner theater The Dam Site. Pat has had a role in many of those productions as well as working with her sister her production company as an actor and in other capacities.

You never know who you’ll find out shoveling snow right in your neighborhood. Do you make a neighborhood event of it. Help others? Good neighbors have always been known to run their snowblower up and down a block. They’re the snow angels.

Do you have a snow angel? Shovel or blower?