A bicyclist passes Prown’s Home Improvements on Monmouth Street in Red Bank, where enlargements from the 2012 calendar are on display. (Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Who among us isn’t a sucker for nostalgia? And who can resist gawking at the consequences of Mother Nature’s fury?
David Prown, owner of Prowns Home Improvement, has decided to combine the two for his shop’s third annual Red Bank-based calendar of old photos.
The limited-edition calendar was “inspired by having an earthquake and a hurricane in the same week (along with some pretty good snowstorms earlier in the year,” Prown tells redbankgreen.
With images once again from the archives of Dorns Classic Images, this year’s calendar looks to the past, this time for photographs depicting the aftermath of floods, snowstorms and hurricanes, including a flash flood on Broad Street at Canal Street in 1965.
Others show dig-outs from blizzards and roof damage in town. Prown ventured beyond the borough’s borders for shots of storm damage in Fair Haven, Monmouth Beach and Long Branch as well.
As with last year’s, this one’s a fundraiser. The 2011 edition was all about Red Bank’s West Side, with sales proceeds going to the Parker Family Health Center on Shrewsbury Avenue.
In it’s inaugural edition in 2010, the calendar took a general look back at Red Bank. That one was a freebie.
Proceeds will go to the borough’s Office of Emergency Management, which among other tasks oversaw the evacuation of 113 elderly patients at the low-lying Chapin Hill at Red Bank nursing home during Tropical Storm Irene in August.
The calendars are $10 apiece, available at the store or by writing here.