CHIT-CHAT
By: Merle Citron
Now here’s something to celebrate. Tucked away in Sergeantsville is Fred Miller’s Copper Penny Players, a group of amateur singers that will be 20 years old this fall. Fred tried to figure out how many singers he has worked with during these 20 years and estimates that about a thousand people have been brave enough to sing their hearts out in front of an audience.
"You won’t believe this," Fred stated, "but working with singers can be a risky business. I once worked with a fella who was rehearsing his song, and at the same time that he was singing, he was also doing military maneuvers with a real bayonet. To my horror, the gun became airborne and ended up stuck in my piano, very close to my body, and that was too close for comfort for me," Fred confided.
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John and Ann Goodyear live on Seabrook Road. The Goodyears came to Lambertville in 1973. John is a nationally recognized painter and sculptor, and Ann was trained as an artist. She told me that they are currently hard at work getting ready for John’s Sept. 9 show at Bristol-Myers Squibb.
John is part of an avant-garde show of Rutgers University art professors and graduate students. One of his pieces, a sculpture of an acrobat on his hands, is placed on the lawn at the company’s corporate center in Princeton.
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Nate Goldfarb and Jean Richardson have certainly wasted no time making Lambertville their home. Last year Nate and Jean moved to Coryell Street from New York City. Nate, who is a sculptor, is the newest member of the Artists’ Gallery, and Jean, who is a therapist, has her counseling business up and running.
They even joined the Sunday morning crowd up at Lola’s Café in Rosemont, where, on any given Sunday morning, you can find Doris Brandes, Joan Stack, Grace Croteau, Elaine Daniels, Gil and Tony Kulish, Susan and Pio Pezzi, John and Ann Goodyear, Ted Schneider, Stanley and Ginny Wollner, Paul and Jan Witte, and others engaged in deep and meaningful conversations.
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Andre Pourbaix and Mark Spencer, who have lived in town for the past 11 years, are on the move again. Last year they moved from North Franklin Street to North Union Street. This time they’re moving from North Union Street to Jefferson Street.
"We have rented a very nice apartment," Andre told me. "By the way, we just got back from Vienna. It was grand." Andre and Mark travel a great deal. "You have to do it while you can," Andre added. That’s so true.
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Photographer George F. Golia lives on North Union Street and has been in town for 18 years. George came to Lambertville from Trenton, where he was born and raised. George used to do wedding photography, but now his interests lie in capturing the beauty of landscapes and the balance of still lifes. He is a member of Artsbridge and volunteered last year to help at the Shad Festival.
"I enjoy living in Lambertville and I can still go down the street and say hi to most of the merchants. I like the camaraderie and I also like that Lambertville has made a concerted effort to be clean. However, I don’t like ever-increasing property taxes. Even though I’m a renter, I feel the tax increases," George noted. Now don’t we all!
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Chris Gallagher, who tends bar at the Boat House, has lived in this area since 1972. She has worked at the Boat House since 1987 and has certainly enjoyed meeting a lot of folks.
"Right now, I don’t have time to talk," Chris told me, "but come on over and we’ll talk and you can check out our new sign, which says, ‘The difference between this place and the Titantic is the Titanic had a band!’ " I’ll be over, Chris.
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They ate, chatted and enjoyed each other’s company and have done so for quite a few decades. Rita Neuls currently lives in West Amwell and has lived in this area for all of her 80 years. To keep the record straight, Rita is Gerry Olio’s sister. She explained, "I lived in the Italian section of Lambertville before we bought a home in West Amwell."
Her friend, Betty Eisenhower has lived on Main Street for 77 years. Because of her unique last name, Betty related the following: "When I met my husband, Connelly Eisenhower, everybody called him "Ike," even before President Eisenhower made that nickname famous."
Another friend, Mary Fox lives at the Hibernia Apartments and has been in Lambertville for 85 years.These gals know a lot of Lambertville history and care deeply about our town.
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It was good to see Gene Lelie, who owns Lelie Real Estate on Bridge Street. Gene recently spent some time in the hospital, but you can’t keep a good man down. He looks good and is still tough, tough enough to confront the 150-pound bear that recently decided to make the Lelie backyard his home. Linda, Gene’s wife, spotted the bear eating her flowers, and called to Gene, who walked out on his backyard deck, flung his arms in the air, and screamed at the bear.
Gene explained, "You’ve got to make yourself seem big. I kept my eyes fixed on that bear’s mouth to see if he snapped his teeth together. That means he’s mad. He wasn’t. He looked at me for what seemed like forever and took his own sweet time to amble on out of my back yard."
Hummm, me thinks these black bears are getting a bit too close for comfort.
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Granted, the temperature was hot and the heat was stifling, but, really ladies, driving your car instead of walking a mere block and a half to a restaurant?
Roberta Kyle, who lives on Perry Street, visited her friend, Jan Holms, who lives on York Street. It made perfect sense to me that Roberta drove all the way from Perry Street to York Street. But then, instead of parking in front of Jan’s house, Roberta asked Jan to get in the car so they could drive one more block and park. When Jan got out of the car, she couldn’t stop giggling. "I don’t believe that we drove down the block, instead of walking."
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Kate McGinnity of York Street has been hard at work writing for the past few years and she has just published her first book, titled "…shiver as we whisper, TREMBLE AS WE ROAR!"
Kate is justifiably proud of her creation. The book is a compilation of her poetry, a short story and an excerpt from her novel, which is about life as seen through the eyes of a child named Patrick.
Kate is also very proud of her son, Peter Brown, who just graduated with a B.F.A. and "Highest Distinction" from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif. Patrick has already written and illustrated his first children’s book, which will be published by Simon and Schuster later this year. Congratulations, Peter and Kate!
And there you have it folks, a little Chit and a little Chat.

