By Charles Stampul
Here is a park that should not exist, and what is happening today should not be happening. But if you were here now watching, you’d probably see nothing wrong, nothing unusual. It might even bring a smile to your face.
Ridgewood’s Maple Park
The scent of sunscreen fills the air as parents ready their young ones for a day of summer camp. For a lucky number of Ridgewood school children, the break from being lined up and ordered around was short-lived. They are now marching like soldiers and being warned or written up when they disrupt the flow.
Back when Maple Park was woods surrounding a swimming pond and stream, the children were free to organize their own games. They experienced nature freely and had time to think. They might have learned firsthand how the woods along the stream absorbed rainwater, helping to prevent floods as well as water shortages.
These camp kids are unlikely to think about the effects of having a plastic field and a concrete parking lot where woods should be. They may never learn that the floods that damaged their neighborhoods in 2021 and 2023 didn’t have to happen. Neither did last summer’s water rationing.
It’s lunchtime now, and the children take out red and green drinks in plastic bottles and chemically engineered foods of every shape and color. In the past, kids might have been at home learning how to prepare and enjoy a nutritious meal. Now, they are laying the groundwork for a lifetime of health problems with a lunch of ultra-processed foods in warm plastic containers, supplementing the plastic they already absorbed from their sunscreen.
Camp is a necessity for working parents today, or is it? How many two-income families earn enough on the second salary to cover all the associated costs? Very few, actually. Include the negative impact on their children’s health and well-being, the answer is none.
Maple Field is not just for summer camp. Games are played here during the day and under the lights at night, most of the year. But why do we need special fields and scoreboards and coaches and referees? Won’t children gain more from organizing and legislating games themselves?
Team sports in America give us artificial heroes who challenge and change nothing of any real value. Through organized youth sports, children are encouraged to fruitlessly emulate these plastic heroes who pose no threat to corrupt and wasteful governments.
There is a property on the edge of Ridgewood, a quarter mile from Maple Park, where General George Washington and his troops are believed to have fought. It’s a woodland on the edge of a busy highway with a house that is still intact after over 200 years. Some people in Ridgewood plan to tear down the house and the trees to build, for short-term profit, a new artificial turf sports complex for youth sports. The residents of Ridgewood are standing by and letting it happen.
For people who grew up going to school and camp, and playing organized sports, the lesson of Maple Park is. “Let’s build another.”
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4 thoughts on “Ridgewood’s Maple Park”
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No one with any knowledge at all thinks there were any battles at Schedler.
Was that post from The Bond King?
Or just a silly troll?
I would guess you don’t read books, but if I’m wrong (which I doubt), try “The Revolutionary War in Bergen County” edited by Carol Karels. Available on Amazon.
If reading a book is too difficult for you, you can also just Google the “Battle of Paramus,” 1780.
Now go back to TikTok and stop making yourself look foolish.
The reference for the claim about George Washington fighting at Schedler Park is
schedlerpark.com. I didnt get a secondary source which is why I wrote “are believe” also because none of the points of the article need that to be a verifiable.
Oh, okay. Now that makes sense. Thanks for clarifying.