By Karen Beatty
When I was five years old, my father transported our impoverished family from the banks of the Licking River in Eastern Kentucky to Bound Brook, New Jersey, just off a tributary of the Raritan River. My mother had not wanted to leave her beloved Kentucky or depart from her numerous kin there, but she did want to stay married. And my father wanted to find work and get away from anything connected to hollows, moonshine, and that old-time religion. Mother also hoped that she, and especially her four children (with a fifth on the way), would be better off. As it turned out, we children mostly were, while she likely wasn’t.
My father chose Bound Brook, New Jersey, because he planned to work in the trucking business managed by his older brother. In Bound Brook, my father moved us into a place described as “Garden Apartments,” but there weren’t any gardens. It was post WWII housing, mainly for immigrants and working class people who could not afford to buy homes. Since I had been transported from a shack in Appalachia, the two-bedroom apartment in New Jersey, even for parents with five kids, seemed palatial: A bathtub and flush toilet! Hardwood floors! A gas stove and oven! Sidewalks, and even a nearby building for doing laundry. Stupendous, indeed!
Bound Brook, New Jersey, was a town where most people worked in restaurants, retail, construction, trucking, and schools; plus, there were countless employees at a couple of highly polluting chemical plants located just above the west end of town. (Sometimes strange odors and actual particles released from American Cyanamid drifted into our schoolyards, homes and playing fields.) I considered townspeople who were low-level bankers and teachers wealthy. Of course we all knew a few kids whose parents were doctors, high-level bankers, or businessmen. Those were the really rich people who did not live in project-style apartments or in low-income housing in the sections of town populated by immigrant Poles, Italians and Irish, with perhaps a random exotic Cuban or Indian family. It was rare to see a Black person or hear Spanish in Bound Brook in the 1950s.
In Kentucky, my mother was a vibrant woman who worked in the County Courthouse. Living in New Jersey, she devolved into a burdened housewife with no local kin and no capacity to access a new community or social life. When the sixth child was on the way, the apartment management informed my parents that they had to move out because they had too many kids. Our family was given two days to leave or pay an extra month’s rent, and regardless, we were being evicted. It happened that there was some new home construction on our west end, near a brook that occasionally overflowed its banks. I knew about the development because we local children frequented the site to steal plywood, tarpaper, and nails to construct lean-tos down the brook. We also nabbed construction cable, which the big kids affixed to tree limbs to make sturdy “Tarzan” swings for sailing from bank to bank across the brook.
At age eleven, I surreptitiously joined a group tour of the model home in the completed new development, where the available space and the fancy furniture smote me. I raced back to our apartment to tell my mother about the model house, and she sent my father over to take a look. Fortuitously, he ran across a salesperson that informed him that as a veteran of WWII, he qualified for mortgage and down payment assistance. Child number six arrived shortly after we moved into one of the newly constructed homes in the development. Then, deep into the following year, my Mother delivered my youngest brother, child number seven. Our new house afforded a shared bedroom for me and my two younger sisters, and an elongated attic room for the four boys.
Sadly, as the duration of her stay in New Jersey and the number of kids in our family increased, my Mother’s mental state diminished. She went from intimidation and apprehension about her life in Bound Brook to what could have been clinically diagnosed as agoraphobia and paranoia. In Kentucky she had been a proud and self-confident woman; in New Jersey she was increasingly unkempt, unhinged, and functionally disabled. I remember having to fake her signature on my report card and school permission slips because she was too distracted to sign or even look at paperwork; in fact, she opted out of most any activity not related to basic household management and cooking.
Without filtering her outbursts, my mother jabbered with religious fervor about her afflictions and her rage at our father who had brought her to New Jersey. She lamented that she would not live long enough to see us grow up. She sang sad and sometimes-scary gospel tunes like, “The Old Rugged Cross,” with lyrics about suffering and shame. She also warned us about rich “Republican snakes” that didn’t care about poor people, and dangerous immigrants with funny-sounding names who spoke strange languages (Polish, Italian). She denigrated both poor Black people and neighbouring Jewish people who didn’t love Jesus the way that she did. And she did love Jesus, and the church, even though she thought church people up North dressed too fancy, sang without spirit, and passed the collection plate with too many expectations. She loved us kids unconditionally, while often relying upon us for the basics of daily living. She was unhappy in her marriage and with living in New Jersey, but she was proud of her children, despite her disappointment when most of us went hippie and unchurched and, worse, two voted Republican.
Sports events and churches consolidated the people in the town of Bound Brook. Officials and functionaries would save your soul if you let them, and, if you were male, tone your body. My brothers were better than good enough at sports, which won them friends, attracted mentors, and enabled them to acquire college scholarships.
