We Hold These Truths

Everyone from New Jersey has a different explanation as to why the state doesn’t deserve the reputation it gets. “If you lived here, you’d understand…it’s not like what you see in ‘____’, on ‘____’ TV show, at ‘_____’ rest stop.” Personally, I stand up for my home state because it represents what its country represents as well—the organized chaos of everything shoved into one place. By “everything”, I mean every type of person, landscape, political belief, class. We make it work. We have our loyalties and our grievances. We truly are not like what the eyes of the world make us out to be, but then, what are we, who are we, in a true, boiled-down definition? That has yet to be answered.

My town in New Jersey is found in Morristown, home to The Seeing Eye, an organization that trains dogs to serve as dutiful companions for the blind. I see trainers and owners alike walking their dogs on South Street with harnesses held confidently nearly every day. I live off the Green, on Maple Avenue, where I rent the top floor of a small house. Each winter, the Town Green is decorated for Christmas with a twinkling tree and Santa’s cottage. The statue of the Seeing Eye’s founder on the corner is covered in snow this morning. Though on this December 11th, I come to see, walking closer, that, atop his head, there lies a red hand knit hat. There’s a scarf around his neck and a hat on top of the metal dog’s head as well.

The handmade items each hold a tag saying:

“If you are cold and in need, take this.

Sincerely, the Yarn Fairy.”

Certainly there are many in this town who are in need, particularly the gang that spends most of their time sitting by the chess tables. Some homeless, some addicts, all lost souls who found a little support in the underside of an upscale town. I’ve always felt that they would be excellent chess coaches. It has been some time since I’ve played, however.

I look at a statue beyond of three founding fathers. Their scarves are not knit, instead part of the sculpture. They too, at one time, were in need of hand knit outerwear, particularly Washington during the dreary months that he spent during the Revolutionary War in Morristown.

For me, thankfully, modern electricity and clothing styles have made winters in Morristown rather pleasant. I enjoy watching snow accumulate on the roof outside my office window, and watching families line up to get pictures with Santa on the green. I work as an accountant at a small private firm on a side street a ten minute walk from my apartment. I have a steady stream of the same customers year after year, many of whom have become close friends.

I grew up in Mendham, just down the road, played baseball for the varsity team. I never thought about where I would end up, but I’ve never needed to go far. My parents still live in Mendham in my childhood home, still go to the same church and have the same circle of friends.

I’m not one to ponder, and I’m one to embrace certainty and predictability. You can see this in my work, balancing numbers and amounts, organizing information to a level of perfect normalcy. But lately I’ve felt my age weighing on me like a large down jacket, and I wonder what I have to show for it all.

Most of my time here is spent wishing the cafes did not keep changing hands and interiors. I’m not a loyalist—I’ll get my drip anywhere, but it’s nice to have a central town location. This morning, I used my own French Press to make a single mug of dark roast before heading to the office. I don’t remember when I decided to become an accountant. It’s not something that I was always drawn to, certainly not a “calling”, but I do enjoy my work. It’s safe, predictable, maybe not heroic or noble, but maybe that’s not a personal aim.

I fell into that predictability later in high school. Plus, in order to afford to continue living in this area, I knew that I had to be quite financially stable. Stability wasn’t something that I lacked growing up, and I appreciated a kind of comfortable monotony. Though Mendham appears wealthy, buttoned-up, and bucolic, it holds its share of suburban secrets. These included Catholic Church cover-ups and murders, certainly infidelities. No matter how shiny, glass can always crack.

There are plenty of bars here, each with its own sort of clientele and staff, history, and quality. This winter, South Street’s Iron Bar is impeccably decorated for Christmas, with wrapping paper covering the walls and a stuffed Grinch welcoming guests in to the large, crowded bar. I enjoy coming here for trivia nights or drinks with co-workers. It embraces over-the-top advertising techniques and sometimes annoys the neighbors, but it never pretends to be something that it is not.

