The Center Avenue House

I knew Jackie Larson before I ever even visited Highlands or Atlantic Highlands. At the time, she was Jackie Caruso, daughter of Dominick  and Mae Caruso, a family well known and respected in Atlantic Highlands for decades.

Jackie was a few years behind me when we both attended Mount St. Mary’s Academy in North Plainfield, me as a ‘dayhop,’ which meant I took the Somerset Bus from my family’s home in Union every day and walked up that gorgeous hill from Route 22 to the Academy at the top of the hill. Jackie was a boarder and lived at the Mount, going home weekends and having fun with her classmates after school and in their dorms throughout the week.  Small school that it was, we all knew everyone else in the school and were friendly with all.

 Jackie and I lost contact after graduation in the 1950s, but Jackie popped up in my life, happily for me, in the early 2000s, when my husband Jimmy and I were living in our RV and volunteering at the National Wildlife Refuge on the Outer Banks, rescuing sea turtles and banding pelicans.  Jackie saw the New Jersey license plates, inquired, then popped in to re-introduce herself when she recognized my name and where I was from.  (Muriel is a lot more unusual than the Smith I became!)

So our friendship was rekindled, we shared so many interests, including our mutual love and  respect for the  military, especially the Marines, and we have been dear friends ever since, though distance means the friendship is kept arm length through e-mails.

But Jackie has always been so proud of her family, and in particular, she was very close to her grandma. Her stories of growing up in Atlantic Highlands always delighted me and her love of her family and pride in all they did is heartwarming

There’s one wonderful story about her Atlantic Highlands relatives during the very exciting Prohibition time, which you’ll see here soon. But first, here’s Jacke’s story, at my request, on her family and ancestors in Atlantic Highlands. Jackie says she is an architect, a quite  accomplished one at that, but she’s also a writer and accomplished at that as well.

The Center Avenue residence

By Jacqueline Caruso Larsen

… As I was told, my paternal grandparents, Joseph and Rosena Caruso met when they arrived in New York in the late 1800’s. They married, lived on Mulberry Street, NYC for a short while before moving to Atlantic Highlands, N.J.

My Grandfather was a builder and was responsible for building the post office and many of the retaining walls along Ocean Boulevard, Atlantic Highlands. He also built a home, guest house and bungalow on Center Avenue just east of Avenue B for his large family of three boys and four girls.

My grandfather died as the result of a construction accident and left his widow with seven children to support. It was very difficult.

The two older boys Louis and Domenick went to work in the millwork and building trades; the oldest girl, Mary worked in the West End Grocery Store across the street.

They all paid rent. The guest house was converted to a boarding house where my grandmother and her daughter, Josephine ,sought to provide lodging and food for local business people.

Domenick, my dad,  married Mae McAllister in 1928 and they moved into the bungalow at the Center Avenue property. My mother, Mae told me that a group of mysterious, appearing men rented the boarding house and paid a sizeable rent.

They would leave at dusk and return about three in the morning. One morning there was a lot of noise and they carried one of the men, obviously injured. into the boarding house. She later learned they these men were “rumrunners” and the injured man was of Russian decent.

No one asked questions. The rent was paid on time along with the gift of several cases of whiskey which my grandmother occasionally sold to visitors to her kitchen. This eased the burden of the struggling widow whom I loved, emulated in many ways, and called my grandma. Jacqueline Caruso Larsen.

Next:  Rooming House Boarders Tony the Shoemaker and Jack Rungayne