93. Streets of your town

 

Time flies. I’ve been living here in New Jersey now for six full months. So much has happened in that time that I’ve barely had time to write about it. I’ve attended two weddings (both of them mine). I’ve had the opportunity to show my son around my new home before reluctantly waving him off at Newark Airport. I’ve seen the Boss play in a small theatre in his spiritual homeland of Asbury Park, and I’ve spent a lot of time in my favourite city, New York.

So, you may be wondering how it’s all going? Did the great romance stay strong after the yearnings of distance dissipated? Does domestic bliss live up to the dream? Are we still even talking after all those years of Skype conversations?

I’m happy to report that the answer to all those questions is a resounding YES. If I’m honest, there wasn’t even a breaking in period. I just slipped right into the chaos that is a house full of hormonal teens and over-excitable dogs as if this had always been my life.

Not that there haven’t been trials and tribulations along the way, it’s just that they have all been external. The relationship is our rock and is what gets us through said trials.

I love the tiny town we live in. It is the sort of place most people aspire to; quiet, friendly, and safe. I’ve never lived anywhere quite like it. The town mayor married us under the trees across the road from our kid’s school. I have daily conversations with the crossing guards (on the morning walk to said kid’s school) in which I’m kept all up to date with  the local happenings.

By chance, I met the town’s (amateur historian), Joe a few months back. Over several conversations, he’s filled me in on some of the more fascinating aspects of the town’s history. This town was incorporated in 1926 after a referendum which was conducted on my Birthday (a fact I consider a good augur). One of the two town churches dates back to the 1750’s and is among the oldest in the county.

I’m a huge history buff (as I’m sure you’ve already worked out if you’ve been reading this blog) and living among so much of it has been a thrill I haven’t experienced since my time in the UK.

And then there’s this one other thing.

I mentioned this is a tiny town – more a village really. The population is well below 2,000 and yet it now has two Australians among its inhabitants. I first met Michael at our elementary school on one of my earlier visits. I’ve always enjoyed walking the youngest to school and, when she was younger, I’d usually pick her up too.

One afternoon, as I was waiting for her to emerge, a chap approached me and said, in an unmistakeable Sydney accent, “you’re from Australia too, right?” His kids and our kids had been talking and I’d been pointed out.

You may not find this that unusual, after all, there are thousands of Australians living in the US. That at least was my take at first as we chatted about where we were from and what had brought us to this distant part of the world (in both cases the love of a Jersey girl).

Then he asked me exactly where I was born, I told him Darlinghurst in Sydney and he immediately said, “Me too! Which hospital?”

“It doesn’t even exist anymore,” I joked and he exclaimed, “Saint Margaret’s? Me too!”

What are the odds that two men of a similar age, born in exactly the same place, should both end up married to women from New Jersey and both wind up in the same tiny village?

I was reminded of all this as I was walking to the Post Office this morning and Michael came running by me in the blistering heat (mad dogs, Englishmen, and people from Sydney). We have not become friends (despite the obvious impetus we have towards it), contenting ourselves with mild pleasantries whenever our paths cross. I think the strangeness of the situation is something we both find a little too unsettling.

I’m aware I went a little off topic there but the anecdote was too strange for me not to include it and I’ve been mulling it over since I got back from the Post Office.

 

 

 

Words and image are my own.

 

©2017

 

 

Revolution

 

 

The Battle of Princeton Monument.

 

 

This great State in which I now reside was the crossroads of the Revolution. More battles were fought over New Jersey soil than over any other of the thirteen colonies. Places like Trenton, Princeton, Springfield, and Monmouth were the sites of some of the most crucial battles of the struggle. In fact, Trenton and Princeton are where the tide began to turn in favour of the Patriots.

Not four miles from where I type this, is a place where Washington stayed while his army was camped at White House, just down the road (sadly the house burned down in the 1960s but a commemorative sign still marks the spot).

Six miles in a different direction and you find Solitude House, High Bridge. This was another house where Washington (and his wife Martha) is known to have visited as well as General Lafayette, Colonel Charles Stewart, and Aaron Burr. It was also the house where two important loyalist prisoners were held for a period of time during the war, John Penn, the last colonial governor of Pennsylvania; and his chief justice, Benjamin Chew.

 

Solitude House from the front.

 

 

And from the side and rear.

 

The house belonged at the time to the nearby Union Ironworks which produced cannon balls and musket barrels for the American troops.

Long Valley (originally German valley until the outbreak of WWI made all things German distasteful to American sensitivities), just one county over, features a house once nicknamed ‘the Fort’ where both British and American troops were stationed at various times during the conflict.

 

The Fort, Long Valley.

