Reminiscing over Old Iselin

Good Morning! I've enjoyed getting a few messages over the last few days from people who read the blog and who enjoyed Green Street's video.

I was wondering where the airport was. (Can you even imagine, Iselin having it's own airport!) I thought maybe by the Home Depot in Woodbridge. But I heard back from Brian Lanigan, AKA Green Street himself, who wrote:

"The airport in Iselin was where the "old" shoprite is on oak tree road just past the parkway on the right hand side. I am pretty sure the airport was gone by the time the parkway was built.

The area on Rt9 where the home depot is was a flea market....i can remember this from when i was a child. My mother worked in a restaurant across the highway called Kenny Acres where the #9 building is now....it burned down, but the original tree lined entrance road to the restaurant is still there in the 9 building parking lot. There also was a small bar on the HD property just south of the turnpike...i can't remember the name of it. Also on the home depot property was Hoffman soda distibuters... a friend of mine's father worked there and i remember going there as a small child. The thing that sticks in my mind about that is the trucks backed into (what i thought was at the time) an underground tunnel (?) inside the building to get loaded with cases of soda. I dont know if it was really underground or if it was just the lay of the land. I was very young and the whole thing was an adventure. A year or two ago i made a right at Syms to go into home depot the back way and i think the old Hoffman warehouse is still there."

I remember going into Hoffman Soda, and I definitely remember the flea market.

Bob Brinckmann also wrote in:

"The Iselin Airport was open during WW2, I had my very first airplane ride there when I was 12 years old in 1943. When they started to build the NJ Parkway they closed the airport. I think that was in the late 40's. I went off to the Air Force in 1951 as did a lot of us guys from Iselin at the start of the Korean War. When I came back home in 1954 the Parkway was completed and homes were built where the airport used to be. When I was 16 years old I worked in Teddy's grocery store shown in the film and my friend Nick LaBruno worked across the street in the hardware store which was named Barrish's Hardware."

I wish I had photos to include, but I don't. But I HAVE figured out the mystery of the missing movie. Or at least part of it. I think that the movie just doesn't get emailed out like the pictures and writing on the blog. I'm not sure why, but it is missing there on my email. So anyone who reads my blog as an email subscription will not be able to see it unless they come right to the blog itself.

OK, that's about it for now, but my next question for everyone who's still with me... What's the deal about the track back behind School 18? That was a horse racing track, right? When did people race back there? And what about the car track - that was over in Woodbridge, right? Write back and I'll quote what you have to say. Thanks!