NEW JERSEY COUNTRYSIDE: FLORA AND FAUNA

Reluctantly leaving my wife in Cherry Hill New Jersey on the afternoon of July 17, I drove alone toward Summerville in that state.  First I scooted up route 295, a superhighway, to Lawrenceville; then I chose to make my way North on secondary roads that turned out to be circuitous and thus extended the time of my travels in the first day.  Yet the roads were pretty, winding through some of the finest rolling farmland in the state, small towns with their photogenic white porches and flower boxes sporting small red and blue buds in the afternoon sun.  I say farmland, for it once was; yet today this land is largely inhabited.  Much of it is houses, yards and driveways, separated as if to relieve the eye by fields, some of which extend to a wooded horizon.

It is one thing to be in this idyll; it is another thing to drive through it.  Gone are the days of Thoreau’s wagon rides through the Maine countryside.  At a horse’s pace, Thoreau was able to catalogue every fence post and flower if he wanted to.  Often he noted a species by the side of the muddy road; once he even insisted on stopping the wagon to pluck it, much to the irritation of the driver and fellow passengers.  There is a feeling of belonging to the scene in a wagon, but this receives the back of the hand when driving a car in New Jersey. 

As I passed over small crests and into modest dips in the road, through sharp curves and bearing into gradual ones, my sensation was dominated by the movement; I did not intuit the place through which I passed.  It was as if either the place or I were no more than a television image, fleeting, sunsplashed, then an instantaneous memory.  The remembered image of that drive is like a Kalaidoscope. 

Though an idyll, much of central New Jersey is a spoiled one at best.  Overviewed from the flight up its roads, this lush countryside is dense with people and their objects, no more prominent of which is demonstrated than the multivariate species of automobiles streaming incessantly throughout.

The traffic artery is clogged with a variety of sports utility vehicles, clearly the car of choice in New Jersey.  Every manufacturer in the world makes them.  There are many big bruising Brunos with belligerent grills that seem to project a kind of bar room power.  There were modest, but not diminutive suv’s that carried their still considerable bulk for the safety of some drug executive’s wife - and there she was, driving that big thing with all the aplomb and security of a babe in a carriage.  Then there were the little big things - the suv’s for folks who wanted more space and transport capacity, but were slightly embarrassed by the rolling riches they had bought - and especially by the global environmental impact they were wreaking by buying and driving a vehicle regulated leniently as if it were an industrial truck, but used casually like a motorcycle with a side car for seven.  These little ones are boxy cars (trucks) with the patina of the fine foreign label and little of the testosterone rich decoration that the meaty American based companies lavish on their monsters.  The little suv says, gently: “I know this is an suv, but, look! - it’s a small modest one.  I still care about the environment!”

Though the suv is de riguer in New Jersey, the road is populated with various other machine forms that give the stream of traffic much color and spice.  More than once, I observed a two seat sports car - Jaguar, Mercedes or Volkswagen - zipping down the road (or tailing me like a teenager with grey hair on Saturday night).  These, along with the occasional Camaro, reminded me of the days when your wheels were your story, and kids with style would flaunt their cool with their hair in the air and the Beach Boys blasting.  There were songs about these cars, sung with abandon by the pretty girls they attracted to the lucky guy’s front seat - and by egg heads like me secretly, alone, as I drove my mother’s grey four door Chevy sedan carefully on down the line.  I saw one muscle car, a Thunderbird with bulging headlight eyes, and an endless racing stripe on the side.  I got out my Springsteen CD and put it in the slot.

Thus entertained with the soft lensed memories of a simpler time, and with the blasting, old fashioned rock and roll in my abused ears, I flew, New Jersey driver style, through the small towns and fields in the center of the state, into a massive snarl of two lane traffic near Somerville, where converge several of the signal arteries of the land - Routes 206, 202, 22, 28 and 287.  202 angles in from Flemington and the Northwest; 206 forges North from the Trenton area and storied South Jersey; 22 and 28 slice through this area from the West and head on to New York City, where all roads are said to reach their glorification at last.  287 was my objective this afternoon, for it would take me directly North through the center of the State, and over the border into New York State, where I would proceed. roughly parallel to the Hudson River, thence to the East and into Connecticut. 

This plan seemed straightforward when traced on the map; however, to avoid the traffic snarls of a Friday on the Turnpike and the (Garden State) Parkway, I was destined to brave the rough water of the Somerville Convergence, where six mighty streams, draining travelers from the four corners of this drivers’ homeland, empty into a single traffic circle, just before the entrance to route 287.  Gone was the elegy of Terhune’s world.  I left behind the quaint porches and hawk hunting fields.  My car was my armored tank; the horn was my cry, and I entered this great circle with the ferrous determination of Achilles meeting Hector at last.

Baseball lost a great announcer last month, Harry Kalas.  In Philadelphia, where he came to fame, there was a full week of mourning. Harry was honored in endless video footage, eulogies and TV retrospectives.  He even lay in state at Citizens’ Bank Park - the first time a baseball figure was so honored since the Babe lay in state at that famous House of his own making.

