NJ Monthly - May 2016

10 MAY 2016 NJMONTHLY.COM in● box NJM READERS SPEAK THEIR MINDS

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editor@njmonthly.com or write to us at: Sound Off, New Jersey Monthly, P.O. Box 920, Morristown, NJ 07963. Letters will be edited for length and clarity.

football program, regardless
of its won-lost record.

—Robert A. Germinsky

asbury
Turned On by Our
WDHA Article

✒I just read your article on WDHA (February) with deejays Terrie Carr and Curtis Kay. Great story! I grew up in Lake Hopatcong during the ’60s and ’70s, and I drove by the house on Route

10 in Randolph where the station first started. I graduated from Hopatcong High School in 1979. Around that time, I heard commercials on WDHA for a band called White Tiger, which was playing at the Final Exam in Randolph. A bunch of us jumped in our cars to see them. I also saw Twisted Sister there before they made it big. [ Your story] brought back a lot of good memories.

—Joe Cerato

newark
✒I don’t care for oldies sta-
tions. I want to listen to new
stuff, so I listen to WDHA.

—Rose Motyczka

roselle park
A Hoboken Fish Story

An online reader posted this comment about the story “Net Gains” (January), which described New Jersey’s former pound-fishing industry:

✒My granddad, Knud Andreas Knudsen, was part of this. He made the first journey from Norway to the U.S. in 1906 (he was 17) and stayed for six years. Hoboken was like a home to him.

He made another trip some
years later before going back
to Norway for good, building
a home and starting a family.

In 1970, a local author did a
several-hours-long interview
with my granddad. In that
interview, he tells a lot of sto-
ries from his years working
as a fisherman in New Jersey,
including technical descrip-
tions about nets, poles, boats,
engines and much more.

—T. Knudsen via newjerseymonthly.com

Something Brewing
in Paterson
✒I love the beer issue
(March), even though it
misses this important
date in NJ beer history:

1792—Alexander Hamilton and Pierre L’Enfant release their plan for the new industrial city of Paterson, including a brewery.

—Leonard A. Zax

president
hamilton partnership
for paterson
One From the Heart

“Table Stakes,” our story about the poker champ who started a cooking studio in Hoboken (March), attracted these online comments:

✒ What an uplifting story
and [it] speaks to a young
man who follows his heart.

— Karen Ajamian Smaldone via newjerseymonthly.com

✒A lively human-interest
story—something uniquely
NJ!

—Lin Goetz via newjerseymonthly.com

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Making a Stink

Regarding your story about perpetual candidate and Secaucus pig farmer Henry J. Krajewski (February): In 1952, at age 12, I lived one town away from Secaucus in Union City. When the winds blew to the north, we experienced the odor of the pig farms. You came in from playing outside and the windows were closed. Thankfully, I lived up the corner from an ice factory, and the winds would blow gentle sprays of water. If you went 20 blocks toward Hoboken, the delicious aroma of freshly ground Maxwell House coffee greeted you. It was all in the winds.

—Barbara Ann Soden

hazlet
Rutgers Still Has
Big-Time Issues

✒I read with interest, and a bit of dismay, Steve Adubato’s interview with Patrick Hobbs, the new athletic director at Rutgers ( February). When asked about his key challenges, Hobbs’s first response was a facilities upgrade. It’s upsetting, but not surprising. This is typical of big-time college football when a great deal of money is involved.

We’re looking at a college
football team where seven
players were suspended for
criminal activity and a coach
was fired for trying to exert
influence on the grades of
one of his players. As long as
a coach or player is able to
put a winning team on the
field, administrators will
tend to look away unless and
until things get completely
out of hand, as finally hap-
pened at Rutgers.

While Hobbs did acknowledge that they are working to restore integrity to the program, that should have been stated as his first key challenge—not worrying about upgrading the facilities for its athletes or discussing whether or not fans and alumni will be patient with the rebuilding of the team.