Don't Jeresy Vermont
Last August some buddies and I piled into my '86 Lincoln Town Car (Oh, how I miss you) and headed up to Coventry, VT for the grand farewell to Phish. Our favorite pastime, let alone band, and the impetus for us to travel to and see so much of this country, including New Orleans and Jersey. New Orleans ain't nothing like Jersey, in fact I would say that outside the DC to NY corridor, there is very little like Jersey in this whole country, and I've seen just about all of it, having spent time in 43 of the 50. Nate is certainly right though when he's posits that its the people who make the place. The trip up to Coventry was calamitous. Huge thunderstorms, followed by 31 hours in traffic moving a total of about 250 yards. Then an announcement on the radio that we all had to go home, because there was no more room to put any of the cars. (Because of the most rain the Northeast Kingdom had seen in 25 years the entire grounds was a mud bog.) Very few went home. Many abandoned their cars on the highway, But most were taken in by the kindly farmers of the area. We went to get some gas and found out though the lady behind the counter that her husband was taking people in on his farm, for free. We went and parked the car in his cattle fields with about 100 other heads and he set us up with a bathroom, shower, breakfast, and a tour of the farm. For free, we each chipped in $10 for a ride to the show grounds and back each night in the back of a pickup. All along the ride approaching Coventry, as the traffic thickened and then clogged to a stop we would occasionally see these signs, that we thought were just hilarious, that said "DON"T JERSEY VERMONT" Its hard for a gathering of 40,000 kids stranded on the side of a highway to stay entirely clean, but people generally respected the request, and cleaned up after themselves and kept this beautiful land as green as we found it. It wasn't till I just read Nate's blog a minute ago, though, that I realized the deeper meaning behind all this. And it was linked right to the people on the Farms up there, miles from Canada, in the northeast of Vermont. Although the desire to have the trash cleaned up was a big part of it. I think it is the Jersey attitude that was the least desired up there. I mean, can you imagine, a bunch of Jeresy cow farmers, (the 3rd largest cattle state in the nation I recently found out) taking in a bunch of dirty hippies hopped up on the emotional ride of seeing the thing they lived for, and in many cases, means of living, end. Not to mention all the Shrooms, Acid, X, Molly, and who knows what else that were in the center of the huge cloud of pot smoke that hovered around the crowd like Pigpen. No way that would have happened in Jersey. Residents of the entire area accepted all these kids with open arms up there, glad to do it. In Jeresy they would have been left on the turnpike. As far as landscape goes much of the mid-Atlantic is very much the same. Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, all kinda a wash. But as soon as you head west to Tennessee things change and just get crazier from there. And nowhere have I found the same type of people. Across the board. I guess I couldn't really put my finger on exactly what the Jeresy mentality is, but if is mundane enough to be transferred to every other place without a definitive identity, I guess I see it as a bad one. Now I've had some great times in Jersey, and met some incredible people from there. But it does just seem to be the turnpike that comes to mind when I think about it. Dirty and fast. Im glad I got to be part of that craziness up in the Northeast Kingdom, I'm glad we didn't Jersey Vermont. I guess I wish that we could Vermont Jeresy.
1 Comments:
For the short version, let me just say that being held to comments you tossed off in your 20's (however repeatedly) is a pretty grim fate.
For the longer version....
Attending JMU in quirky and lovable Harrisonburg, VA was pretty alienating. While there were plenty of folks from New Jersey around (it's the state that sends the most people to the school, after, of course, Virginia), there weren't many from South Jersey, my area. While it may seem silly to draw distinctions about such a small state (4th smallest, if you must know), the difference between North and South Jersey is - or was, anyway - stark.
Everyone assumed New Jersey was nothing more than the Turnpike and whatever gas station and fast food restaurants surrounded it. Like all generalizations, this isn't true. Nevertheless, upon arriving in H-burg and telling people I was from NJ, I'd invariably get, "Oh, Joisey! What exit do you live off?"
It was a frustrating misconception...made worse by the fact that I more or less lived right off of Exit 4.
Eventually, I just started telling people I was from Philadelphia. And I am, too, if you consider the brief time I spent in Albert Einstein Hospital as a newborn.
A few years later, I took a poetry class, and for some reason my professor was kind of fascinated by the fact that I was from New Jersey. She'd been talking about personifying the environment, giving voice and identity to rivers, trees, rocks, and the rest of nature. Then she asked me if I could come up with anything from MY environment that holds the same sort of innate identity.
I came up with streets, which I think is a pretty good answer - Springsteen would have approved, anyway. He'd have more likely gone with abandoned ferris wheels, but he'd have approved.
But apart from that, I thought it was pretty strange that I was being seen as this gritty urbanite, when in reality I live in a town with strip malls, trees, fields, a T.G.I. Friday's...like Springfield, VA, but with a bit less traffic.
I've observed (and I'll probably cringe if someone reproduces this when I'm in my 40's) that people from Jersey tend to get defensive about the state...that, or just claim they're from New York or Philadelphia. I think it has to do with being the butt of so many jokes, jokes that were conceived, and that work because of the association with, driving down the Turnpike, seeing only refineries and McDonald's signs.
As with most places, you really can't get the full picture when you're taking a road designed to bypass everything.
Anyway...
After chafing at Jersey-bashing for 5 years (the extra year is for extra learning), I found myself traveling. And Indianapolis, Dallas, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Huntsville, Pittsburgh, Detroit...everywhere I went, I'd get out of the airport, go get a car at Hertz, drive past a Blockbuster and a Wendy's, go through busy intersections with Exxon stations and convenience stores and Hollywood Tans, and, honestly, kind of resent the whole thing. People put down New Jersey for five years, and THIS was what the rest of the country looked like?
"It's all Jersey."
Really, though I didn't realize it at the time, it was more of an observation about the mass-marketing and corporate mergers and forced ubiquity being imposed on the country by Our Corporate Masters.
But that's kind of knee-jerk, isn't it? I wasn't really SEEING these cities, just flying in, renting a car, going to the nearest convention center/corporate hotel suite area, and leaving a week later. I remember feeling particularly vindicated when I traveled to Connecticut, and saw much the same standardization as elsewhere, only with everything looking about 10 years older. "The myth of New England has been exposed!" I proclaimed, smugly content that there were not, in fact, eccentric whalers everywhere.
I've mellowed. Didn't even take that long. And to amend Nate's post...
1) I always claimed that Los Angeles was not, in fact, like Jersey.
2) I eventually included San Diego, Las Vegas, and Albuquerque on the list of interesting, unique places.
3) In point of fact, it was a friend of mine who'd shout "You'll die alone!" Actually, he'd shout "Divorce!" I may have hijacked it and changed it to suit my tastes. Yep, I was one hilarious dude.
Anyway, when I first arrived in Rome and got in a cab at the airport, I drove past billboards advertising Scooby Doo in Italian, and saw an Italian McDonald's, and for a brief and really disappointing period, figured Rome was just like Jersey. Of course, it's not, and I spent most of the time there awed by how different everything was.
Three miles outside of the airport or across a bridge, South Jersey is just like Northern Virginia, which is just like St. Louis, which is just like Detroit, which, I'll wager, is just like Vermont. Which is even just like Rome, although you can't understand any words except "Linda Cardellini."
It's getting easier and easier to ignore what makes a place unique, and live in 7-11/Starbucks/Tower Records homogenity. But I'd venture that it's not so much Jersey that's making it that way - it's people who had to pass through Jersey and didn't want to venture very far.
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