Passaic towns celebrate Fourth of July in grand fashion

Then it was time to go. Ciara’s mom, Christia Lajterman, lifted her redheaded little toddler off Rosko’s back and placed her on the pavement.

Ciara’s frown bloomed into a full pout. She stretched her hand back toward Rosko, shook her head and said "No."

"She is obsessed with ponies," said Ciara’s dad Josh Lajterman, who has taken his family to fairs as far away as Hawley, Pa., near Scranton, so Ciara can ride her favorite animals. "She gets a pony ride every week."

This year’s Independence Day in North Jersey was a time for families to gather, and for others to remember our history. It was a day of hot weather and patriotism, Kimberly Griffin volunteered to play the role of traitor. As hundreds of people gathered on the front lawn of Ringwood Manor on Monday to hear the annual recitation of the Declaration of Independence, many of them wearing T-shirts and dresses and pantsuits emblazoned with the American flag, Griffin stood in the middle of the crowd dressed in the woolen suit of an 18th-century Englishman and jeered these foolish colonists for their naïve belief in freedom.

"And once you have your independence, what then!" Griffin yelled. "Are you ready to make a government? To pay taxes?"

The crowd booed her. Griffin giggled.

"Most people don’t realize that New Jersey was not a colony that was entirely for the Revolution. We had a lot of Loyalist regiments," Griffin, a Hawthorne resident said after the ceremony. "It’s just that the ones who wanted to leave were more vocal."

All across North Jersey on Monday, many people said they wanted to use this July 4th as an opportunity to get back to their roots, to remember things that had been lost. In Paramus, volunteers who organized the borough’s day-long celebration said they’d grown tired of a parade consisting of so many business owners and employees walking down North Fairfield Avenue behind banners with their corporate logos. They missed all the ornately-decorated floats, and the sight of regular townspeople.

So last year they reinstated award contests for the best-decorated bicycles and strollers. This year they brought back the award for best-looking float. The effort appeared to have worked.

"It was nice to see the floats decorated," said Ruth Mason, who attends the parade every year.

In Oradell it was a day to remember 9/11, and to spruce up a section of town that long went overlooked. Firefighters with the borough’s volunteer department built a small memorial garden around a section of steel from the World Trade Center’s debris. The metal sits in a bed of river stones. Two fire hydrants pump water from their valves into the stones. The steel and the fountain are in the center of a patio styled in the shape of a Maltese cross, a universal firefighter symbol. At the top of the cross is a refurbished and newly landscaped memorial to the deceased members of the Fire Department.

The garden won the borough’s beautification award.

"The fire department really stands out," said Sam Trisas, the borough Beautification Committee chairman. "There’s a patch of green where there was nothing."

Back in Little Falls, the throwback was to tie dyed shirts. Susan Boleen sat in the back of her booth on Main Street and read the latest issue of TIME, as passersby inspected her dyed shirts and baby onesies.

"A lot of places you just don’t get enough people. And a at flea market, no one wants to spend more than a dollar," said Boleen, 54, whose handmade shirts with personalized logos in the middle cost $25. "This one is good. Plenty of people here."

In Ridgewood, the long tradition of setting up lawn chairs days in advance to reserve viewing spots days before parade has never waned.

"It’s such a tradition, I think everyone just let’s it go," said Cathi Suter, a Waldwick resident who attends the parade every year. She was sitting right next to Mark Fernandes, 39, of Midland Park, had put out four chairs to reserve spots for his family on Sunday. Fernandes, who was wearing an umbrella hat on his head, said that he has been coming to the village parade since he was a child.

On Godwin Avenue, Ingrid and Neal Richardson were hosting their annual Fourth of July party at their home, and about 20 guests gathered on their front lawn to celebrate and watch the parade pass by. Neal is British-born, and many of the Richardson’s guests live in Ridgewood now but originally hail from countries such as Argentina, Poland, France and Jamaica, according to Ingrid.

"It’s international," she said while serving up empanadas. "It’s what America stands for."

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