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Local Life, Opinion

Fair Reflections: An Ode to Opening Night of the Fair Haven Firemen’s Fair

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Our annual reprise in celebration of opening night of the Fair Haven Firemen’s Fair and how all the scents and sights the night before flood a Fair Haven kid’s mind with memories of the fairest kind. This year, this reprise is dedicated to my little sister. May life be forever fair in our haven of priceless memories …

All’s fair. The night before. The decades later. It’s something a Fair Haven kid will always see … a shooting star that they grabbed and tucked away in their heart, holding onto the glistening, magical light.

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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Local Life

Retro Wheel of Fair Fortune

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Manning a Fair Haven Firemen’s Fair game of chance booth in the 1960s
Photo/FHFD

Reprise, because the countdown to Fair Haven Firemen’s Fair time has begun! Yes, there are games of chance at the fair, but most would agree that everyone’s a winner with the fair and its cache of memories for any area-raised kid. Spin …

“Round and round she goes; and, where she stops, nobody knows.”

That usual was the sing-song mantra echoed through the grounds of the Fair Haven Firemen’s Fair back in the day. It was emanating from the guys manning the game of chance booths that still line the grounds — the loud ticking of the wheel with the spin, numbers going round and round, fingers crossed, breath held … until they stopped on that winning number. “Aaaaaand we have a WINNER!” Woohoo!

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Local Life, Opinion

Retro Fair Candy Apple Daze

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Candy, Ray and Marion Bennett tend to the candy apples at the Fair Haven Firemen's Fair circa 1979 Photo/Fair Haven Fire Department Yearbook, courtesy of Evie Connor Kelly
Candy, Ray and Marion Bennett tend to the candy apples at the
Fair Haven Firemen’s Fair circa 1969
Photo/Fair Haven Fire Department Yearbook, courtesy of Evie Connor Kelly

It’s Fair Haven Firemen’s Fair time! With the fair, of course, comes goodies. Confections. Fair food. One favorite that hasn’t made a comeback is the candy apple. So, we look back and reminisce about a fair treat and tradition gone with this “back by popular demand” reprise and a little addition …

How do you like them apples? If the name fits, you know … And it did. She may not have been the actual boss lady of the booth, but perhaps we could call her the Big Dipper? I mean, who better to one of those at the helm the candy apple operation at the Fair Haven Firemen’s Fair than a woman named Candy — Candy Bennett?

The Retro Pic of the Day offers a glimpse back to fair days in 1969 with yet another fair family affair at another booth — the candy apple booth (a corner of the Outback, or what used to be called just the hot dog booth).

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Local Life

Cooking Up ’50s-Style Fun on Starvation Island

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

Yes, there comes a time when 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.

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Local Life, Opinion

Retro Crazy Days of RFH Boys’ Summer

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RFH Class of 1979 guys on a day at the beach Photo/courtesy of Paul Hughes, Class of '79 reunion slideshow
RFH Class of 1979 guys on a day at the beach
Photo/courtesy of Paul Hughes, Class of ’79 reunion slideshow

A reprise in honor of sizzling hot summer days on the beach with some cool RFH guys … 

Remember that horror movie When a Stranger Calls? The babysitter  gets a repeated freaky call from a stranger asking, in measured terror tones, “Have you checked the children lately?”

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Local Life

Retro Fair Haven Gals’ Fair Show Boating

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The FHFD girls on the boat to be raffled at the fair circa 1960s
Photo/.FHFD

The heat is on and the countdown has already begun to the Fair Haven Firemen’s Fair.

And, back in the day, the 1960s day, the fire department, rather than raffling off a car, SUV or a big chunk of cash (as in Super 50/50), decided to make a boat the prized prize of the fair. And they advertised that with the help of some fire department-affiliated bathing beauties.

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Local Life

Retro RFHers’ Donovan’s Party Time

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RFH Class of ’78 reunited for the 25th reunion
Photo/Lisa Mazurek D’Amato

Yes, it’s reunion season. It’s also this RFH Class of ’78 editor’s birthday season. Ahem. So, there’s no better time to take you back again to a hoot of a 25th for the RFH Class of ’78 at an iconic spot in its original little-shack- on-the-beach form — Donovan’s Reef.

Before Sandy, a “DO” at Donovan’s meant something entirely different for RFHers reuniting. Rather than a symbol of “We can do it. We can rebuild.” it was more like a simple “Let’s do the Donovan’s thing!”

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Local Life

Retro ‘Night Out’ Mayoral Dunkin’

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Fair Haven Mayor Ben Lucarelli gets a dunking at Night Out 2012 Photo/Elaine Van Develde
Fair Haven Mayor Ben Lucarelli gets a dunking at Night Out 2012
Photo/Elaine Van Develde

Reprise … in honor of the best of National Night Out times …

Every year there’s a Fair Haven National Night Out. Tonight’s that night.

It’s a night, celebrated on the national level, designed to familiarize residents, from kids to seniors, with police and other emergency responders in town. That Night Out is always the first Tuesday in August. So, Tuesday it is in Fair Haven. There are plenty of Night Out memories to recall, but this featured one is a classic from 13 years ago.

There are games, demonstrations, looks at emergency equipment, food, smiles and handshakes — and a dunk tank.

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Local Life

Retro Sea Bright Beach Clubbing

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Sometimes ya just have to go clubbing … in Sea Bright … before the age of 10.

After all, what good Rumson kid didn’t? Not many, if any. And back in the summer of ’69, little Claire Hurd was one who went clubbing … to Sea Bright Beach Club, of course, with the best of them. It was just the way Rumsonites rolled in the summer. Still do.

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Local Life

Old News: ‘Damn Yankees’ of RFH Summer Theatrics

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Leave Lola and the devil out of it. Whatever RFHers want, RFHers get …

And, back in the summer of ’75, they wanted summer stock theater. And they got it — a brutally fun load of it crammed into five dramatic dancing, singing, acting weeks among RFHers.

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