THE SUMMER WIND

Hoboken's summer weather inspired me to swim. Or should I say, perspired. In this tale, I describe a dip I took into an unhealthy body of water, seeking relief from the humid heat that often blanketed the area. 02/07/2016

THE SUMMER WIND

The city of Hoboken offered no organized activities for its young people during summer, at least none that comes to my mind. Most grade school aged kids hung out in the parks or at the nearest candy store, romped around the campus of the mostly vacant Stevens Tech campus, played city street games, or took up space sitting on the stoops in front of tenement houses. The YMCA, located just six blocks away, had a swimming pool, but I hated its highly chlorinated smell and the regimentation that governed its availability.

My brother had taught me to swim at an early age. I looked forward to swimming during the long hot, muggy Hoboken summers but few opportunities availed themselves. I could swim in Lake Culver during my two weeks of “scout” camp; at Palisades Amusement Park, with its giant pool; in the Atlantic Ocean, either at Coney Island, Rockaway Beach or Point Pleasant. These options all required adult supervision or approval for me to swim. That’s what made swimming in the Hudson River so appealing. No permission needed.  

Given the choice, I would have gone everyday to Palisades Amusement Park located on the Jersey side of the Hudson River near the George Washington Bridge. Filtered water flowed into the deep end of the pool over a wall painted to simulating a waterfall while at the shallow end a man-made sandy beach provided a great place to soak up the sun. The pool featured five diving boards, one of them ten feet high with a great spring. My brother could dive beautifully, and although he tried to teach me, I never matched his skill. As a pre-teen, my trips to Palisades Park were limited to weekends when he took me.

I needed no adult approval or supervision to take a dip in the Hudson River whenever conditions allowed. I swam in a cove between an old out-of-service ferry boat and a pier used the infrequently to barge railroad cars across the river. My grade school friends and I considered it our private pool. Neither the river’s polluted condition (beyond description), nor the peeking eyes of the girls who lined up along the park fence located just above, deterred us from jumping in naked. We never tempted fate by swimming out beyond the end of the pier where the swift flowing waters of the might Hudson River would have carried us out to sea.

10th Street railroad barge pier on the Hudson River, my boyhood swimming location.

  From time to time, we’d swim over to the old ferryboat and climb aboard. Sometimes a security guard would appear, forcing us to abandon ship and swim back to the railroad pier. One day, an organized posse came aboard, chasing naked young boys all over the ship. Most of us eluded them and jumped overboard, laughing at their futile efforts to snare us. However, the gendarmes trapped two of my best friends, Vinnie Delaney and his cousin, Red Burke. Vinnie climbed on the railing of the upper deck, perhaps twenty feet or higher above the river. Then he dove off, executing an Olympic Ten swan dive. He came up to a round of applause. Burke, no diver, jumped in from the railing, feet first. He failed to put his hands over his private parts, and when he hit the water, he almost lost his manhood. In great pain, damn near unconscious, he had to be towed back to port.

My next swim in the Hudson became my last. The cove of water had become a cesspool. Desperate to cool off, I dove into the water without looking and surfaced in an oil slick. Back on shore, I discovered my body had turned black. It took hours to clean myself. Why Hoboken boys did not die from such experiences remains a mystery. Maybe it just toughened us. We were balmier than the weather.

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