Vol. 4, No. 821
Welcome to the New World, aka New Joisey
Allan R. Andrews
American Reporter Correspondent
Washington, D.C.
WASHINGTON -- Someone please check the real estate holdings
of the
Supreme Court justices. Does George Steinbrenner have much invested
in
New Jersey? Which side of the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels controls
the
tollbooths?
There's a conspiracy afoot, to be sure, and I think I know its
roots.
In case you missed the news, the Supreme Court ruled this week
that
Ellis Island, the first place most of our forebears set foot in
the New
World when they immigrated to the United States, belongs not to
the
State of New York -- as most of the world's lawmakers and mapmakers
have presumed -- but to the State of New Jersey.
As one who grew up in the Big Apple -- in Brooklyn, to be specific
-- I
watched many of my friends and their families abandon the city
and head
for the suburbs. Mostly, they traveled in one of two directions:
to
Long Island or to New Jersey.
Alas, my own family soon joined the exodus. My sister and her
husband
crossed the Hudson River into New Jersey but turned north and
wound up
in New Windsor, N.Y., chasing my brother-in-law's company when
it
pulled out of the city.
After I went off to college in New England, my parents retired
to Sag
Harbor, almost on the eastern tip of Long Island, but happily,
like my
sister and her husband, still in New York. My mother moved back
to the
city when my father died and remained there until she couldn't
take
care of herself any longer.
Like my mother, I didn't like the idea of the family
leaving the city,
but at least someone from our family remained in New York. Most
of my
friends from church, school and the neighborhood, however, relinquished
their memory of Peter Stuyvesant and their love of Prospect Park,
and
headed to New Jersey, settling in places such as Parsippany, Dumont
and
Perth Amboy. I have to admit my chosen profession dragged me from
the
city, but my shadow is firmly planted in New York State as surely
as my
parents are buried there.
To me, New Jersey was the place we went through when we had to
get to
Philadelphia or Pittsburgh. We held our noses as we drove through
Hoboken or Bayonne and held our breath as we raced down the 16
lanes of
the New Jersey Turnpike near Newark, the only place I ever saw
that
built towering fans to remove fog, or smog, or whatever they called
it
then.
We turned our backs on the beaches of the Jersey shore. Sure,
they had
reputations because of all the Pennsylvanians that crossed the
state to
get to Atlantic City or Ocean City or Asbury Park, but we had
Jones
Beach and Coney Island and Riis Park.
At any rate, I think all those New Yorkers I used to know have
plotted
to take some of the city with them after their adult migration
into the
Garden State.
Keep in mind that New Jersey is the most densely populated
state in the
union. You can't move thirty feet in New Jersey without bumping
into
another body. Like Japan, New Jersey values real estate as a scarce
resource. They're out to recapture all they can. Now they've gotten
the
27-acre site (most of it landfill) just a mile from the Battery
on
Manhattan island and part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument.
I think the capture-New-York conspiracy began shortly after the
Verrazano-Narrows Bridge opened in 1964 between Brooklyn and Staten
Island, well south of the disputed island. New Yorkers thought
that was
strictly a provincial project, but for the first time, one could
travel
across Staten Island to get to New Jersey without having to board
a
ferry.
The bridge, you see, also gave people in Jersey easier access
to
metropolis via Staten Island and Brooklyn, and with easy access
comes
envy. How're ya gonna keep 'em down on the trucks, after they've
seen
the Battery?
The conspiracy loomed large when the New York Giants of the National
Football League packed it in and moved to the Meadowlands. They
even
had the audacity to continue calling the transplanted team the
New York
Giants!
Of course, what's one to expect of a state that once allowed horses
to
dive off piers?
Now those turncoat Joisey-ites have gone to the nation's highest
court
and stolen a few thousand square feet in the beloved and historic
New
York harbor. (Forget that it's in New Jersey waters; they don't
call it
Upper New Jersey Harbor do they?) All along, New Yorkers thought
Staten
Island sat as a shield against such an assault, but I suspect
that New
York City's most suburban borough has been corrupted from the
West and
largely infiltrated by ex-Jersey-ites.
Mark my words, within the coming decade, New Yorkers
will probably see
the New York Yankees move to Englewood Cliffs!
Well, O.K., New Joisey has won this one, even though most of the
immigrants who landed on Ellis Island and forged their futures
in this
country were positive they were landing in New York, and as one
of the
justices noted, no immigrants had tickets aboard a ship bound
for New
Jersey.
Then again, with its crowded population, one could make the case
that
Jersey has inherited the "huddled masses."
New Yorkers have one outstanding consolation. The Statue of Liberty
appears to have her gaze turned away from New Jersey!
New Yorkers, be prepared for a New Jersey proposal to shift the
statue's pedestal!
Allan R. Andrews is a news editor for
The Stars & Stripes in
Washington, D.C., and a freelance writer. He can be reached at
allan.andrews@reporters.com
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