Jersey isn’t Jersey anymore. Have you noticed?
New skyscrapers popping up on the Manhattan skyline. Steady streams of traffic on roads that used to feature an all-day lull. Fewer and fewer kids actually walking to and from school. A lot of people in town that you don’t yet recognize.
My neighbor is crotchety, but I tell ya, he looks pretty good for eighty. His family calls him “Archie Bunker.” I wonder if he wants the mention…what rules govern this sort of a telling, anyway? No matter, I suppose, because it’s a small town, and in small towns people talk to each other and about each other. It’s only natural.
So I’ll get what’s coming if he’s not happy to have wind of me talking.
His family and he are long-timers at their current address. Did he say fifty years? That many years, or all of his life? I seem to recall him saying he lived in Newark before he was married, like a lot of Belleville people. Or was it only to report for work?
A couple of days ago, I couldn’t help but notice his frame of mind. It was more than a mood. I don’t always see this in him, so it was striking, the way he was, apparently, accepting of how things have changed around us. Not only here in town and with the world, but, more importantly, right here in front of his house. And there was no fatalism on his part. Like we were going to be okay. Even through the upheaval, the craziness, the abuse, the neglect.
He gets cranky about the people he thinks do not fit in. Archie Bunker. He crabs about the whats and whys of whatever it is they do that gets him bristling.
“Who the hell do they think they are and where in the world do they come from?” he’s been known to gripe.
Once, some years ago, I saw him get into a heated curbside shouting match with someone who turned out to be a neighbor and a lifelong resident herself. I couldn’t tell–from that exchange–if he knew her or not, but she parked her car too close to his driveway opening and nothing winds him up like that!
She didn’t want to hear it and stood her ground. They both walked away from a hasty brush-off with no harm done.
Through the years, I came to realize that he knew everyone within four-five houses of where we are, and had pretty good rapport with at least someone from each household. He’ll always ask after everyone and what I know about how they’re doing. This was surprising to me at first, because I’d heard him wonder and grouse–when we would have an occasional sidewalk chat session–about some of the same households, mostly when they were new and unfamiliar to the neighborhood.
Honestly? I think he just needs to get the stress off his mind once in a while. He tends to keep a sharp eye on things.
Just don’t park him in. You will be sorry if you do. He is like a Terrier come off its tether. In the end, however, it’s all bark, every time. He pulls up with time and room to spare.
I’ve seen my block reinvent itself more than once. Financial cycles will do that to a community. But this time around–this new economy–this is something different. The world has changed in ways that people are only beginning to come to terms with, and Belleville’s identity as a refuge for young families and the recently ex-urban (not to be confused with exurban) has been getting rocked.
“We’re more urban than you think,” another long time resident once said to me, of the town, several years ago. Now that particular guy kept his eye on the ball, alright. And he liked to follow the politics.
I wonder what he would know of this new thing, this fifty story “Vision.” The one that has to be Sufficiently Va Va Va Voom, or the developer won’t be properly inspired to do the deal. This big idea.
A development plan just got fast-tracked though the Belleville Zoning, err, Planning Board and is on its way to the governing body–the Belleville Town Council–for evaluation and final approval.
That’s right. Final Approval. What the bejeezus? Who slipped this one in? See what I’m saying? Times have changed.
Behold; bigger, badder, more slippery, and here, right now, in an effort to convince us–or, more significantly, the seven heads atop the Belleville Town Council–that this is what we need to help define our future. The Planning Board has punted. Or is there something else which explains the board’s incuriosity?
Now, I know some people are wondering whose future is going to be defined first, if you know what I mean, and whose is going to be cut adrift, because there is no way a plan like this lands in town without making a sound.
It’s the start of something big.
This kind of big doesn’t happen in an environment of “no known associations,” nor without a few fellow actors who also want to move some major product of their own inside our township limits. Our sleepy little town. A town hard at it. Day in, day out.
A word to the wise? A plan like this is rarely a matter of just one kiss.
Espalier
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