My cover blown, it is time to come out of the closet. Despite appearing, for more than half a century, to be a loyal son of Toms River South, I have recently harbored feelings of joy at the prospect of our dreaded, sworn, enemies, succeeding. Yes, a traitor in the land of the Indians, hoping for a return to football glory of the Lakewood Piners. Unthinkable. Unforgivable. But there I was, Friday night, sitting in the visitors’ stands as Lakewood took on Monsignor Donovan. No disguise, no attempt to deceive anybody, I was there prepared to root for Lakewood. Notagainst Mon Don, for Lakewood. …

Seaweed problems, such as the debacle that has unfolded over the past couple of weeks in the township's Seawood Harbor development, are nothing new in Brick. Complaints of too much fertilizer flowing into Barnegat Bay are nothing new, either. Experts have said too much food flowing into the bay from lawn fertilizers is taking a toll on aquatic plants. It was those plants that were in the crosshairs of upper bay officials in the summer of 1968. There were too many of them. Brick Township was hiring 15 men during the summer to try to rid its beaches of what were branded “weeds.” Former Brick …

There was no wrinkled trench coat, no chewed and smoking stogie this time for Lt. Columbo. But actor Peter Falk, who died at 83 on Thursday, was involved in a real life drama in Ocean County in the fall of 1982 when he got a bit part in the trial of a college friend accused of a bizarre plot to bribe a young state trooper to forget the details of his arrest of wise guy’s kid at the Surf Club in Ortley Beach. Falk was delivered by a limo that stopped on Hooper Avenue before he got out and went to Superior Court Judge William H. Huber’s second floor courtroom. The celebrity brought lots of …

To Ocean County’s political folklore, add the cannoli moment. Joe Vicari, proud of his Italian and Jersey City heritage, must be feeling the heat in his bid for yet another three-year term on Ocean County’s all-Republican freeholder board. Sponges used to be his campaign mainstay. “The guy with the most sponges wins,’’ he likes to joke. Only this year there’s no guy trying to unseat him. Instead it’s Michele Rosen of Waretown, who once served on the old Dover Township Committee before Vicari, the late Tom Renkin, and political sniper Robert Haelig put the Grand Old Party back in control of …

The massacre of Toms River’s reputation in October 1972 was bloodier than the British attack on the village and its defenders during the waning days of the Revolutionary War. And it's impact reverberated throughout Ocean County. The despoilers did not arrive by longboat through Cranberry Inlet. Loyalist William Dillon of Island Heights did not lead the murderous pack to the village. Instead they came overland, from Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, led by Maury Levy, a writer in search of a story, even if he had to make one up. “Death at Toms River,’’ screamed the headline over the …

The Allen Road beach on the bay in Berkeley Shores is getting a makeover – again. It’s a place that once looked like the meadows north and south of that bayside community. But when the growth genie jumped out of the bottle in Ocean County with the opening of the Garden State Parkway, it soon became apparent that there was not enough waterfront property to fill the needs of the masses suddenly within driving distance of paradise. So out came the big timber mats and the clamshell dredges. The big shovels moved the mats out onto the meadows and drove up on them, operators secure that the heavy …

The crush of development in Dover Township saw its population soar from 7,707 people in 1950 to nearly 10 times that many in 1979, when it seemed that no matter where you turned, new public service facilities were opening in response to that growth. Toms River High School East opened in October, providing room for another 1,600 students. The regional school district’s enrollment was about what it is today, and new schools were being built to accommodate a student body that size. Also  that October, Community Memorial Hospital opened an addition, adding another 128 beds to what began in 1960 …

There are trials you don’t forget, especially if they have sex, violence, organized gangsters and great lawyers. The trial of a North Jersey wiseguy reputed to be Joe Pesci’s model for his role in “Goodfellas,’’ was one of them. I didn’t know it then, but Robert “Cabert’’ Bisaccia, was a mobster on the rise when he was hanging out “down the shore’’ in 1974, moving from motel to motel and looking for prey. He found it when a Seaside Park doctor went looking for somebody to collect money from a contractor he loaned money. The contractor owed the doctor money. So Dr. Gerald F. Wolfe asked …

In the summer and fall of 1971 it was an idea whose time had come. The state needed to widen Route 35 in Bay Head and Mantoloking to eliminate the summer traffic bottleneck caused when four lanes of the state road north and south of those shore resorts turned to two lanes. Forty years have passed and all that has changed is the uproar. Motorists are still stalled in the morning going south on the Barnegat Peninsula, and going north in the evening on busy summer days. It seemed in 1971 that just about everyone wanted the road widened – except those who lived in Bay Head and Mantoloking- …

Few issues have shattered the political tranquility of Ocean County and Toms River the way the controversial plan to build a new $315 million toll road from South Brunswick to the Garden State Parkway did in the early 1970s. Plans for the Driscoll Expressway, named for the former governor and father of the New Jersey Turnpike, seemed like a runaway train that could not be stopped. But stopped it was. The so called Parkway Spur was authorized by New Jersey lawmakers in 1965, but the New Jersey Highway Authority, which operated the Garden State Parkway, did not have the money to build it. …

Ocean County needs a place to remember those who color outside the lines: a Citizen Activist Hall of Fame. There are dozens of nominees, mostly now forgotten, who battled the status quo against abuses real and imagined, and in some cases made huge differences for others who heard and adopted their cries for reform. I got introduced to the species early, on Long Beach Island, where the likes of Capt. George Clover, Joseph Transue, and Wesley Kenneth Bell railed against some of the policies of the Long Beach Township Board of Commissioners. Transue was a frequent critic of the amount of money …

There was a role reversal Wednesday when what was new in Ocean County government took place in its oldest public building, while what was being renewed took place in the more modern Administration Building. First the new, or the old. Historic Courtroom One was all gussied up, looking as grand as it ever has, for Scott M. Colabella to take the oath of office from Superior Court Judge Vincent J. Grasso as County Clerk. Nobody has put a final number on the cost of renovating the grand old courtroom, but it’s north of a million dollars, according to the most informed speculation. It would still …

Wouldn't it be great if the redeveloped Beachwood Plaza Shopping Center did become the focus of a new town center for Berkeley Township?  Will 2011 be the year that dream finally clears the bureaucratic and regulatory hurdles? We'll see. For me, nothing can replace the shopping center as I knew it, working for one of the most colorful men ever to adopt Ocean County as his home, the late James E. "Jimmy'' Johnson, who owned the place – sometimes. I say that cautiously, because no one could be sure, from day to day, which limited partnership or other family entity actually owned which part of …

What a week! First the Big Oyster announces it will close the nation's oldest nuclear plant in Forked River 10 years before its extended license expires. Then the governor unveils his $110 million Barnegat Bay bailout. It's hard not to be optimistic with so much good news coming our way. The impact could be as important to the northern part of the bay as it is to the region around Oyster Creek. That's because more than 60 percent of the nitrogen pollution flowing into the bay comes from the Metedeconk and Toms River watersheds. Those watersheds stretch far into the western fringes of Ocean …