And You, You're Traveling At the Speed of Light

When I sat down to write, I thought I'd tell a story about Christmas or New Year's or Hanukkah or Yule. This afternoon, my mother's side of the family exchanged gifts finally, and I'm so exhausted I can barely type. Tomorrow, I'm going to get up and go do the radio show, a few errands and hopefully spend the afternoon watching soap operas. After nearly two weeks with my family, I can't wait to watch the underfed and overexercised bitchslap each other.

Last night, Paulie Gonzalez and I had dinner with Paulie's recently widowed father, Aaron. Aaron lived for a couple of decades in Las Vegas, but before that he lived in one of those towns along Route 9 near Woodbridge, where he was involved in politics. Aaron has moved back from Vegas and become involved in the local politics of the town I grew up in, where developers cannot build disgraceful condo villages fast enough, and where yuppies and senior citizens just voted down athletic facilities in a township where there is no other after school activity for kids besides robbing your house.

Over dinner, when I listened to Aaron nonchalantly describe the workings of the town council and the planning board, the blood rushed to my head. After about half an hour of trying to figure out why anyone could talk casually about unsustainable overdevelopment and suburban sprawl, about stupid planning and putting the new high school out in the middle of nowhere, then building McMansions behind it and refusing to build basic athletic facilities, I lost it. I admit I spoke my mind in a small family restaurant in the harshest of language, which Aaron has never seen before. We've only known one another for a few months, really, and he didn't know I came from that town. On the other hand, I don't live there now, so what I think of those council fuckers selling out the town's future to the lowest possible bidder couldn't possibly matter less.

On Friday, I was driving on a road I've traveled for more than 40 years. A frightening chunk of woods was just...gone. Sky and bulldozers. Aaron may be more realistic about it than I am but his manner infuriated me. He and I did not disagree fundamentally on the moral bankruptcy required to put a ShopRite on a street few people travel because the farms around that street will be sold to developers or the town will take them. I felt my face burning and pressure mounting inside my head. Finally, I know this bullshit is unstoppable by me, anyway, and at least Aaron works to mitigate what looming disaster he can with experienced planning. He knows more about it than I do. I know the town and its disgraceful, naked desire to be white Princeton - just without the brains.

God. Words fail me. In the seventies, my town was one of the best integrated towns in the whole country. Watching this change is not unlike watching children play with daddy's loaded shotgun. Watching people who don't care about the place prostitute it is disgusting. I feel physically sick thinking about the next soulless townhouse cluster filled with people with good credit, hating the poor people they can't escape and can't wait to punish, resenting a town for making them talk to their neighbors.

The rush to destroy the woods and sell off the farms is stupid and short-sighted. Aaron mentioned a location where a development will be, no doubt about it. He talked about getting developers to build small connecting roads. I asked what purpose those roads serve. You know, to connect. I drew three lines and said, "There's nowhere for this traffic to go but 287, which is an astounding failure." Aaron said, "Yes, that's exactly where they'll go." I said, "They can't. Route 287 is a failure." Aaron said, "We build them their own exit."

I said, "You don't understand. In forty years, 287 has been rebuilt three times. The first builder took the money and went somewhere tropical. There is no time day or night when you can drive on 287 without encountering a pointless traffic jam because the road is so badly designed. There's no widening possible. There's no adding exits that will help. Route 287 is a failure. And you are saying it's this or Route 27, which we agree is a failure. And you're saying building in a town without a center and no proposal for public transportation is what will be. Evil is afoot and you are complicit in its designs."

Aaron said, "This is the United States now. It is morally bankrupt, as you say. If you took a poll and asked how many people would prefer killing the homeless to providing for them you'd be shocked by the results. Senior citizens in numbers will destroy school budgets. Nobody cares that kids have no place to go and nothing to do. In a town that has traditionally produced state level track champions, the new high school won't even have a track or a football stadium. These young couples are the first to turn down what planners call 'tot lots' then five years later complain their kids have no playgrounds. It happens everywhere. If the planning committees turn down too many developers' proposals the developers take the towns to court and get whatever they want. That's New Jersey."

It's not just Jersey. I accept that this is painful reality. The more I think about it, the more painful it becomes. I'm just one idiot with a love of one place and a microscopic attention span. Still, I can't help thinking that this gluttonous consumption of open space, woods and farm land is not the bankrupt inheritance we want to leave to our children.

You know, the ones whose education we don't want to finance, whose formative experiences we regulate so strictly they can't play in the backyard alone, and whose friends are only people we vet.

Look for them to punish us for this selfishness in the future when there's nothing left.