Cross-Pollination

Paramus—much of Bergen County actually—about half the residents came from Jersey City. One or two, at most three generations removed from the ones off the boat, who were processed through Ellis Island. They settled in Jersey City where Italian, Irish, Polish and other immigrant communities had been established and ample employment was available along the industrialized banks of the Hudson.

Veterans of World War II and the Korean War wanted what they thought would be a better life. Everyone aspired to upward mobility. They eschewed the drudgery of the rail yards or factories, like Dixon Ticonderoga and Colgate. Come five o’clock the windshields of all the cars parked in the Exchange Place and Paulus Hook neighborhoods attained a thin film of soap residue from the production at the Colgate Plant. They had the G.I. Bill and there were new white collar jobs to fill.

By the mid-50s, the Jersey City segment of the Greatest Generation began to move to the suburbs where they would commute into New York City and office jobs in the white collar sky scrapers. The earliest forms of the cubicle began to emerge. Capitalism was king! The suburbs promised lawns, wide open spaces, good schools and wholesome experiences for their baby boomer offspring. Soon, the remaining wide open spaces were filled with shopping malls and their kids were getting high. Even prefabricated deceptions begin with worthwhile dreams.

In Paramus and the surrounding boroughs, what used to be farmland, where descendents of Dutch families grew celery and tomatoes—an agrarian culture that went back to before the American Revolution—sold off their fields to developers who had Levittown in their eyes. They built communities of two story houses on one acre lots at prices affordable to folks who grew up in Jersey City and wanted their own version of Mayberry or Walton Mountain. Puerto Ricans and African Americans had begun to move into Jersey City neighborhoods, attracted by the same blue collar, low-skilled jobs once filled by the Italian, Irish, German and Polish immigrants. The brown exodus into Jersey City further fueled the white exodus into the suburbs.

Not all the Caucasians moved out of Jersey City, just a lot. Urban meant crime, loss of opportunity and suburbia meant the small town experience everyone back then dreamed of. Not everybody in Paramus came from this background. My family didn’t, but most of my friends did. Most of my friends were properly ethnic—Italian and Irish mainly. Jersey City was a place they went on Sundays to visit their grandparents.

My mother still lives in Paramus and I visit frequently. After I moved from the lower east side of Manhattan into Jersey City—at the time, the early 90s, Jersey City was not the destination of young adults like it is today. Jersey City was still the slum next to Hoboken. There were few signs of what has been called gentrification or yuppie-fication in Jersey City when I moved here. At the time I was still a pioneer.

“They must have roaches as big as footballs,” said one fellow who lived across the street from the house where I grew up. He is older than me, grew up in Paramus and moved to another suburb to raise a family.

“Unlike New York, I’ve never seen a roach in my apartment.”

“I remember painting apartments there as a job, renovating them for the (he uses a racial pejorative) when my grandparents were still alive. The place was disgusting, how can you live there?”

"A lot has changed since then.”

His father loved to talk to me about his home town. He always reminded me that Christopher Columbus Avenue used to be Rail Road Avenue. He told me that the neighborhoods were designated by Parishes. “Even my Jewish friends would say, I live in Saint Bridget’s or Saint Michael’s.”

When I moved to and lived in Manhattan, folks in my home town would look at me screwy, the idea of spending more time than you had to in New York, be it for work or entertainment—simply unfathomable. Jersey City though, that they could understand and support. My mother worked in the rectory of Our Lady of Visitation, where I went to school and received the sacraments. My mother when we talked on the phone would tell me so and so said hello, asked where you lived in Jersey City. It was a craze for a while among my mother’s friends, asking her about me and Jersey City We would go to mass, after mass they would come up to me, “I hear you live in Jersey City.”

Some of course were parents of my classmates from grammar school. They never really inquired about my well being before, nothing more than a hello. I had gotten in trouble a lot in High School and in the suburbs prejudices either die hard or live forever. They weren’t inquiring about my well being now either. They really wanted to just talk Jersey City. They didn’t care about where I lived or what I was doing. Only a few places—like Percaro’s Bakery, which makes Pizza Bread, I’ve seen old people in Paramus get teary eyed remembering Pizza Bread— were still around, but most of what they remembered had been gone for a while.

One of the organizations at OLV was the Catholic War Veterans and sometimes they hold functions after mass when I visit mom. An old guy (shit, they’re all in their 70s and 80s!) comes up to me, “Are you the Timothy that lives in Jersey City?”

“I’m the Timothy.”

“That was where I grew up in Jersey City. I go there all the time. Ocean Avenue.”

Now, here’s the thing. I have an awful sense of direction and there are neighborhoods and places in Jersey City I’ve never been to or can’t remember if I had been to them or not. I’m too busy wandering around living the life of the mind. “Isn’t that the heights? I think it’s a bad neighborhood.”

"It’s not as bad as it used to be a few years ago. I go there all the time.”

“Is there anything to do there? Any good restaurants?”

“I never get out of the car. I’m retired. Twice a week or so I go to Jersey City, drive around look at where I grew up. I never stop and get out, I just drive.”

Probably how a lot of people see Jersey City, through their car windows, taking a short cut from the Turnpike. Most just drive through (at speeds above the residential limit). Maybe some wonder who lives here, what kind of lives they lead. Others though are coming from Bergen County, seeing what used to be here, remembering the kind of lives their parents led.

“Timothy, do you know of any apartments in Jersey City, not too expensive.” said born and bred Jersey City woman from my mother’s generation—I’ve known her all my and loved to talk to me about Jersey City and pizza bread, until 2008.

“It’s not like when I moved here, the rents are out of control. Manhattan prices are being charged. Lots of condos.”

“My grandson wants to live there, can you believe it? Me and Bob (her husband) moved away so we could raise our kids somewhere nice and clean and now their kids want to move to Jersey City. Did you know that Jersey City has become the hot place for kids to live?”