Bridge Views: Sinatra in Fort Lee

Growing up in Fort Lee in the late 1960s and 1970s, I was weaned on stories about the mob that for some reason always led to stories about Frank Sinatra. It was as if the two were indelibly intertwined in the lessons I was receiving about my town from the stool at the bar of the V.F.W.   

The mob stretched its shadow over Fort Lee in the days before its grassy woods and wide open spaces were layered over with asphalt and steel by companies they most likely controlled. The fact that Fort Lee was a really small town appealed to men who were rumored to sleep with one eye opened. And what other town held in the palm of its hand exits to everywhere? We have the George Washington Bridge, New Jersey Turnpike, Route 80, Palisades Interstate Parkway, Route 4 and Route 46. Fort Lee was (and remains) the ideal place to make a quick getaway.

From having spent so much time performing at the Riviera, Sinatra fell in love with Fort Lee and moved his parents, Marty and Dolly, from Hoboken to the newly developed section of Abbott Boulevard. My Uncle Joey, who had been a professional baseball player and now was the head of the laborers union, was often invited to Dolly Sinatra’s elaborate parties. I used to eavesdrop as he told grandma about the eclectic group of people Dolly regularly gathered together.

I particularly enjoyed hearing about the men who made a profession out of having no profession. Now, I’m not suggesting that Dolly Sinatra was “connected” but those who were (allegedly) connected wanted to connect with her in order to connect with her son, which was my passport to the dark profile of their world vis-à-vis Uncle Joey.

In fact, Uncle Joey, along with a lot of the local guys and (alleged) made men and wanna-bes, used to regularly drink with Frank’s father, Marty, down at Frank’s Cozy Bar that discreetly sat on Palisade Avenue just at the edge of  the Palisade section, which was, and still is, the swankiest section of town. As bars went, I was never fond of Frank’s, although Gloria, his barmaid, was aces with me. Kids annoyed Frank and that annoyed me. Anyway, I was more of a Krieger’s or Yellow Front Saloon girl. I preferred to sip my cherry-laden Cokes at the bars of lower Main Street.  

As a four-year old, I loved listening to Uncle Joey unearth the details of a Dolly Sinatra party to grandma while sitting at her kitchen table with the plastic floral tablecloth. He spoke of mod, starch-haired women with brightly painted turquoise eyes thickly outlined in black eyeliner wearing sequined mini-dresses who would pile their furs onto Dolly’s king-sized bed making the bedroom look like a pile of fresh road kill, albeit, very expensive road kill.

Tales of thick-necked, scar-faced men dressed in coffin-lined silk suits doused in expensive cologne who drank nothing but single-malt Scotch in cut-crystal bourbon glasses.

Grandma’s eyes would widen when he described the ladies’ mammoth diamond rings, necklaces, bracelets and earrings that sparkled like a swarm of neurotic fireflies, their brilliant flames flickering  and leaping onto and off of the gleaming porcelain bodies of the Catholic saints that filled the empty spaces of  Dolly’s ornate living room.

These characters that peopled Uncle Joey’s stories became for me the dark Prince Charmings and gin-soaked Cinderellas I would go to bed dreaming about.

As I inconspicuously listened to Uncle Joey’s Johnny Walker Black, tobacco-chaffed voice tell these tales, I would close my eyes and pretend that it was me elegantly glittering in my sequined dress sipping Asti-Spumante from a delicately carved crystal champagne flute blithely laughing as Dolly Sinatra whispered closely held secrets about Frank into my ear. 

At the age of four, I knew I was living an exciting life. I mean, what other kid my age heard men tell stories that the mob allegedly favored disposing of their problems on the southern perimeter of Palisades Amusement Park because the screams from the Cyclone roller coaster drowned out the sound of people getting whacked?

What other pre-kindergartner knew from an original source, who drank Crown Royal with Ava Gardner while Frank performed at the swank Riviera nightclub, that Ava was a first-class come si chiama who was prejudiced against Italians?

What other pre-kindergartner poured whiskey sours for retired World War I veterans while standing on a red plastic milk crate behind the bar at the V.F.W.?

Shortly before Dolly died, Frank took her west with him and the Sinatras left Fort Lee, taking with them all the glamour and all the stories, leaving a gaping hole where possibility once reigned.

I remember the day they knocked down her house to replace it with a larger, more elegant house. I stood wondering if the people who would be moving in had any idea of the ghosts that roamed its bricked perimeter. Although I never ventured into Dolly’s house, I felt as if I had roamed its rooms through the stories I heard.

My childhood is tinged with stories about Frank Sinatra; his name and his music powerful enough to evoke an indelible memory of Fort Lee as I have preserved it within the narrative of memory.