Hi, my name is Bob and I'm from New Jersey

In June 1991 I threw my few last belongs into the trunk of my car tossed my two cats, Leslie and Murray into the backseat and made a 12 hour run to Mi-Casa in the heart of Atlanta.

I never truly had a Jersey accent so it was easy to disguise my state of mind.  When I was asked where I was from I usually just replied "the New York area".  This was close to the truth as my last two residences were in fact Hoboken, NJ and Manhattan.  What I didn't disclose right off is  that I was a genuine Jersey boy. Born and raised in the heart of Irvington, directly outside the borders of Newark, NJ

Life is but an exit away

 The first 20 years of life existed right off exit 143 on the GSP (Garden State Parkway)

Hey, it's okay to be from Jersey

Fifteen years later I'm proud to say that I'm from New Jersey.  I've come to realize that no matter where you grow up kids make the best of the situation.  Two things I learned in Irvington, 1) to use my imagination to create something out of nothing and 2) to run really fast. 

We grew up on 35 Elmwood Terrace on the first floor of a 3 story house.  All that separated our house from the house next door was an alley way just wide enough to fit the handle bars of my orange Schwinn bike through.   On the floor above us was this Ukrainian family.  The mom who we called Milly, always wore a nightgown and yelled "scat, scat" at any stray cat that ventured into our backyard.  This was a common occurrence considering our German neighbor Werner was running a stray cat shelter in his backyard and basement.  He probably had 50 or so cats at a time.

Werner was kind of a hero to me, given my absentee father.  Werner was strong, ambitious, caring and he and always hung with the kids in the neighborhood and told us Paul Bunyan type stories about his life. He eventually adopted some foster kids since his wife couldn't have children of her own.

Life was simple back then, hell we even had sidewalks and lived around the corner from Florence Avenue School.

The town of Irvington, eventually turned sour and I was probably mugged/jumped maybe 10 times between 1977 and 1984.  I guess when I got a little older and taller and enrolled in a Tae Kwon Do class, the target fell off my back.  Like Sam the Snowman in the classic Rudolph the Red nosed Reindeer flick would say behind his umbrella, "Tell me when it's over." 

Even if your not the consummate White Castle fan, if you can relate to a late night road trip to fight the munchies, you'll love Harold and Kumar go to White Castle.  I laughed my ass of watching this 'stoner' road-trip movie.  Pick it up on DVD tomorrow.

You might be from Jersey if you don't understand why there aren't more 24-hour diners elsewhere in the country.   Click on the diner to find the nearest one and order up some fries with gravy for me.
 

Jimmy Buffs - Home of the Italian hotdog and right down the street from my childhood digs on Elmwood Ave and Springfield.   An  institution for greasy food lovers, that has served generations of the Meier household.  There's a new one up in East Hanover, but the original locations are worth risking your life to travel to.  I'll have a Double with everything!

Growing up In Irvington

I suppose I'm just homesick for the memories...  Here are a few.

The paper-routes I ran all around Florence Ave, working at Bills Army & Navy, getting comics from the newsstand on Becker Terrace, going to church at 2nd Reformed Church, hanging out at Dairy Queen and the brook, watching the Irvington parade on memorial day,  mischief nights, catching R-rated flicks at the Sanford and Castle theatres, George the Butcher and the little penny candy shops, crossing guards, Pizza bagels, Italian Ice, playing tag around the public library, the Red Crab pet shop where I got my first hamster, Diedricks vending machine shop next to Florence Ave. where I  purchased 45s, the assemblies at school with high scale productions like Mr. Jiggs the Chimp on roller skates, those freaky scooters we sat on and played dodge ball way before Ben Stiller glorified it and the 4th of July carnival down at Orange park by Irvington High where I'd pass out after eating 2 snow cones, a bag of popcorn, a few hotdogs and a ride on the whip (those rides they brought in on  trucks).  Oh, I could go on for hours but unless you grew up in Irvington, New Jersey this probably doesn't make much sense.

If by chance you grew up in Irvington you should check out the Irvington Yahoo Group.  

what A Long Weird

Trip Its Been

Take a trip over to Weird New Jersey, a publication that started as a newsletter in 1989 that has now received world-wide recognition.

Essentially a travel guide to the weird, odd and  eccentric history of the Garden State. It's a must to check out if you are from Jersey and have an appreciation for New Jersey folklore.

During the '80's I suffered from the Greenhouse effect.  I became a brother at Iota Kappa Phi, listened to the Grateful Dead more than I cared for and met some really cool peace loving people. 

Going to school at NJIT in Newark kept things lively and I haven't been back to the Frat since around 1990.  I've just reconnected and plan to make a stop over soon. 

More Jersey Facts

In 1870 the first boardwalk was constructed in Atlantic City -   Leo the MGM Lion, Cheetah the chimp and Elsie the Borden Cow are buried in New Jersey - New Jersey has the largest petroleum containment area outside of the Middle East countries - There are 23 White Castle Restaurants in New Jersey. - New Jersey has the most diners in the world and is sometimes referred to as the diner capital of the world. - New Jersey has a Trash Museum, 2 De Korte Park Plaza, Lyndhurst

And for more on everything NJ go to NJ.com or the NJ Historical Society

The Garden State is the Place

Georgia on My Mind?

Sure I enjoy living in this fine southern state and raising a family here. I never have to shovel snow and if it does snow I'm the only one on the road.

You may not know that  many true southern folk are still bitter about the civil war. Just ask my wife, Christy  a true Georgia girl.  Hey, I'm still referred to as a carpet-bagger down here.  I haven't heard that term since 10th grade history class And the only wars I ever  heard mentioned in Jersey were the revolutionary war on school trips to Morristown and gang wars in the inner cities.

