Alison Hyland

River Rats: Growing Up on the Raritan River Alison Hyland

Dan Hyland, as a boy growing up in the city of New Brunswick, New Jersey from 1930-1938, saw the last boats being locked through the Delaware and Raritan Canal. He knew the old lock keepers and people who lived in the abandoned barges along the canal. The Raritan River and the D.& R. Canal provided recreation that was both exciting and extremely dangerous. Dan rode the ice flows on the Raritan after city work crews dynamited the frozen river in the early spring. He met strange and colorful people with names like "Corker Pete" and "Two-Cent Itszi." Dan and his buddies pulled a lot of stunts, caused mischief, and had run-ins with waterfront bullies. He enjoyed a free and virtually unsupervised boy's life. Money was nearly non-existent, so Dan and his friends pooled their resources, skills, and imaginations to find ways of earning money to go to the movies and acquire their play equipment. They learned how to capitalize on the neighborhood bootleggers and traveling junkmen. "River Rats: Growing Up on the Raritan River" is a memoir of the Great Depression. The stories are upbeat and at times humorous, reminiscent of the exploits of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.