Exploring Under The Waterfalls!

Dear Vince,

Like so many of us originally from Northern Jersey, I too have wonderful memories of Palisades Park... as a child , I grew up in nearby Fairview, NJ. Every year on the last day of school, we would get a strip of tickets for the rides at Palisades with our report cards... but my fondest memories by far are of the pool.

My sister Donna and I would go to the Sun and Surf Club  (that was the name of the pool membership) every Monday, Wednesday and Friday... every week all summer long. We would get a dollar from my parents, ostensibly for the bus fare and entrance into the pool, and we would brown bag our lunch. We would walk the three or so miles from Fairview to the pool and use the bus fare for those delicious french fries. Many of our friends would meet at the pool, and we would hang out on the "boards"... that was what the wooden section behind the diving boards were called. I would watch those lifeguard with those girls all over them, with their zinc oxide spread over their noses... and thought they had the life. We would try to go across holding on to the small rim of wood that formed a lip at water level under the water falls. The force of the water coming out almost forced you under and made it very difficult to breathe. We would also swim the fifteen feet down to the bottom of the pool and explore under the falls. Eventually, myself and one of my best friends Binky (Donald Caufield), discovered a hole in the lattice fence under the falls, near the bottom of the pool. We had all heard the horror stories of boys found every year inside the wave machine, but we had to go for it. We held our breaths and swam down to the bottom and squeezed thru an opening in the fence and found ourselves in a dark underwater labyrinth of pipes, with a load rumble that you could hear thru the water. We squeezed between the pipes and swam what we thought would be another fifteen feet to the top for some much needed air. Incredibly what we found was that there were two sections to the wave machine, one that was above the water surface and one below, separated by a wall. Fortunately for us, there was a small three or four inches of air pocketed at the top of the lower compartment. By turning our heads we were able to access this air to prevent us from drowning and we hyperventilated and then hand signaled to each other to swim back out. Once we got out, boy were we shook up... we swore we would never try that stunt again. God, if our parents only knew how close we came to drowning at the "park".

Anyway, some of my fondest memories of growing up in Fairview involved going to the park, I will never forget it. Thanks so much for this great website. 

Sincerely,

Dr. Ralph La Guardia