I was an excellent gymnast, runner, fielder, and could handle baseballs, basketballs and footballs as well as many boys. And I could maneuver a cable swing and play ping-pong better than most boys. At an inter-school Sports Field Day, I won all six of the proffered blue ribbons. Nonetheless, I didn’t get scholarships, rewards, or accolades. Instead I was mocked as a tomboy for wearing sports attire, and teased as a “skinny-bones” because I didn’t eat or grow much. After leaving rural Kentucky where I was used to drinking raw milk, the New Jersey pasteurised milk did not taste right, and my mother was reduced to serving canned vegetables and mystery meat from a supermarket. I hated the ground meat, hot dogs, and strange overcooked vegetables she served up. So I mostly didn’t eat. At a time when women were expected to be voluptuous and alluring, I was lean and agile. I hated New Jersey.
In fact, I never embraced living in NJ the way I “owned” my early years in Eastern Kentucky and my adult years in New York City. My best friend Janice said whenever she told people she was born in New Jersey, they laughed. She even wrote a song about that. I wasn’t born in New Jersey, but had enough of it imposed upon me to understand the song. Although there were plenty of kids to play with and make “fun trouble” with in the apartments and in our new housing development, I was bullied by big (literally) girls in the neighbourhood, and spurned at school by stylish girls from the better-heeled households. To survive, I became fleet of foot and quick of tongue, able to either run away from dicey situations or talk my way out of them. I fully realised I had to get out of Bound Brook, New Jersey.
In the interest of fairness, I must report that in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s Bound Brook had excellent schools and recreation facilities. Unfortunately, I had not attended any school in Kentucky, so, upon entering elementary school for the first time, I was both shy and academically lost. I also suffered from undiagnosed dyslexia, so I didn’t learn to read until almost 6th grade and never learned to write script, to the chagrin of teachers charged with improving me. Self-conscious about my “hillbilly” accent, I also did not talk at school, a definite deterrent to making friends and getting teacher approval.
I finally caught up by playing and sparring with the kids on the west end, many of whom had worse family situations than me and had the kind of personal and academic issues that were not going to resolve with time. (Being a west end kid certainly informed me that the required “Dick and Jane” school readers did not represent most families.) By the end of fifth grade I could read slowly, print neatly, and participate orally in classes. Best of all, I learned about the local library where I took refuge and read about places and events beyond what I was exposed to at home or in school. I was determined to find a way out of New Jersey.
By high school I was considered one of the smart students who was also a discipline problem. I understood socio-economic differences and realised (without knowing the specified words) that I was from a home with domestic abuse and child neglect. We kids were essentially on our own because our mother had checked out mentally and our father was irritable, sullen and mostly absent. (His absence was a good thing, considering his PTSD rage disorder from WWII.) Never really fitting in either at school or in the neighborhood, I engaged in bravado and resentment to camouflage my fears and vulnerability.
While most of us west end kids were petty thieves and street combatants, my weapon of choice became wit. I assailed bad teachers with derision, mockery, and scorn, refusing to cave to silly authoritarian directives and relentlessly challenging their biased views or misinformation. In short, I was learning about and exposing racism (then called “prejudice”) and political manipulation (still called “patriotism”).
The good and honest teachers admired my audacity and laughed at my antics, but the bad teachers were threatened and became vindictive. I teamed up with Grace, a classmate from the neighbourhood. She came from a single parent household (rare for Bound Brook in the early 1960’s), and lived in one of those so-called garden apartments with her mother. Suffice it to say, Grace and I created a lot of “smart trouble” at school. Soon we were not allowed to be in the same classroom. Worse, despite my qualifying grades, I was barred from the National Honor Society and kicked out of senior English. I had to report to the guidance office where I befriended the guidance counselor, who arranged for me to graduate despite my not completing the English requirement. This all probably happened because English was my best subject, and I was beginning to nurture my lifetime commitment to human rights and civil rights. I held New Jersey in contempt.
I desperately wanted to get out of Bound Brook and away from my home life, but I had no information, experience, or resources to facilitate those yearnings. I had never even traveled to another town by bus or train.
Toward the end of my senior year, I got work at the local recreation center, where I met a woman who was attending Montclair State College. (At the time, Montclair was the best of the New Jersey State colleges.) My older brother was putting himself through Rutgers State University, where female applicants were relegated to their Douglas College campus, close enough to Bound Brook to have required me to live at home and commute. At the last minute, I mailed an application to Montclair State and got a late acceptance with a State Scholarship that covered the $150 annual tuition, without which I could not have attended. Best of all, I was required to find housing near the college, away from home.
I had managed to escape Bound Brook but not New Jersey. I only had enough savings to live off-campus and attend college for one year, so I was prepared to drop out when President Lyndon Johnson saved me by signing the Economic Opportunity Act. Based on family income, I was part of the first wave of acceptances. Yes, to socialism and good government! I was grateful and shocked to receive money for housing, books and general spending.
Moving onto the 7th floor of a new dormitory with a stunning view of the New York City skyline, I rejoiced. Furthermore, because of Montclair State’s proximity to New York City, I was able to partake of a broad liberal education in the arts and sciences. I could actually envision departing New Jersey, so I vowed never to use Bound Brook as my mailing address again. (As it turned out, my instincts were correct: the two of our seven siblings who remained in Bound Brook eventually voted unabashedly for Donald J. Trump.)