There is also the ruin of a Presbyterian church where the minister famously donned an American uniform at the pulpit and declared, “there’s a time for preaching and a time for war!” He then marched out of the church and joined the Continental army.

 

Also very near to where I write, the small hamlet of Annandale features two buildings which could not more perfectly illustrate the situation which afflicted the country at the time of the revolution. First is the Vought House built in 1759 which belonged at the time of the Revolution to a family of German origin who remained loyal to the German-descended King of England, George III.

 

The Vought house.

 

While, not ten minutes walk away stands a building* which was once a tavern owned by  Thomas Jones, an avowed patriot.

The former Jones Tavern from the rear.

And from the front (the top storey is a later addition). When the  Declaration of Independence was eventually signed, it was read publicly to the people of the local area from the balcony of this Tavern.

Jones Tavern was a local recruiting post for the Hunterdon County militia and Jones himself was one of the officers who procured and hid the boats that Washington used to cross the Delaware and attack Trenton.

One night, Vought’s son, john, and about 25 loyalists broke into the tavern and severely beat Jones for his rebel allegiances. This did not go over well with the Provincial Congress of New Jersey when word of it reached them. And it led to the Vought house being surrounded by militia and to Christopher Vought, John’s father, being placed under arrest. His son escaped but later surrendered.

The two spent five days to two weeks in prison for their troubles and, soon after, fled to join the British. They were captured in the battle of Two Bridges and the family went into exile in Nova Scotia.

About 20 miles from here, the British, led by famed Commander Cornwallis, launched a surprise attack against the American garrison at Bound Brook. They were attempting to capture the entire Continental contingent but failed to seal off all escape routes and so were unsuccessful in their main objective. The American reinforcements under Major General Nathanael Greene reoccupied the fort as soon as the British had left.

Monmouth County, about fifty miles South East of here, provided raiding grounds for the infamous Colonel Tye. Tye (whose far more impressive real name was Titus Cornelius) was an escaped negro slave who joined the Royal Army to fight against the Americans.

The British Earl of Dunmore had declared that all black slaves who left their rebel owners and fought for the King would be granted their freedom. Tye escaped his Quaker owner in Colt’s Neck, Monmouth County just a day later (quite coincidently) and took the announcement when he heard it as a fortuitous development. He joined the British soon after.

His first taste of action was at the battle of Monmouth near Freehold (where, in the American ranks, the woman who came to be known as Molly Pitcher wielded her rammer at the mouth of her wounded husband’s cannon). Serving with the Ethiopian Regiment, Tye managed to capture Captain Elisha Shepard of the Monmouth Militia. Soon after he was leading raids all over Monmouth County and up towards New York, operating out of a coastal fort at Sandy Hook.

New Jersey is rich with such stories and much of that history is present in the stone and plaster of buildings still found all over the State. You can reputedly see the depression in the wall of Nassau Hall, Princeton, where one of Hamilton’s artillery balls impacted it during the Battle. And at nearby Morven House, a piece of bullet-riddled wall has been preserved to remind us of the ferocity of that desperate conflict.

Many of the old battlefields have been subsumed by urban sprawl but you can still walk parts of the fields at Princeton, Bound Brook, Red Bank, and Monmouth. I found Princeton particularly evocative and deeply moving. Men fought and died all over New Jersey and the other twelve colonies to win freedom from a foreign oppressor. The Great American experiment found new hope in the blood, mud and freezing snows at Trenton and Princeton.

Princeton Battlefield.

The Clarke house, where General Mercer lay dying for nine days after being bayonetted by the British for refusing to surrender at the height of the battle.

Though I loathe war, I dearly love the ideals and the vision that those men (and women) were willing to sacrifice life and treasure to secure. It fills me with a strange pride to be surrounded by so many reminders of that idealistic and, conversely, brutal time here in my adopted home.

 

* I have visited this particular building many times and it plays an undocumented but important role in my own and my wife’s story.

 

 

Words and images are my own.

 

©2017

 

 

 

4th of July

 

Well say goodbye it’s Independence Day
It’s Independence Day all boys must run away
So say goodbye it’s Independence Day
All men must make their way come Independence Day

Springsteen, Independence day

 

Our town, like thousands of others around the nation, staged a July 4 Parade yesterday. I didn’t know what to expect, but what I got managed to move me deeply.

Here are just some of my visual impressions of the day.

 

 

The Baby Parade

 

 

These images represent only a fraction of what was on display. There were, for instance, some 30 individual fire engines at least in the parade from all the surrounding towns (even one from Arizona – the pink one). There was also an amazing sellection of classic cars and vintage John Deer tractors to feast the eye upon.  Sadly, I’m dangerously close to running out of storage space on my WordPress account (not sure what I’m going to do about that) so I was forced to leave a lot out.

