To The Beach We Go--

The Drive Going

This Saturday morning I sleepily looked out the front door window and to my surprise saw that we were socked in with a heavy fog. The air conditioner kept our townhouse unrealistically cool, and so without thinking as to the season I slipped into my sweatpants and “hoodie” (long sleeve sweatshirt with pull-over hood), leashed our dog for its morning trot, and stepped out the door into a more dreadfully humid environment than I thought possible. Relating this experience to a not yet fully awake wife, she suggested that we head for the beach. “Fine idea,” I thought; if we were going to be miserable in this thick humidity, we might as well do so on the coast where the humidity might have competition with a complementary breeze from Heaven. Hours later -- the beach is not exactly down the street you understand -- we stepped ashore at Hammonasset Point which is east of New Haven, Connecticut.

A closed down, actual, diner car and erstwhile restaurant in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
New Brunswick was a seedy, graffiti covered town with hoards of rude drivers coming at you from every direction. Now in all fairness, there may well be a prettier side to the town that I did not see, but the main drag through it was just that -- a drag. It was New York City in miniature -- absent the crush of yellow cabs.

When you think of New England you imagine quaint boroughs, and townships with white churches whose steeples jab sharply above the trees. Well it t'ain't so along the coast, that is, it ain't so what I saw! It looked like anything but the picture postcard I think of New England as. However, we passed through the Ivy League town of Princeton, New Jersey, and were awed by the diverse mansions of various designs and what we were able to see of the campus it looked as if someone had torn a page right out of medieval England. I know, New Jersey is not considered New England. But Princeton was the only saving grace along the road.

The price of gas was slightly astounding, $4.43 for regular and diesel was a staggering $4.93 a gallon. I am sure that by this fall these prices will be considered benevolent. Start filling coffee cans, and Mason jars now!

On the whole, we stayed on the interstate and were whizzing by some of the most undesirable real estate of the Eastern seaboard. We passed through industrial zones, dilapidated row houses, walls of graffiti, and Stalin-style projects that warehoused the poor. I wondered what the people’s view of their life was as they lounged on their narrow, sky-high patios overlooking the Bronx; their “backyards” -- stacked one atop another, and cluttered with B-B-Qs, lawn chairs, and flagged by drying clothes of color -- was a picture of urban uniformity. But what really struck me was the sterile environment void of even one weed to fuss over. If I were to live in a project I would garnish my slab of concrete with wilderness! I would have planter boxes of dandelions, and crabgrass, thistles, and flowing drapes of puncture vines. Why my lofty courtyard of concrete would reflect the world around me in shades of prickly green, and wafts of smog!

From the New Jersey side of the Hudson River we could see the Empire State building. In light blue silhouette it stood alone, in audience with skyscrapers bunched to its north. What an edifice it is; a mountain range on its edge; Jacob’s ladder at its first landing -- wow!

The View From New Jersey

The following portrait was a collaborate effort by two eye-witnesses to fully illustrate an event that no picture could possibly explicate:

While heading north the loud rumble of motorcycles could be heard coming up from the rear. The first biker was a wiry, tattooed fellow, in a bandanna, dark sunglasses, and a stringy beard that the wind blew over his shoulder. The second biker was a large man in a tank-top, and whom we presume, had recently lost a good deal of weight. He was still quite stout (stout my gluteus maximus, he was huge!), but not as immense as he once was. The blanket of loose skin below his upper arm flapped in the 80mph slipstream that blew over his rotund, tattooed, biker’s body like amber waves of grain in the Midwestern wind, the tattoos rippling on his skin like patriotic symbols on a flag from Bikerville. Of course, what we saw, and how it has been tastefully masked is far from the visual reality. The verity is, the view was fleeting and most captivating; but we have not captured just how repellent it was.

Upon concluding our pleasant, and late lunch (we ate at 5:30 PM), we only stayed for 30 minutes, and then it was time to head back.

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