Yardville View, 1959

Then ~ 1959

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Now ~ 2008

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This was posted before, but since I got "creative" and added the "Now ~ 2008" photo, I moved it to the top again, just showing off.

This view of Yardville was taken about 1959. Once I look at these photos, the memories seem to "Kick"in, all good ones.

The small white “L” shaped building with the black roof, in the lower right corner is “Tony Rossi’s, Take it Easy Bar”. Our big treat, as young teenagers, if we had more money than we could spend in Groveville, was get a few of us together and walk to “Take It Easy”, knock on the back door (we were not old enough to go to the front) and Jean Rossi would come to the door. We would order “Meat Ball Sandwiches”. These were no ordinary meatball sandwiches, the meatballs were hand made by Mrs. Rossi and the sauce was from scratch. They were made on thick slices of Italian Bread and wrapped with white paper that seemed like Butcher Paper. If you ordered these in the bar they were served on a plate covered with sauce and served with a knife and fork.

Back then you could not buy cans or bottles of beer after 10:00 pm, so they had those quart cardboard drink containers (pre-Styrofoam) and they were allowed to sell draft beer in these for “Take out” after 10:00 pm, so we would buy quarts of draught Birch Beer, great birch beer, to go with our Meatball sandwiches and walk to the Church Street over pass of Route 130 and eat our sandwiches and Birch Beer.

The row of homes across from Take It Easy is Martins Lane and the area at the end was then Best Block Company, now Clayton Block, They were manufactures of Cinder Blocks, at the time of this photo.

In the large triangle shaped wooded area in the center you can see a factory; this was the Chandler-Palruba Company, this company made Oil Cloth Floor Covering, The factory was torn down years ago and the houses have since been removed and this entire triangular area is now home to the Yardville Acme Market, Roma Bank and an office building

The large barren area in the center left is the Yardville Concrete Company. This is now know as Yardville Supply, and where the barren area meets Church Street is where Yardville Supply’s Ace Hardware is now.

In the center – left are the coal elevators of T.B. Anderson and Martin Brothers, next to the Yardville train station.

In the top left center, where the railroad tracks intersect with the Yardville – Hamilton Square Road there is another large white area and this is where the GLF Fertilizer plant was located. GLF stood for The Cooperative Grange League Federation Exchange, a farmers Cooperative. All that is now known as Agway.

Above GLF is a large house with big trees around it that was the home of Tim Bowers. Tim had a large dairy farm and was everybody’s “Milkman” for years. This house is now the office of Attorney Richard Kelly. I have a Milk Bottle from the Bower’s Dairy, some day I’ll take a photo of it and post it. The area left to the Hedge Row and south towards the railroad tracks was his pasture land.

The large clear area in the upper left, other side of the Hedge Row was the Sunnybrae Golf Course, some of the round Sand Traps are visible, but it appears this was about the time that they were starting to develop the area into “Sunnybrae Village”

The entire upper portion of this photo is now covered completely with homes.

I remember as a kid driving to Hamilton Square, once you passed Tim Bowers house it was a long dark ride, no streetlights, no Interstate 195, no traffic lights and the only houses were the Simpkins Farm, the Selmon Farm on the corner of Kuser Road, and the farm house between the small creek and Klockner road and there was a farm house that sat off the road across from where Reynolds Middle School is now, its still there, but its built up around it.

Where the Briarwood Stores are and the Briarwood Condos are now was a large wooded swamp, very, very close to the road, separated by those black and white posts with two cables running through them, lot of protection there.

Driving by on a summer night, with my parents, with the car windows open (no A/C) the sound of the “Peepers” was so loud and so scary on that dark, unlit road.

I think I am still having “issues” with that swamp.