One of my clients, David, asked me to stop for drinks this Friday. He insisted on paying, thanking me for helping him to start planning his family’s new business, a boutique opening on South Street. I go for a Sam Adams Holiday Ale tonight, embracing the theme of the bar and season. Christmas never seems to grow old for me, though I may not believe in the magic anymore. Perhaps it is important to never lose a sense of wonder at the lengths we will go simply to have a good time. And remember that having a good time is an essential part of life.

A new boutique on South Street. It would be nice to have—we certainly have our fair share of restaurants, but clothing stores and boutiques are few and far between. David’s wife is artistically inclined, as well, and many of the items that she sells are hand-knit, hand-painted, hand-designed. We worked to make the numbers align. Sometimes I think that, if New Jersey represents the United States, Morristown and the surrounding area represent the behaviors of its upper-middle to upper classes. The charm and glitz of the center of town reveals side streets with crime and dirt, forgotten residents trying to make ends meet. The meticulously manicured backyards may not reveal any landscaping errors, but they represent a sort of blindness to the failings of the American Dream.

But I am one to talk, having bought into the American Dream my entire life, having the privilege to criticize it from my college-educated pedestal.

I wait for David, order a beer and sip quietly. Work was busy today, with things wrapping up before our holiday break. He shows up five minutes late, apologizing profusely for the minuscule error.

“How are you and your family doing? Ready for the holidays?” He asks.

“I think we’ve finally got everything done—what about you guys?”, I ask.

“Anna is always finding something new to add to the tree or cook, but otherwise I think we are finished,” he replies. “We’re going to her parents’ for Christmas this year. What are your plans?”

“I am going to Tessa’s parents’ in Chatham,” I reply. My wife, Tessa, grew up in a town close by. She works as a history teacher at Ridge High School in Basking Ridge, 15 minutes down the road. We met through mutual friends soon after college. In some ways, she is the creative side to my practical, though years of work have begun to wear her down.

The beer is exactly what I needed, and I feel a warmth throughout my body and a physical sense of happiness. Everything is exactly where it needs to be. Another year has gone by, and I beat on, I continue.

David and I discuss his business and family. He is endearingly cautious and worried, as one would expect him to be. But I admire his willingness to take a risk. We order a bar pizza and work on it throughout the night. He has three children in elementary school and middle school, and he talks about the progresses they have made in extracurriculars, the escapades they have gotten up to.

Eventually, we realize that the clock reads midnight, and bid adieu lest we overdo ourselves. I put on my winter coat and head out into the frosty night. The tree is lit up and I stop by it for a moment, listening to a street performer play holiday songs on piano nearby.

About five minutes into my walk home, I step onto a new section of sidewalk and my boot sinks in.

“Shit”, I mutter—the cement is wet. My appreciation for this town turns to a hatred of the specific crew of workers that neglected to block this area off. Shockingly, I try to remove my foot but it continues to sink, past a level that would make sense for a wet sidewalk. Suddenly, I’m buried in cement up to my knee, and feel an intense weight pulling me down.

I’m going to die here. No one is going to find me. My body is going to be lost, encased in cement. Why, why is there so much damn cement here.

And then I’m drowning, my second leg sucked in, my head under. This is it.

But then….

I gulp in a heavy breath of crisp air.

The poet and translator Anne Carson has published a collection entitled: Float. It’s a series of chapbooks encased in a plastic box. There’s no clear narrative, no order to read the pieces in, no main structure to the writing. That’s how time feels to me now—unbound from any of its conventional restrictions: floating.

The scene starts to become clearer—though I am not covered in concrete as I should be, it feels as though a heavy layer of something is peeling away from my eyes and skin. I’m where I was before, but not. I’m near Maple Avenue, but gone is the sidewalk and road. Instead, there’s a modest dirt pathway. The homes are bare and wooden, the modern apartment buildings gone. I know that this aligns with what Morristown must have looked like in the colonial era, but it makes absolutely no sense as to why I should be experiencing it with my eyes, born centuries later.

