It’s all fun and games until … the RFH Tower Players crew finishes building the set … or show time … or something like that. You get the picture — or pictures.
The RFH Tower Players are playing on Nov. 20 with their pandemic time virtual production of Shuddersome: Tales of Poe.
RFH ghouls, or something like that, on parade in 1977 Photo/George Day
In honor of the Halloween season, a reprise Retro Pic of the Day originally posted in 2015 …
It’s all about Halloween festivities in an unprecedented trick, treat and haunting era right now in the Rumson-Fair Haven area. There’s distancing where there was a lot of congregating. And while the era of high alert for razors in apples is a bygone one, now there’s a pandemic, rules about touching, masking, more masking, less tricking and more careful treating. But, the Halloween show goes on.
So, to honor the crowded gathering of ghouls in socially distanced days, we take a look back at the RFH prep for parading as all seniors packed themselves into the lounge, mingled and tried to figure out who was what and why and just have some fun.
Lounging on the VW at RFH in the 1970s Photo/RFH Yearbook
A reprise as an ode to an old normal and return of those sunny fall days we’ve been having …
Everyone’s falling for the summery fall in the Rumson-Fair Haven area lately. It makes an RFH student want to escape the classroom with a spring fever-like fervor.
RFH library aides do chair battle in the 1970s
Photo/RFH Yearbook
You’ve seen it before, but it warrants a reprise. With the recent death of aide Joan Blake RFHers all over are reminiscing about their time, or doing time, with those RFH aides. And every good RFH grad knows that they sometimes had to resort to techniques to tame us beasts that likely would get them in a heap of trouble, just like misbehaving students, if they were implemented nowadays. So, we revisit doing hard time in the library with those aides at RFH on a rainy day laden with those doldrums that they always seemed to chase away, even if it was with a chair …
Once upon a time, when the rain started, so did the antics in the library at RFH. And there to keep everyone in line and keep up one step, or a char, ahead of the antsy foul weather pranksters were those library aides.
Rumson-Fair Haven Regional High School teacher aides of the 1970s, Joan Blake (far right). Photo/screenshot of RFH yearbook
When you’ve grown up in a small town, your memories often revolve around the comforting kind of feeling that anyone else’s mother, no matter their child-rearing differences or life circumstances, is a surrogate of your very own. That’s just how it is. The neighborhood concept.
It’s that time the year again when thoughts of old-time Hunt times come flooding back for many Rumson-Fair Haven area folks. There may still be a Hunt, but not this one. So, we are offering a glimpse back to the days of the Haskell Hunt from a non-tailgating vantage point with a reprise of the following Retro Pic(s) of the Day piece originally posted on Oct. 20, 2017 …
The hunt for more Hunt photos ensued and the find was a treasure trove of glimpses at the happening scene up on hip, hip Hippie Hill. RFH grad and Hippie Hill frequenter Bird Jensen reminded us last year that the last weekend in October “would’ve been the weekend we’d all gather at Hippie Hill.”
Fair Havenite Tom Bull’s description of The Hunt to “outsiders” has quickly become a classic: “I used to explain to people how it was a cross between a Grateful Dead concert and a Grey Poupon commercial.”
The elegant tailgating part shown in previous years would be the Grey Poupon commercial aspect. We will reprise that next. Hippie Hill is the Grateful Dead concert side — or so it would naturally seem.
So, here’s the Dead concert — or, perhaps, a little Lennon soirée …
It was probably the late 1970s. These peacefully assembled cool long hairs and renegades likely snuck into the Haskell Hunt through the fence and onto that infamous hill on ol Amory Haskell’s elegant estate. Call them musicians, concertgoers and peace pipe tokers, if you will.
Well, the RFH Bulldogs won their first game on Friday night by a landslide. So, we’re going back again to 1951 with a look at the team, those uniforms and some personal insight from one of the players himself, Chuck Seymour, a 1951 then Rumson High School graduate.
A swift soccer kick during the 1970s at RFH
Photo/George Day
You could say that some RFH friends and fans really get a kick out of soccer. And, it’s a special kind of kick this season — the kind that boots a little cheer into pandemic times.
The whistle was blown and they let the games begin last week. And on Thursday there are both boys’ and girls’ team games to be played in addition to a full season.
Cheers! A reprise from 2016 in honor of a different kind of season during which, according to RFH posts, the band plays on …
It’s that time of the year. It’s football season — a pandemic season, at that. And that means it’s also time for the RFH Marching Band to play the field, too. They’ve been talking about practice on Twitter and they’re taking their marching orders well.
On the year without the fair … We look back to a story originally published in 2015 all about just how the largest firemen’s fair in the state was run and a bit about that famous clam chowder. The details come straight from a longtime fair chairman and his son years later … RIP, Jim Acker. All’s fair ….
There was a time when there was one. Now there are three. We’re talking Fair Haven Firemen’s Fair chairmen. Yes, there was one person in charge of all that’s fair, getting it started and keeping it going. That guy was James Acker back in the day a few decades ago from the late 1960s to early ’80s. Then it was Gary Verwilt, former longtime Knollwood School teacher.
Just when the guy in charge of the kitchen has retired, a pandemic comes along and obliterates the Fair Haven Firemen’s Fair and all that annual fine fair food. So, on the year without a fair, we look back again to our 2015 story of fair food, who did it all back in the day, what was done, how and who’s still cooking. Can you wait another year? The absence of fair food wafting through the air likely has everyone drooling for the next fair already … No one’s in the kitchen this year but the ghosts. They’re always there …
Raquel Falotico at the Fair Haven Firemen’s Fair 2015 working the dining room
Photo/Elaine Van Develde
Amanda Lynn and Kim Ambrose at the Fair Haven Firemen’s Fair 2015
Photo/Elaine Van Develde
Present-day kitchen crew, or most, after a ride at the Fair Haven Firemen’s Fair 2010
Photo/courtesy of Evie Connor Kelly
The guys in the kitchen back in the day at the Fair Haven Firemen’s Fair
Photo/courtesy of Evie Connor Kelly, FHFD Yearbook
The ladies tending to the sausage, meatballs and sauce upstairs at the Fair Haven Firemen’s Fair back in the day
Photo/courtesy of Evie Connor Kelly, FHFD Yearbook
By Elaine Van Develde
Someone’s in the kitchen at Fair Haven Firemen’s Fair grounds.
And while they may have, at one point another been with someone named Dinah, as the old ditty goes, it’s a definite they’ve been with someone named Mike, Dale, Sue (x2), Raquel, Ethel (x2), Mary, Anne, Amanda, Skippy, Hodgie, Mary Ellen, Joe, Evie, and, oh, yeah, Andy and a few others.
And they certainly haven’t been strummin’ on any ol’ banjo. They’ve been way too busy — cutting, peeling, filling, flouring, husking and just plain cooking.
Except there’s nothing plain about what’s cooking in the fair kitchen, who’s cooking it, when, where, why or how.
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