New Jersey

As, with the obvious exceptions of Texas, Oklahoma, Utah, Idaho, South Carolina -- and the political situation is such that there was no need to stop there -- no state is more deserving of gratuitous slander than New Jersey, this moment right on the heels of my preceding post seems like a good time, finally, to post the following paragraphs, which I wrote as long as three years ago.

I am convinced that New Jersey, like any other place, is capable of and has in fact produced some of the very finest people to be found anywhere. In fact I know a number of such persons, and some of them, would you believe it, still live there. Nevertheless I think that on the whole New Jersey has problems, and one reason is that sometimes its inhabitants badly need to dig themselves.

It is probably one more indication of the general sad state of human affairs that so many of the species have chosen to pile up together in that one place, which has the shape of a pillow that a giant tried to squeeze in the middle but quickly gave it up as a bad job. Over time the natives have made a big mess of things there, and it used to be that it wouldn't be long after you crossed into the premises before your olfactory senses would make a point of telling you that, from, I suppose, all the refineries and industries and what else. Maybe by now the Clean Air Act has had some effect.

I know you will still see many trees and some farms there, yet New Jersey is, to my knowledge, the only state so far that officially no longer has any rural areas. The entire state has long since been declared to be a metropolitan area. Unless I missed the announcement, that miserable distinction hasn't been achieved yet even by tiny Rhode Island.

This means that all the so-called "Garden State" in effect has become one big, sprawling city. It means that proportionately more of it has been paved over and thus sealing off life- and happiness-providing Mother Earth than in any other state.

The beautiful, relaxed, and still lightly populated county in which I live, which gradually rises from the Piedmont up to the crest of the Blue Ridge, in the western part of Virginia, and in which I myself am a transplant, has been discovered in recent years by droves of retirees and other people from New Jersey, and now every other person you meet seems to be a refugee from that state. My good friend down the road and across the river, H., views this as a renewed invasion and a permanent occupation, finally, by the despicable Yankees, and he has said that it's too bad that they can't all be arrested on sight and deported.

I don't waste time wondering how I fit into that, but it can't be favorable, as I am not only an unapologetic liberal, but also I didn't even have the good grace or the sense to be a native of Virginia. Instead I was born and raised just across the river, in Washington, D.C., where H. was, for a short time, once a cop, and I can guess what he must think about its citizens.

I don't go as far as H. with regard to his professed attitude about New Jersey, but let me just note that while I was living in D.C., twice careless New Jersey drivers struck my ineffably cool little black 1963 VW Bug in the rear, causing damage for which of course I wasn't recompensed one red cent, because of "The Sopranos" land from whence they had slithered.

So H. and I are in agreement on one point at least, though for different reasons. New Jersey drivers should not be allowed to leave their state.