Fond Memories

Many fond memories for three 
generations of my family

I was transported back 40 years when I found your site! My grandparents loved Palisades (especially the carousel), and my parents used to go on dates there. We frequented the park when I was little, and always stopped at Callahan’s for hot dogs. In 1967, I was a Regional Finalist in the Miss American Teenager pageant—Cousin Brucie from WABC was the emcee. I didn’t advance, but my friends were there, and we spent the evening going on the rides and having a glorious time. The breeze off the Hudson and all the lights always made the evenings the best time to be there. Many years later, I was getting ready to marry a gentleman who was raised in Peru. He’s a few years older than I. His mom gave me a photo album of his childhood, and I as I looked through it, I noticed a photo of him as a small boy in a boat ride. “We had a ride that looked uncannily like that in a place called Palisades Amusement Park,” I said. “That’s because that’s where that was taken,” his mother told me. I was so surprised. My husband was there, in my park, all those years ago. Had I been a little older, we might have been riding the boats together. I moved away from NJ to go to college, but in 2002, I finally took my husband back to Cresskill where I grew up, and made a special pilgrimmage to that wonderful area where the park used to be—a place that held many fond memories for three generations of my family.

BLS 2006