Klarinet Archive - Posting 000220.txt from 2003/12

From: "Ken Wolman" <kwolman@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Re: 10 worst
Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2003 12:26:20 -0500

Dan Leeson wrote:

> Ken, let me remind you about the Passaic River which runs through
> Paterson where I grew up. On the shores at the west end of the city
> were dye mills where cloth, also produced in Paterson, was given color.
>
> The dye vats were invariably poured into the Passaic river when they
> needed cleaning and I would fish there when the river was bright yellow,
> green, or flaming red. People got cancer and liver diseases from eating
> the fish from that water. Nobody swam in it and lived very long. I just
> put the fish I caught (those that were alive) back into the river.

You can ask my S.O. about the Passaic River. She grew up in Kearny.
Her father worked for the Congoleum tile plant in Kearny or East Newark,
and probably developed a brain tumor on account of the asbestos. I
don't know whether he was affected by the dye job taking place up-river.
On the other side of Lyndhurst from where I spent 3-1/2 years there were
sinkholes above what used to be copper mines. Chromium was used in
Kearny to prevent grass from growing through cracks in the sidewalk. It
did that; and it did more than that. The nickname for the
Rutherford-Lyndhurst-North Arlington-Kearny-Harrison belt was "Cancer
Alley."

I lived in Wayne, near Paterson, from 1976 to 1997, and worked there for
19 months. The mills and dyeworks by then were long gone: the Jewish
emigres from Lodz who came over to work in the silk mills had long since
abandoned the city, and I never saw the Great Falls as anything but
water-colored:-). Indeed, the factories near the Falls are now museums.

> Today on the Sopranos, they will occasionally shoot at a location called
> "The Passaic River Falls." It was originally seen by Alexander Hamilton
> as a power source for the region. But I would see that falls come down
> purple, and chartruse.

Like I said...you must've lived there when the silk mills and dyeworks
were still going strong. I found it a sad and increasingly dismal place.

> Ah, ecology!!

Yeah, I guess it beats cancer floating out of the river.....

Ken
--
Kenneth Wolman
Proposal Development Department
Room SW334
Sarnoff Corporation
609-734-2538

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