The Bizarre Case of the Decorative Props on Tops of Telephone Poles Along Route 23 in West Milford

 

When I was a young man, in my late teens and early twenties, something strange and quite funny began happening in West Milford's stretch of Route 23. This would have been in the early to mid-1990's, when grunge was ruling the airwaves, and Bill Clinton was still the new president. There is a small part of that highway, near the entrance to the private community of Smoke Rise - one of the first and most exclusive, privileged gated communities (before gated communities really became a thing) that I knew of - and not too far from the exit to Bloomingdale. It is a relatively isolated part, a small stretch of the highway, not surprisingly, with few homes or businesses around, just before it really gets busy as you head south on the highway.

For a while, it seemed, there was something new that kept popping onto the tops of telephone poles. There were all sorts of weird things, and I can hardly remember them all. One was a penguin. The other was a rabbit. There was a bear. A mailbox (a real one). A traffic cone. Probably some others that I just am not really remembering at the moment. 

It was amusing. My friend and I both took notice of it, and we began to almost eagerly look for the next thing that would find itself a new home atop one of these telephone polls. We both found it quite funny.  And for a while, we could almost count on something new being there almost every time that we drove by it. It seemed like it might keep going and going, although I am sure that the local police surely must have put a stop to it at some point, somehow, with more frequent patrols. Perhaps they even caught the guy who was doing it. Who knows?

At the peak, there were probably around 10 or 11 of these kinds of things, and maybe more.

Even now, all these years later, some of them remain. I took a picture of this stretch of highway, and believe that I have identified the rabbit, the mailbox, what may be the penguin (hard to tell in the picture, admittedly) and a traffic cone that has clearly seen better days. 

Yup. They are still up there. 

In fact, there are actually more now, although the others are on a different stretch of Route 23. Still on 23 South, but the newer ones went up at a much later date, and from somebody presumably new, trying to match the ones from the early to mid-nineties. 

Now, I did not get a chance to take pictures of the newer ones, which again are on a different stretch of Route 23.

However, below there are some pictures of some of the older ones, which are located on Route 23 past Echo Lake Road, as you are approaching Smokerise. The one pictured are a bunny, a penguin, a traffic cone, and a mailbox. I also remember a bear, specifically, although something must have happened to that one, because I did not find it this time around. 

Take a look, and enjoy!