Remembrances of Baristaville Past

Newspapers traditionally recap the previous year's big stories in late December (we plan ours next week), and when the new year ends in a zero, they often roll out the stories of the previous decade. Well, nobody has to do that in Baristaville this year because Star Ledger reporter Phil Read already has: in a self-published collection of local stories that originally ran in the newspaper from 2000 to 2009.

"Montclair & Environs" ($21.90), which you can buy, signed, at The Fine Grind in Little Falls, includes a collection of Read's stories over the past decade about Montclair, Glen Ridge and surrounding towns. Like many retrospectives, it reads like a graveyard of familiar landmarks. There's the end of "Over the Rainbow," the hippie organic food store and restaurant on Church Street, the end of the Olympic Shop, the end of the Soda Pop Shop and the end of Bradner, the old-fashioned apothecary in Watchung Plaza.

And it's not just landmarks. Read also includes an article about the 2002 estate sale of Eddie Bracken, the movie star who spent his last years on Douglas Road in Glen Ridge. I remember it well. I was among the carrion that picked over Bracken's possessions.

Well, at least we still have Yogi Berra, who wrote a forward for the book.

Most of the stories are familiar, which could make the book a good gift for the nostalgically-inclined. More interesting to me are the stories I don't remember, like Read's profile of Weather Underground alum Mark Rudd, who grew up, just another "nice Jewish boy," in Maplewood, and who returned to speak at a 2004 world premiere of a documentary on the radical group. Rudd spent seven years as a fugitive and never served jail time for his role in the Weather Underground, a group that, among other things, exploded bombs in the Pentagon and the Capitol in protest of the Vietnam War.

Read couldn't convince Rudd to talk about what his 20-something children thought of their revolutionary dad, but with typical thoroughness, he nailed plenty of other details. Growing up in Maplewood, Rudd played soccer and belonged to the electronics club. His grandmother owned a candy store in Newark. And in his senior yearbook picture, the future radical wore a tie.