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Thursday, November 08, 2012

1941: HOWARD JOHNSON ROUTE 25 BORDENTOWN

Back when I was a new teenage driver, one of the things I and my buddies did as we cruised around the area when gas was 19.9 cents per gallon, was to drive up what was then known as the "highway of death" due to all the many accidents and the truck traffic that traversed north and south before the N.J. Turnpike was built. They were such simple pleasures: We would let those 18 wheelers pass us and as they did we would blink our headlights telling him it was OK for him to go back into the right lane ahead of us. He in turn would return the courtesy with a blink of his tail lights as he changed lanes and slipped in front of us. We often rode Route 25 (today's U.S. Route 130, occasionally stopping at Bordentown's Hamburger Haven, a trip to Millside Farms for a banana boat, or sampling one of Howard Johnson's 28 flavors. Ahh, memories are indeed made of this!

4 comments:

  1. HI TOM....THAT AREA TO MANY WAS TOMMY MIOWNE'S BAR WHOSE DAUGHTER MARRIED LOUIE PRIMA AFTER HE WAS DIVORCED FROM KEELY SMITH. I BELIEVE THAT WAS ON ROUTE 25. I ALSO RECALL, THE GUY WHO RAN THE ICE CREAM PARLOR NEXT TO THE GREENWOOD THEATRE PLAYING BASS WITH PRIMA AND SAM BUTERA. I DON'T REMEMBER HIS NAME BUT WE RAN INTO HIM AT LAS VEGAS IN THE 60'S. BEST REGARDS.

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  2. First concrete road ever poured in the US and the original lasted from the 1930's till 70's till people started complaining about the "thump" of the seams. They must have "lost the recipe", because these new concrete roads don't last more than 10 years before the steel rebar blows pot holes in it.

    Ed Millerick

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  3. Mmmmmmmm, fried clams, mmmmmmm.

    We stopped at this restaurant many a time, but mainly for the ice cream on a hot Summer day. While growing up in Jersey, all the clams I ate were live and on the half-shell, or my Mom's "famous" Clams Casino.

    In the late 70s I moved to Nashua, NH, just across Silas Dean Highway, what do you think there was? A Howard Johnson's with an orange roof, the same sign and 28 flavors of ice cream, and they sold fried clams. A historic monument to low culinary arts if there ever was one.

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  4. Does anyone remember where 206 and 130 crossed and there was a flashing neon stop sign for Rt. 206 traffic, before they reconfigured everything there? That was in the 1950s.

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