_ So Goes the Nation
from chapter 3
Over in Eatontown off Route 35, he spotted the chrome facade of the Charles Diner and parked in the lot. Friday morning must be a busy time—all those tearful goodbyes between traveling salesmen. He chose a seat at the counter, the better to hear people.
“Morning. What can I get you?”
“Coffee, please. I’m still deciding.”
The menu in his hands seemed bigger than the kitchen. The more he read its pages, the less he knew what he wanted. Eggs, shouldn’t have. Pancakes maybe, not either. Eight kinds of cereal, two of granola. He chose one.
“It’s an insult! Who are they trying to scare?”
“They shouldn’t have done that.”
“No sense even talking with ‘em now.”
These voices on one side of him mingled with basketball talk, girl talk, wheeling and dealing talk on the other.
When the waitress returned, Nicky asked: “What do you think’s gonna happen?”
“What do I think?” Her name was Lucy. Twenty years she’d been working there. “Soldier boys’ll go away, their tails between their legs. But at least they’ll be alive.”
He was impressed. “How about the tunnels? What’s going to happen there?”
Lucy shrugged, she wasn’t saying.
Two other customers called her. When she came back, she was willing to tell him something. “I bet you’d find a lot of people agree. I just think our whole relationship to New York has to be readjusted, or start over, whatever it takes to change. Because it’s just not working out. You know, like when a relationship has gone sour.”
Before he managed to finish chewing, she refilled his coffee and added, “You might be from this state, you might not, but it seems to me things have been off kilter for a good many years. New York is part of that, the whole country is. Believe me, New Jersey is better off without them.”
He was afraid he could get arrested just for listening to that kind of talk. Lucy moved on again, but he was tempted to stick around and ply her for more commentary. He was embarrassed to have no idea whether her views were common.
Enough of sophistry, he had to be on his way. The next bit of road led right to the Garden State Parkway, and in normal traffic he would be at the Holland Tunnel in less than an hour. Certainly, nothing was normal about the day and yet: somehow traffic moved along the freeway. Since the start of this mess, New Jersey drivers had shown a remarkable ability to stay away from even the approaches to New York. Could they have been preparing themselves? Nicky managed to take the same route as yesterday without too much trouble, even to park in the same gas station where the attendant greeted him with a wave of the hand.
The scene was much changed since yesterday. From his end of the plaza where skateboarders had sailed by fresh from their momentum off the ramp, today a bevy of press people and assorted witnesses hung about, waiting for the great demolition. A few blocks further stood the empty toll booths; beyond, the smattering of troops. Behind them, looming above their heads, the wall of car wrecks they dared not stand beside. No Port Authority workers were anywhere to be seen. The soldiers clutched their weapons as if any moment a show of force might be needed.
A photographer named Carlo told him the first thing they did was arrest three men wearing Port Authority badges and held them for an hour. But having no evidence against them, and not wanting to detail a portion of their small number to watching prisoners, the troops soon released the men.
“What is the army doing here?” said Nicky. “If they’re trying to make a statement, they seem kind of lost.”
“That’s all they had.” Carlo kept his eye on them down the road. “And you can guess there’s no National Guard left either, needed for the wars.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“These boys, they’re place-holders. Greenest of the green. You don’t want one of them making mistakes.”
Just in case, Carlo began to advance carefully along the edge of the plaza. Nicky watched him wend his way to take up a perch two blocks closer. Kids were also gathered on the sidelines, including one girl helping her bald father set up a lunch stand because people were going to get hungry.
Gathering courage, Nicky ventured to approach as well. At that distance, the big weapons in the soldiers’ hands looked like playthings. Still, it would be awfully stupid to get shot.
In pockets around the plaza, gaining strength, people started chanting a sudden refrain.
It became louder, more insistent, defiant. The soldiers seemed not to hear the call of the voices. Then another chant replaced the first.
Shame, shame, shame on you.
Shame, shame, shame on you.
Those words, multiplied a hundred-fold, clearly had some effect. The soldiers waved their hands by their faces, as if swatting flies. Nicky debated whether to go over and interview one of them, until the noon whistle blew nearby. Before he could even turn, a line had formed at the lunch stand selling fresh tamales. The soldiers as well relaxed, long enough to pass around sandwiches and drinks; but they did not fraternize with the crowd.
He had not yet reached the front of the line, having decided on a carnitas tamale and also an eggplant tamale, when someone nearby started talking about protests in Newark and Jersey City. Nicky was not about to lose his place in line, but still he kept turning his head to keep the talkative guy within earshot. The two protests took different forms: one was a big rally down at City Hall, while the other was a wildcat march down main street tying up traffic half the afternoon. He didn’t hear which was where.
That meant at least he had somewhere else to go. The waiting here at the tunnel could last all day, and for what? It was a big state. He was glad to get his tamales, eager to dig into them, but time was short. Maybe he should move along and check out other actions down the road.
He was not alone in making that call: the troops appeared to be losing some of their audience. Savoring the tamales on the way to his car, he wondered if maybe a strange madness had seeped into the air. How else to account for its spread? Surely New Jersey was more complicated than he thought.
In Jersey City he got lucky—he had no idea where he was going. He found himself driving west on Montgomery Street; a few blocks after the Route 78 overpass, by the medical center, he spotted the tail end of the march up ahead and pulled the car over into a parking space. Quickly he gathered his bag and ran after the last stragglers in the march.