Old Man Walking Delivers Eulogy

I watched and mourned along with all the other die hard Phillies fans.  I remembered the 1980 World Series, when the Baseball moguls decided that only national broadcasters could call the games, and Phillies fans inundated corporate offices with protests (many no doubt expressing colorful linguistic equivalents of that good old Philadelphia “boo”.)  I grieved to lose Harry’s unique baritone voice, his emotional “calls”, and the famous “Outta here!”  I joined the collective pride at Harry’s national stature, including his familiar voice-over work for NFL Films’ weekly roundup.

Harry was, as the testimonials proved, a great guy, humble, kind to strangers, and a man with a great sense of humor.  His pub crawls were epic, his cigars odiferous, and his devotion to baseball so transcendent that any mortal must stand in silent reverence.

What a voice!  It was unique in all of broadcasting.   It was deeper than most, flowing like honey with rich overtones.  Its sound alone could cancel any reverie: the normal concentration on the road, the search for All Bran in aisle fourteen.  Like Pavarotti or Enya, it was a voice with a name already attached.  Instantly, when you heard it, you would greet its owner by name, as if he had just walked into Cheers at the beginning of a show.  “Yo, Harry!”

Still, at the back of my mind - behind the on-the-twos reruns of Harry’s call of Mike Schmidt’s five hundredth home run, and the sound track of “High Hopes”, his favorite song that he performed with or without request in any and every public gathering - hidden in that cold, skeptical corner of my misbegotten, college educated, piercing, critical mind - was a small voice saying, “I really did not like Harry’s “Outta here” call, and I hated “High Hopes.”  Bless me Father, but this makes me feel really guilty.

“Outta Here” just happened too much.  As baseball became more and more a game of home runs, Harry just repeated his signature call every time.  Perhaps for the same reason, I hate - I mean with a passion eclipsed only in the throbbing hell of Ravel’s Bolero, Pascalbel’s Canon and every Christmas Carol (except “The Christmas Song” by Mel Torme) - I hate, hate, hate “High Hopes.”  And I can tell you why, I know it very precisely.

Next time your found, with your chin on the ground
There a lot to be learned, so look around

Just what makes that little old ant
Think hell move that rubber tree plant
Anyone knows an ant, cant
Move a rubber tree plant

But hes got high hopes, hes got high hopes
Hes got high apple pie, in the sky hopes

So any time your gettin low
stead of lettin go
Just remember that ant
Oops there goes another rubber tree plant

When troubles call, and your backs to the wall
There a lot to be learned, that wall could fall

Once there was a silly old ram
Thought hed punch a hole in a dam
No one could make that ram, scram
He kept buttin that dam

cause he had high hopes, he had high hopes
He had high apple pie, in the sky hopes

So any time your feelin bad
stead of feelin sad
Just remember that ram
Oops there goes a billion kilowatt dam

All problems just a toy balloon

Theyll be bursted soon
Theyre just bound to go pop
Oops there goes another problem kerplop

There is no such thing as a rubber tree plant.  I take it on faith that there is a plant that makes rubber - haven’t researched it, but let’s just assume.  It is either a tree or a plant, but I can guarantee you that no flora on the face of the earth is called a “tree plant.”  I swear, that’s why I hate the song.  Also because I am not convinced that you can rule out a ram poking a hole in a dam, depending on the size of the ram and the size of the dam.  There are dams made out of mud, you know.

But, as in any relationship, I learned to love it in spite of the occasional “tree plant.”  Even that song can be forgiven when you listen to Harry sit at the feet of one of the best center fielders in the history of the game, dubbed “His Whiteness”, Richie Ashburn.  You had to love Harry, not for being clever, or filling the airwaves with scintillating banter.  No, like Dickie Smothers or Mary Tyler Moore, Harry was best at setting up his partner and letting him shine.  With barely a verbal wink and a nod, Harry would slowly draw out the old Nebraskan’s rain prediction secret (”I can smell it”) or the observation that the man on first looked “runnerish.”  Or stories from the Mets’ storied first years, when the star was “Marvellous Marve Throneberry.”  And when Whitey departed for the great eternal sports banquet, Harry’s devastation, his inconsolable nostalgia for Ashburn more than anything displayed his inner goodness.

I have a theory about this male love story.  For Harry, Ashburn represented the game that Ashburn had played so well.  And Harry loved the game.  Harry not only loved the game, he respected it.  And that is why, when Harry broadcast the game, it was as though we were standing behind the cage at the field on a Sunday afternoon in the sun, the pop of bats and the smack of the gloves punctuating the dull hush of summer.  His voice was relaxed, like a great hitter at the plate, and his cadence ambled lazily, like batting practice.

Baseball is an odd game, uniquely unsuited to modern television broadcasting.  It is leisurely and still for minutes on end.  It looks as if nothing is happening.  Then it bursts into action, and the crowd is drawn out in admiring exclamations wholly lacking in words, syntax or sparkling intellectual content.  Then all is quiet again.

There really are no words in baseball.  Harry understood this, and that is why he was special among announcers in this modern age.  He did not talk all the time.  As he had done with Whitey, Harry got out of the way and let us just enjoy the game as much as Harry did.  We will miss the silence he granted us, that rare reservation of peace from the maelstrom of 24/7 TV.