Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Scenes from The Real New Jersey







For anyone who's ever assumed that Jersey is Joisey without actually visiting the place, and for Baydog, who also posts a lot of pictures from The Real New Jersey & will hopefully get a kick out of this post. These are pictures from in & around the New Jersey town where my mom grew up. And that's JERsey, not Joisey! Just ask my mom.

16 comments:

PeconicPuffin said...

Beautious! Once you get below the chemical corridor it's fantastic.

moonstruck said...

Most "out of staters" think NY ends at the top of the Bronx. If you write Dennis and Arleen and the zip code on the envelope we will get the letter. first four years we lived here, we had a telephone "Party Line"

Dennis G

will said...

and i thought port elizabeth, newark, and the meadowlands (the wild place) were the real jersey.

will said...

ps: the meadowlands IS a great place to paddle around and play peekaboo with birds and tops of NYC skyscrapers

O Docker said...

This is so true.

For a few years, I lived in a small New Jersey town like this whose roots went back to the revolution.

Despite all the goldenocity of the Golden State, that was still a much more human place to live than where I am now.

bonnie said...

I couldn't find it but Baydog had posted something a while back that got me blithering about visiting my grandparents in New Jersey, and my earliest impressions of New Jersey being entirely of seeing rabbits and deer in the back yard, and visits to Crane's farm stand for peaches and corn and tomatoes, and fireflies and all that stuff.

My mom spent her first few years in a cottage that was originally the granary for a farmhouse that was said to have served as a hospital in the Revolutionary War. Unbelievably, that farmhouse was torn down & a gaggle of McMansions of the ugliest sort raised there (the town evidently allows owners a lot more leeway about having their homes designated historic than some places, and in this case the owners had chosen against & when they went to sell, the razers must have made a much juicier offer than anyone who wanted the old place), but the cottage is still there & the lilac bush & the peonies my grandmother planted are thriving, the pine tree that my mother remembers them bringing home from Maine in a Dixie cup lost it's top it one of our recent windstorms but even what's left makes for a pretty impressive tree.

Sadly, the people who own it now aren't sure how much longer they can afford to stay there, but they hope that when and if they do have to sell, they can find someone who will appreciate the charm of the old & not just want it as a tear-down for another glitzy monstrosity.

bonnie said...

ps - Will, every time I take a bus or a train out of NYC I look down on the marshes & waterways & think "What a great place that would be to poke around in a kayak".

O Docker said...

I lived seven miles from where Washington crossed the Delaware.

It was a little spooky to look down into those waters and think what might have happened if he hadn't made it.

I guess we'd all be speaking English now.

Baydog said...

Wow, O Docker, I was just going to ask where it was that you lived. I'm just about that far from Washington's Crossing as well.

Bonnie, you made me feel right at home-nice pics. Joisey can be fun too , coming from the people who laugh with us instead of at us!

will said...

laurel hill county park (just northwest of the secaucus NJT station) does kayak/canoe rentals on the hackensack. let's do it some time with a group. also, wild NJ: NJ DEP esimates nearly 4000 black bears in NJ north of I-80. who knew?

Unknown said...

I purchased my boat from someone who kept it in New Jersey just a few miles south of the Delaware Bridge. Spent that first off-season making the trip down there often.
It was very rural with a lot of working farms in the area.

Also there are some real pretty spots on RTE 76 (or 78?). South of I-80, west of NYC

Baydog said...

It's kinda weird, but it seems like people are actually surprised how beautiful this state really is. : )

Trenton Tommy said...

It's all dem New Yawkers what give Joisey a bad name.

Criminy, if youse wuz in da city and lookd cross an saw Bayonne, wouldja wanna know anythin more bout Joisey?

No way you're comin tru da tunnel.

Cheese, like wadda ya gonna do, spend da weekend in Newark?

Lantic City, dats all dey know from Joisey.

doryman said...

It's a beautiful country. We're fortunate.

Baydog said...

I know who you are, Trenton Tommy.
Did you see today's page six?

Carol Anne said...

Then there was this news story that I reported on a couple of years back from the woodsy part of New Jersey: Yeah, Folks are Tough in Jersey. Unfortunately, the original article has disappeared, and along with it the picture I had posted, which shows verdant green woods, along with the ferocious cat and the frightened bear.