You know You're from Jersey If...
 

• You do not think of citrus when people mention the "Oranges."

• Your big class trip in elementary school was to Morristown.

• You know that it's called "Great Adventure", not "Six Flags."

• You actually know bakeries that are not part of a supermarket, but are individual stores.

• You've ordered a "hard roll with butter" for breakfast.

• You can go bowling at 1:30 am (w/ automatic scoring).

• You know what a "jug handle" is.

• You go to the boardwalk at least once a year.

• You know where to get a great bagel.

• There are no self-serve gas stations -- and you like it that way.

• You have, or know someone who has, Mafia connections.

• You've played in a P.A.L. league.

• You know where to get a fresh Taylor ham, egg and cheese at 2 am.

• You remember Action Park and may have been seriously injured there.

• Anything less than 3 inches of snow isn't worth your time.

• There is no beach, just "the shore".

• "Been there . . . been there . . . drove past that . . . shopped there once"
  -- your response to the opening credits of The Sopranos.

 History of Irvington:

Here's a brief synopsis of the history of Irvington by the Township Historian, Alan A. Siegel.  For a more complete accounting on Irvington's history click the  history of Irvington link or purchase one of Alan's books, Out of Our Past, a History of Irvington , New Jersey, Images of America: Irvington Township, a photo history, and Smile, a Picture History of Olympic Park.

A brief history

In 1666 several small vessels from Connecticut sailed up the Passaic River in search of a safe landing. Within a decade Newark's first settlers laid out highways, erected a meeting house and established themselves on the banks of the river. The next generation looked to the west for additional land. Irvington had been explored soon after Newark was settled: The Indian trail that later became Clinton Ave. led straight to the Elizabeth River and the open meadows of the valley. History has not preserved the name of Irvington's first European settler nor the date when he and his family cleared the woods to build the first rough cabin here. Tradition has it that Irvington was founded in 1692.

During the early years of the 18th Century a handful of families inhabited the valley, most of them clustered along the river. West Farms, as the place was first called, gained its earliest citizen of note when Samuel Camp sold his property in Newark and moved his family here about 1725. His son, Joseph, opened a general store on what is now Clinton Ave. about 1740, farmed the family's lands, owned a sawmill on the river and operated a cider mill and distillery on Vinegar Hill. At mid-century Joseph Camp and his numerous relatives and descendants owned nearly one-third of the arable land in what is now Irvington, reason enough for West Farms to become known as Camp's Town.

Camptown built a new schoolhouse in 1809, saw it burn to the ground in 1826 and replaced it with a three-story brick building that was to stand as a landmark at the Center until 1913. The Camptown Academy was Irvington's only schoolhouse until Central School on Clinton Ave. opened in 1870.

By the mid 1800s Camptown was a village of about 900, most of them farmers but a growing number professional and business people from Newark, Jersey City and New York City who had sought the place out for its quiet country lifestyle. When Stephen Foster published his new ballad, "De Camptown Races," in 1850, the "better folk" of the village were mortified that people would associate their hometown with the bawdy goings on celebrated in Foster's song. To Lydia Crawford, the wife of the local postmaster, belongs the honor of choosing Camptown's new name: Her 1852 suggestion, "Irvingtown," commemorated Washington Irving, America's greatest living man of letters.

By the turn of the century Irvington had been transformed from a country village to a thriving middle class suburb of Newark. The town's first electric trolley in 1890 was largely responsible.

Since the building boom finally ended in 1930 after consuming every farm and field in town, Irvington's population has remained relatively stable. A little over three square miles in area, Irvington is one of the most densely populated places in the state. Census takers in 1905 found that one-fifth of Irvington's people were foreign born, most of them natives of Germany, England and Ireland. During the first three quarters of the 20th Century, a wave of immigrants swept over Irvington. German Americans bought or rented so heavily in the East Ward that from the 1880s to the 1950s they were the town's most dominant ethnic group. The town's Jewish community, numbering over 9,000 in the 1970s, was virtually non-existent until 1900. The largest ethnic group by the 1970s, Polish-Americans moved here in force after World War One. Italian-Americans began arriving in the West Ward in the early 1940s, followed in the 1960s by Ukrainian-Americans, 4,000 strong (most of them in the North Ward) when the 1970 census was taken.

The Newark riots of July 1967 hastened an exodus of families from that city, many of them moving the few short blocks to Irvington. Until 1965 Irvington was almost exclusively white. By 1980 the town was nearly 40% black, by 1990 it was 70%. On July 1, 1980, Fred Bost, the first black to serve on the Town Council, was sworn in as East Ward Councilman. Michael G. Steele, the town's first black mayor, was elected in 1990, followed by Sara B. Bost in 1994. The current Mayor is Wayne Smith.

Olympic Park

If you grew up in the area you might also remember Olympic Park on the border of Irvington and Maplewood.  The park closed down the year before I was born, and I use to imagine what it would have been like to grow up across the street.  My aunt once told me that the houses directly across from the park could get in anytime they wanted for free on account of the crowds and noise they had to deal with on a regular basis. 

If you want to check out some pictures 2 years after the park closed click here.  Alan Siegel also has a great book called Smile that accounts for the nearly 100 year history of the park.  Click on the book to purchase thru Amazon.  The land was an cleared out and made into an Industrial Park when I left Irvington in 1988, I assume it's still that way today.  I also understand that the Carousel at Disney in Orlando, Florida is from Olympic Park and the only reminder of the Olympic past.  

The Life of Bob • Living By Heart • Garden State • Center of Awareness