Jersey Shore Magazine

J e r s e y s h o r e • S p r i n g 2 0 1 7 98 HOME PORT New Joisee Or How I Learned To Embrace My Inner Jersey Girl by Christine Menapace "I believe there's an intelligence to the universe, with the exception of certain parts of New Jersey," —Woody Allen, Sleeper I forget how old I was when I first realized my home state, New Jersey, was a popular butt of jokes. It may have been as late as senior year of high school. I was visiting an upstate New York college and doing the round of get-to- gethers for potential students. Another prospective student and I got to talking. It wasn't too long before he comment- ed, "You don't seem like you're from New Jersey." "What? Why not?" I was perplexed. "Well you don't have big hair, and I don't hear a Joisee accent. And you're not dressed like a Jersey girl." "Oh," I said, unsure as to how to respond. It seemed he was perhaps trying to compliment me by insulting my state. And I loved New Jersey even if I didn't wear acid wash. (Did I mention this was the late 80s?) "Well, we're not all like the stereotypes," I assured him and went on to describe the gorgeous area where I grew up, bordered by beaches to the east and horse farms to the west. This was before The Sopranos. Before Jersey Shore. Before The Real Housewives of New Jersey. Before "tanning mom." Before Bridgegate. I get it now, of course. There's plenty about New Jersey to poke fun at. But none of it had been my experience growing up. When I moved from upstate New York to New Jersey in third grade, I traded in winter-long ice skating and sled- ding weekends for entire summers of daily beach going, playing in the ocean, and buying fresh Jersey corn and tomatoes. Fall was punctuated by trips to pumpkin fields set amongst horse farms. I took full advantage of my sur- roundings. I rode carousel horses in Asbury Park and real horses in Lincroft. So why would I ever think my home ridicule-worthy? My mother had a different opinion. She was from Pennsylvania. When she found out my father was trans- ferred to New Jersey, she was filled with trepidation. Sure, New Jersey was where you headed for a beach vacation and boardwalk decadence, but it was certainly not a place where you raised children. "It was just better to live in Pennsylvania and near Philadelphia. We felt sorry for my cousins who lived on the other side of the Delaware. Plus, it was all just tomato fields then. We joked that that's where the mob buried their dead." She had told my father she didn't want to live too close to the Shore. It would frizz her hair. So as we looked at houses in New Jersey, the family joke became whether we were seeing pigeons or seagulls. "That's a seagull," my mother would say as we crossed a bridge. "It's a pigeon," my father would retort. Eventually, we found a home in Monmouth County, a barely-safe six miles from the hair-frizzing beach. "I was shocked when we pulled onto our street," says my Mom. "There were these big maple trees. I didn't think New Jersey had places like this." My mother was not alone. I married a Maryland boy who also initially thought New Jersey was pretty much the view from certain parts of the turnpike. Industrial pollution and sprawl. Now he knows better and is equally amused when we can't convince his father that the crabs we catch in New Jersey are the same species as the famed Maryland ones. After some research, I discovered this negative impres- sion of New Jersey has a long history, dating back before we were ever a state. But ironically, it wasn't about indus- trialism, it was quite the opposite. Benjamin Franklin reportedly said, "New Jersey is like a barrel tapped at both ends." In other words, we were the country bumpkins compared to the sophistication of Philadelphia and New York City. Michael Aaron Rockland, of the Department of American Studies at Rutgers, has also pointed out that while still under British rule, New Jersey was split into two different regions from East and West. It created a cultural divide and identity crisis that still exists today and fueled the impression of New Jersey as a lesser state. But those who live here know the truth. Today, my mother, the same woman described above, has a magnet on her car that reads, "Jersey Girl." Shell motifs decorate her house and a silver flip-flop hangs from her charm bracelet. In retirement, my parents could—and probably should for financial reasons—live in another state. But my mother is now like a New Jersey rock jetty. She has found Wavebreak Media LTD continued on page 88

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