Bayonne Boy
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One Of Our Escapades Almost Turned Into A Disaster ,We Found This Old Rowboat Down At What We Called The Million Dollar Pier ,There Was No Million Dollars And No Pier Every One Called It That And I Don’t Why ,Just One Of Life’s Little Mysteries, Anyway We Decided To Run The Boat Around To The Longdocks, Which Was Located At The Foot Of East 49th St. Now The Bay At E. Thirtieth St. And The Longdocks Were Separated By The Navy Base ,Yup That Was At The Foot Of East Thirty Second St. Everything Was At The Foot Of Something In Bayonne. It Was A Cold April Morning When We Set Sail From The Millions It Was Overcast And Blustery, The Crew Consisted Of Bill Nem Ron Koch , John Stoff And Myself. I Was Made Captain Because My Father Worked On A Boat, We Were Sailing Right Along Enjoying The Sights And The Sea Air Until We Were Off The End Of The Navy Base Actually About Halfway There. The Point Of No Return, The Sea Started Picking Up Along With Commercial Traffic, i.e. Big Tugboats And Barges, We Were Dwarfed By These Leviathans, What Really Upset Us Though ,Was The Fact That Our Little Was Literally Coming Apart At The Seams ,water was pouring in fore and aft port and starboard luckily we had the foresight to bring plenty of pumps We Each Had A Maxwell House Coffee Can, We Were Scooping Like Hell With One Hand ,Holding The Boat Together With The Other Hand And ,I Don’t Who Was Steering, But We Made It Safely To The Long Docks. To Add Insult To Injury ,The Guy That Owned The Boat Found Out Where It Was And Came And Got It. The Wreck That It Was. That Ended Our Short Lived Plunge Into Piracy, And Our Chance To Breath The Rarified Air Surrounding Boat Owners
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About the Book
This is a story about a young kid growing up in the blue-collar town of Bayonne, NJ. During the war years of the 1940s and his teenage years of the 1950s, Robert Vargovcik went off to make his mark on the world. Bayonne is located across the harbor from the southern tip of Manhattan. It was known for its oil refineries, but it also had a lot of heavy industries, chemical plants, foundries, and the like. Everybody had a good-paying job. The author grew up in close neighborhoods, and television and air-conditioning were on the distant horizon. It was the time of screen doors, front porches, and backyard swings. Evenings were spent with neighbors exchanging gossip and waiting for a cool breeze. Winters were spent playing board games. Thanks to gas rationing, the streets were the playgrounds, and seven-year-olds could roam far and wide and not worry their parents. They just had to make sure they were home for dinner.
About the Author
R.J.Vargovcik could never sit still, after graduation from Vocational High School he enlisted in the army and served 3 years in the Transportation Corp as a landing craft operator. After discharge from the military he would spend the next 45 years working as a Merchant Seaman and truck driver with a couple of other jobs thrown into the mix. In 1978 he moved his family to the Jersey shore and today he resides with his wife of 47 years in Selbyville Delaware but he still considers himself a Bayonne Boy.