The day was remarkably poignant and uplifting in equal measure. I hope to see many more like it.

 

Happy Birthday, America.

 

All images used in this post are my own.

 

©2017

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The colour of spring

 

Springtime in New Jersey #2

 

All images used in this post are my own.

©2016

Rooms for the memory

 

Now the sweet bells of mercy
Drift through the evening trees
Young men on the corner
Like scattered leaves,
The boarded up windows,
The empty streets
While my brother’s down on his knees
My city of ruins
My city of ruins

Springsteen, My city of ruins

 

In my post Open all night I mentioned my deep and abiding love for the Jersey diner. In the area around Hunterdon County there seems to be a lager than normal concentration of such establishments, but very few of the classic aluminium clad variety. To me, that style is the ultimate aesthetic for the perfect diner.

There are a couple on route 22 that fit this description but alas, only one still operates. The other has become a bit of a Jersey landmark. The photo in my post was a found piece I trawled from the internet featuring the abandoned diner on 22. I’d driven past the place many times but had never had a camera to hand, so this time around we made a special trip to grab a few shots.

The place has deteriorated further since the previous image was taken. The sign on the roof has blown down and a chain-link fence has been put up around the entire building to keep out squatters. It is still strangely evocative, though, as I hope the following images will attest.

 

 

I have no idea what name this diner was once known by. Locally it’s always referred to as the abandoned diner on 22. It looks like it’s been sitting there in this state of dire disrepair since forever but I get the feeling it won’t be around for very much longer.

Places like this fascinate me. They remind me that you can have more than one history. This was once a thriving business, a place where people came to eat together and where people worked to keep food on their own tables.

It has also had a history as a ruin. Homeless folk have sheltered here, local wildlife too. The two histories have seemingly nothing in common on the face of it but they both occurred within this same aluminium skin.

 

 

 

 

Words and images used are my own.

 

©2016

 

 

 

 

 

Spring rain

 

Springtime in New Jersey #1.

 

Related

All images used are my own.

©2016

Cross the river to the Jersey side.

 

New Jersey is a very strange place. I began this blog with those words a few months ago and continue to stand by them. It is also a very old – originally it was a British colony – and densely populated place, but for all that, it is tiny (especially compared to its near neighbor Pennsylvania).

Despite its diminutive size, what strikes you about Jersey is the rich variety of settings it has to offer. People from outside the Jerz tend to think of it as heavily urban slash industrial; I certainly did before I got there.

Hollywood has relentlessly presented Jersey that way and populated it almost exclusively with mobsters and lowlifes. Now, I won’t attempt to make the claim that there’s no veritas in that portrayal. There are parts of northern New Jersey that look like the seedier bits of New York coming down off a crack binge; only much more threatening.

I don’t want to single any particular places out here, but I’ve been to Union and have passed (hurriedly) through the outskirts of Newark and so I definitely get the reference in the song Open all night when the Boss sings New Jersey in the morning is like a lunar landscape.

And it’s not just the North end either if I’m honest. Amboy, Trenton, Asbury and Atlantic City are all places where things have gotten a little… feral (and I wasn’t going to name names).

That said, much of NJ is surprisingly rural and really very pretty. Hunterdon County, where Jersey girl resides, is positively Arcadian. I love spending time there and miss it terribly when I’m away.

Cape May.

Cape May is another wonderfully scenic area, as is Princeton. Indeed, with only a few exceptions, there’s much to recommend in the great state of New Jersey.

Princeton.

For many, the greatest attraction is the fabled shore. Running from the mouth of the Hudson River all the way down to the Cape, is an unbroken stretch of beaches and seaside towns – like the legendary Asbury Park – famous the world over (infamous in some places, thanks to a certain pig’s breakfast of an [un]reality TV show known as Jersey Shore).

Jersey girl at the Beach Bar in Asbury Park.

I personally prefer the version of the shore famously featured in the exquisite song Jersey girl written by the inimitable Tom Waits and gorgeously reinterpreted by Springsteen.

Down the shore everything’s alright

Just you and your baby on a Saturday night

That’s my heaven, right there.

Jersey has it all really; beautiful woods, mountains, and rivers, a plethora of safe and sunny beaches, sleepy villages and bustling cities.

Raritan River, High Bridge.

And if you’re in the mood to have the living crap scared out of you, why not give the Pine Barrens a visit? Rumour has it that’s where all the bodies are buried from various mob hits.

Image is the property of HBO

Unless otherwise stated, all images used in this post are mine.