For me, graduating Ridgewood High School - while special and memorable and providing me with excitement about my future and the thought of the next thing in my life - there was clearly a part of me that felt short-changed and wished there was at least one more year to go with my classmates at RHS - I was having so much fun! I'm happy my high school experience turned into a good one and I know some didn't have one but it's what you make it.
I wasn't a saint once I got to my junior year - I smoked, I drank, I cut classes and I cut school days - I convinced my girlfriend from Paramus to cut with me too! I was always concocting ways (Friday or Saturday nights) to obtain liquor for a party or a dance or for whatever. Daun Paris told me in an email that the downside to dating someone from out of town was that you missed out on things that connected you to your own school. I was definitely missing out on Ridgewood as I spent a lot of time in Paramus.
But despite that I will never forget the RHS dances (they would eventually get banned senior year due to drinking and fighting), drinking behind the stands on Friday and Saturday nights, Friday night basketball games, Saturday football games, the elaborate excuses when I cut class and the excusal notes I was good at forging, Robin Sleeman and I at the Paramus game. Getting chased by my dad one school morning - he had suspected I would cut the day and waited - when I ditched the bus he came up beside me in the car as I walked confidently down the sidewalk in the direction of my girlfriend's house in Paramus - wow was I surprised - he didn't catch me but he gave me the silent treatment for 3 solid days and it killed me - it was worse than being yelled at!
Above a retro look at the infamous Fireplace in Paramus - who hung out there more - Ridgewood or Paramus. Watch out when there football or basketball games between us - we all went to the same place.
I won't forget Renato's Pizza (still there!), the Warner, Van Neste Square (now Citizen's Park - seriously!?), Lyons, Wilkes Deli, racing to the pay phone at the main entrance of RHS to get the call from my girlfriend from Paramus, the process of buying a new record album, giving free ice cream to all my friends, Sharon Muster, Humanities class, making my environmental film senior year, summer school sophomore year and swearing that was not gonna happen again (it didn't), Linden's cookies, smoking in various boys rooms and the cat and mouse games with the teachers that tried so hard to catch us, The Fireplace and trying to juggle both Ridgewood friends and Paramus friends, working at DQ, working at Baskin-Robbins, canvassing anybody I could to buy liquor for me at Cordially Yours and taking delivery in Van Neste Square, telling my parents I was at the library and going to parties, fireworks at Vets, hitching up and down Ridgewood and Linwood Avenues, my first concerts, telling my mom I was going to Woodstock in 1969 at 13 and mom looking at me like I had 2 heads, cutting my last 2 classes sometimes and hitching down 17 to Paramus High to meet up with my girlfriend and having all the teachers and principal convinced I was a PHS student, running into my cousin in the halls at PHS and asking her not to tell her mom she was seeing me regularly, being not too liked by some members of the Paramus football team at parties because I was from Ridgewood but grudgingly being accepted (it wouldn't have anything to do with one burned out press box and Spartans logo turned into "Fartans" would it?), driving a '65 Rambler, going to 3 proms and wearing the most ridiculous looking tuxes ever made, Mr Mac telling me of the perils of truancy, trying to convince mom that the sunburn I got was from laying outside at RHS not because I spent the better part of the day at the Jersey Shore, actually very proud of receiving my RHS ring, thinking the white gowns, roses and white tuxes were a pretty cool tradition at graduation and one that set us apart of the other towns, meeting friends in the student center, wishing certain Ridgewood teachers were still around, $1.50 movies in Ramsey and Emerson, Esposito's, Lift the Latch, Jade Fountain, Drive-In movies, blue RHS binders from Drapkins, gym clothes, taking showers after gym class and being late and wet to class, Mike Iganamort's red Mustang................well the list could go on and on but RHS reminds us of so much and the tour on Saturday October 19 with Dave Vanderbush will bring it all back!
Above the park I will always know as Van Neste Square - I would take delivery of beer, liquor and Boone's Farm Wine at the park!
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