No one is out, though I hear some bird calls. The air is crisper and cleaner than the modern day metropolis. I decide that the only thing that I can do is walk towards my apartment on Maple. I continue on a narrow dirt pathway away from the bars, which are small taverns instead of overcrowded music-blasting centers. Now, one of the bars on Maple Ave is aptly named “Revolution,” a keg and original American flag painted above the door. Many sites around Morristown are named after the war or founding fathers, their mark never leaving this area.

I’m home, but I’m not. There is an empty space where my apartment used to live, a patch of dirt beckoning deer and young children to play. Suddenly I relate to the homeless I see sleeping in coffee shop doorways, feel a sense of fear at the coming frost. And somehow know that I will have to survive much longer here.

Survival seems to be a cornerstone of the revolutionary war. The bare soldier hut replicas at Jockey Hollow park reveal little preventing the snow and general elements from attacking soldiers settle down for a very long winter. I remember hiking there with a sense of wonder as a child, feeling as close to history as I could possibly get. Now I am closer.

I find a clear spot of ground outside of a tavern door, and feel grateful that I left my down coat on tonight. All I know now is all now is shelter and survival. In a state of resigned confusion, I lay down to sleep.

The next morning, I awake to a small crowd staring at me with a look of bemusement and apprehension. They have no place to put my clothing in their mind. “Look, he awakens,” remarks one man.

“Where do you come from?”, asks another.

I’m unsure of what to say and mumble something along the lines of “The west”. The unexplored territory would be entirely new and unfamiliar to them. Eyes grow wide with interest.

“What is it like there?”

“How did you get here?”

“Is there anyone else with you”

And now I must create a story. I stay as simple as possible, explaining that I am a traveler looking to return to family in the New Jersey Colony.

The onlookers continue to appear confused and wary. There’s no other way to continue explaining, no explanation that I can offer as to what brought me here. I’m from here, I’m another stray, welcome me please.

There is a homeless woman who has wandered through Morristown for many years, named the “Mud Lady” for the brown makeup that she smears over her wrinkled face. Many legends refer to her: some say that she was once a model, some say that she has consistently refused psychiatric treatment from her family, treatment that it is clear she needs. Her behavior, in my experience, has ranged from quiet and disheveled in the corner to confused yelling at servers. Many establishments send her away, her appearance a detriment to their earnings. I am reminded of an interview with the author David Foster Wallace on David Lynch, where he claims that something that is “Lynchian” is something that is both grotesque and mundane. Her hand-me-down pajama pants and purses clash with her starkly disorganized appearance, poking a hole in the sharp frame around Morristown. I’ve seen people try to help her, or people look at her in disbelief, and I find that she has become somewhat of a tourist destination, a fixture in the town. Though she is human, prone to freezing winds and lack of warm food.

I also feel that it is something of a Morristown trend to think deeply about things, but leave it at that—no action involved. I know people who wake up at 5am each morning to read, then return to their corporate job day after day with no thought to the process or any sort of meaning. I belong to this group, probably, making a living the way most of us do, working with money. I find no shame in this, know that money is what allows all of this to go on, times to change, bars to grow from dirt pathways.

I walk around the green, feeling as though I am in a fever dream, finding that I must be in a dream in some way. There are no boutiques yet—only the bare necessities, dry goods and alcohol, which was more sanitary than water at that time. I wonder what they would think of my 2022 cash, complete with pictures of historical figures that they only knew as present war heroes at the time. I feel I am here to learn more than any other historian has come close to knowing about the events that went into the founding of this country. Every portrayal of a founding father comes to close to adoration and idolization, but not complete pictures of the men who were simply men, men of their times and homes. On the green in 2022 is a statue of three founding fathers discussing something, and in a different way it does humanize them, welcomes you to join in their discussion from nearby.