Still, my transition out of New Jersey was a long and winding road. I returned to the State (though not to live in Bound Brook) a couple of times for temporary work or educational opportunities, and I never abandoned my New Jersey family or friends. My escape route led me to explore living in Berkeley, California; Bangkok, Thailand; Hiroshima, Japan; Honolulu, Hawaii, and, finally, to settle permanently in Greenwich Village in New York City. My daughter was raised as a proudly triumphant New Yorker.
It was, therefore, not exactly serendipitous that in my early 70s I returned to the place of my former captivity: the state of New Jersey. My choosing a late-life summer residence in the Garden State just kind of happened. My sister and I had been looking in Cape Cod, Massachusetts for places to rent or buy near the ocean, bay or sound. At the time, I was living alone in New York City and Karla lived in Massachusetts. I wanted a get-away place; she was seeking a year-round home. After a couple of thwarted attempts and some financial reality testing, we conceded we could not afford Cape Cod.
Back in New York, we investigated numerous beach towns, with similar financial results. Then, in the New York Times, I read that Asbury Park, on the north coast of the New Jersey shore, was undergoing massively successful development. With more trepidation than excitement, Karla and I hopped on New Jersey Transit to check out the Asbury Park options. We were in the habit of referring to our old home State as “New F*cking Jersey” and reassured each other that “Down the Shore” is not the same thing as NFJ!
From my youth and during the early days of my marriage, New Jersey towns along the ocean were not unfamiliar to me. In the 1980’s, my husband and I had joined resources with our New York City friends to rent summerhouses in towns close to the ocean. We were emulating our previous summer rentals in the Hamptons, except none of it was like the Hamptons or Amagansett. It was New Jersey.
The Garden State has the shore, not snooty beach towns. You go “down the shore,” not to the beach. The Jersey shore is much cheaper than the Hamptons, but also has far less cache. Thankfully, most of the Jersey Shore is also not like the TV series of that name, at least in the experience of my friends, who were college professors, psychotherapists, artists, or in media-related professions.
In the late 1980’s the shore rentals in New Jersey were affordable, the commute was a dream, and the ocean was fabulous, even if the food and entertainment were not top notch. Of course this was the early days of Bruce Springsteen, so we knew about the Stone Pony, but the town and boardwalk areas of Asbury Park were a wreck. We also knew that next to Asbury Park was an odd little town called Ocean Grove, which was developed and managed by the Methodist Church Camp Meeting Association. The church people did not allow driving on Sunday or the sale of liquor at any time. Entry to the beach was blocked until noon on Sunday mornings. (You were supposed to be in church at that time.) At best, we New Yorkers, many Jewish and all borderline atheists, thought this Ocean Grove place was endearingly bizarre.
We stuck to upscale towns like Spring Lake for our summer rentals. By 1992, when I was 47 years old, we ended our group rentals in New Jersey and eventually most of the friends and their marriages dissipated.
It was not until 2016, when I was 71-years-old, that my sister Karla and I sadly discovered, on a sweltering summer day, that the newly renovated Asbury Park was also not affordable. Dismayed, we crossed an inviting footbridge in Asbury that led to the Ocean Grove side of the Wesley Lake estuary. Meandering around the quiet, spiritually immersed town, we noted the striking contrast to bustling Asbury Park.
Needing a cool down, we spotted an air-conditioned realtor’s office and inquired, without enthusiasm, about properties near the ocean. The prices were considerably cheaper than Asbury and the town was charming, but could we contend with the controlling Methodists? (Certainly our Mother would have approved!) The realtor patiently showed us a couple of listings on the market, but none were very appealing.
As an afterthought, probably because she was kind, it was a slow day, and we were likeable, the agent mentioned that next door to her home was a large Victorian house that had been converted to condos a couple of decades ago. The gaudy blue structure was facing the ocean and included a small 2-bedroom apartment, which had been languishing vacant and unsold for about ten years. We asked to see it, and despite the heat, the realtor agreed to climb over thirty steps in the giant house to show us an unpolished, but fully furnished, top floor unit. A series of convoluted real estate and legal processes that dragged out for a year (plus simple naive luck) enabled us to purchase this condo in the turret (meaning attic) of a magnificent old house, with ocean views throughout. Yes, it was located in Ocean Grove, NEW JERSEY!
Nowadays, I very much enjoy spending my summers down the shore, gazing at the sea from our New Jersey condo and happily catching waves in the buoyant salty water. (Fortunately, my sister lives there year-round to help maintain it.) It is indeed ironic that lacking finances, but having good fortune, delivered me “down the shore” for the summers of my elderhood. Have I come to terms with NFJ? Recently, I had lunch with a nephew visiting me in New York City. When he nonchalantly asked if I ever considered living year-round down the Jersey shore, I let out a resounding, “NOOO!”
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Karen Beatty’s work appears in over 30 publications, including Chicken Soup for the Soul, Books Ireland, Non Binary Review, and Mud Season Review. Her novel, Dodging Prayers and Bullets, was published in 2023.
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