Looking At the Palisades From Hastings-on-Hudson

A wild, funny, and unforgettable memoir of boyhood freedom on the Hudson River!In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Hastings-on-Hudson was still a blue-collar river town where everybody knew everybody, shopkeepers knew your parents, police officers knew your name, and a boy's reputation could beat him home.For J.J. Grady and the Gems, Hastings was more than a hometown. It was an adventure course.The Hudson River was their swimming pool. The Old Croton Aqueduct was their battlefield. Warburton Avenue was their racetrack. A rotting five-masted ship called The Buccaneer became their pirate ship, diving platform, and rope-swing launching pad. From the waterfront to the Youth Center, from Algeo's Pharmacy to Manor Market, from Dobbs Ferry to Yankee Stadium and Chinatown, J.J. and his loose gang of friends invented their own adventures long before cell phones, polished waterfronts, warning signs, and adult supervision became standard equipment.These true tales include river rescues, runaway sleds, the Warburton Grand Prix, the Bear Claw prank, the Great A&P Pie Fight, fireworks missions to Chinatown, billiards with television legends, and narrow escapes that were funny only because everyone somehow lived to tell the story.But Looking At the Palisades From Hastings-on-Hudson is more than a collection of pranks. It is a portrait of an era: a time when families lived and worked in the same village, when local stores were gathering places, when adults corrected other people's children, and when mischief was met with consequences that were swift, personal, and usually proportional.Funny, irreverent, nostalgic, and occasionally astonishing, this book preserves a kind of childhood that may never come again.Huck Finn had the Mississippi. J.J. and the Gems had the Hudson - and that was trouble enough.