These last happened to be students, about nineteen years old, who seemed none too clear on where they were headed. They greeted Nicky like he might be their teacher.
“What’s with the march?” he asked them.
“Support for the workers. Port Authority workers.”
“We want a new deal with New York.”
“We want the feds out!”
Where did these kids come up with their ideas? Nicky hurried along. The march stretched on for two city blocks. There were shopkeepers and homeowners and immigrants’ rights people, and even a few lawyers; there were youth groups and city college people, and also transport workers, and families. They began to chant:
Fed up, yes! Feds out, hunh!!
Fed up, yes! Feds out, hunh!!
A 90-year old woman walking with a cane, who was born on the boat coming over and lived most of her life in Jersey City, was chanting every other line.
Nicky asked her: “And why are you marching?”
“Because I want the army out of our town. Get their stupid muddy footprints out of our community, they have no right to be here. And tell New York to mind its own business. They’re nothing without us, you know.” She seemed pleased to have a turn speaking out.
“Sounds like you’re ready for a fight.”
“Oh, you bet I am!”
Spontaneously a great cheer rose up through the full column of marchers as word got around that workers on both the local and national train lines, the PATH and Amtrak, were suspending all service into and out of New York beyond that evening. The military intervention motivated the decision to show their solidarity with the bridge and tunnel workers.
Further up in the procession, as he paced alongside, he noticed two gentlemen in suits. He had to wend his way around the crowd to reach them. “When did the march start? Where does it end?”
The gentlemen glanced at each other. “I think it’s going all the way to West Side Avenue, then it turns.”
“I don’t know where it ends,” his friend confessed. “But it started about eleven.”
“We were at a meeting near City Hall.”
“Big brunch. Ate too much.”
“Had to walk it off. We found this march.”
“Everyone seems upset about the armed forces showing up,” Nicky commented.
“That’s all it is, a show. They can’t do anything. There’s nothing left of them.”
“It’s a shame what they did to themselves.”
“Good riddance!”
Nicky interrupted. “So the march has grown quite a bit since you gentlemen joined it?”
“Yes, apparently it has. Bravo!”
“Look at us, we’re in the vanguard!”
Weaving in and out of the crowd became difficult as he drew closer to the front of the march, but still he managed to interview a union carpenter who had nothing but abuse to heap on New York, two sisters whose parents had migrated from the south forty years ago to settle in Jersey City and not New York, and the director of a preschool who maintained that military spending was a pure waste and hurting children everywhere, maybe it was time New Jerseyans put their taxes to better use. No one worried about who he was or what he wanted before engaging in such talk.
What continued to impress him, though, was how nobody seemed too disturbed by the blockades in the first place. He asked a teenage girl, sporting a jacket from some musical he’d never heard of, if she wasn’t concerned she might not ever see another show.
“You’re kidding, right?” she replied snapping her gum. “I mean, the amount of money we pour into Broadway? Really, they should thank us. They should come on over here and set up their stinkin’ shows on this side of the river. That’s what they’d do if they were smart.”
By now, he was a good distance from where he’d left his car. With no clear information on where the march would end up nor what would happen there, he decided to go back the way he came. The crowd had grown considerably.
from chapter 3
Over in Eatontown off Route 35, he spotted the chrome facade of the Charles Diner and parked in the lot. Friday morning must be a busy time—all those tearful goodbyes between traveling salesmen. He chose a seat at the counter, the better to hear people.
“Morning. What can I get you?”
“Coffee, please. I’m still deciding.”
The menu in his hands seemed bigger than the kitchen. The more he read its pages, the less he knew what he wanted. Eggs, shouldn’t have. Pancakes maybe, not either. Eight kinds of cereal, two of granola. He chose one.
“It’s an insult! Who are they trying to scare?”
“They shouldn’t have done that.”
“No sense even talking with ‘em now.”
These voices on one side of him mingled with basketball talk, girl talk, wheeling and dealing talk on the other.
When the waitress returned, Nicky asked: “What do you think’s gonna happen?”
“What do I think?” Her name was Lucy. Twenty years she’d been working there. “Soldier boys’ll go away, their tails between their legs. But at least they’ll be alive.”
He was impressed. “How about the tunnels? What’s going to happen there?”
Lucy shrugged, she wasn’t saying.
Two other customers called her. When she came back, she was willing to tell him something. “I bet you’d find a lot of people agree. I just think our whole relationship to New York has to be readjusted, or start over, whatever it takes to change. Because it’s just not working out. You know, like when a relationship has gone sour.”
Before he managed to finish chewing, she refilled his coffee and added, “You might be from this state, you might not, but it seems to me things have been off kilter for a good many years. New York is part of that, the whole country is. Believe me, New Jersey is better off without them.”
He was afraid he could get arrested just for listening to that kind of talk. Lucy moved on again, but he was tempted to stick around and ply her for more commentary. He was embarrassed to have no idea whether her views were common.
Enough of sophistry, he had to be on his way. The next bit of road led right to the Garden State Parkway, and in normal traffic he would be at the Holland Tunnel in less than an hour. Certainly, nothing was normal about the day and yet: somehow traffic moved along the freeway. Since the start of this mess, New Jersey drivers had shown a remarkable ability to stay away from even the approaches to New York. Could they have been preparing themselves? Nicky managed to take the same route as yesterday without too much trouble, even to park in the same gas station where the attendant greeted him with a wave of the hand.
The scene was much changed since yesterday. From his end of the plaza where skateboarders had sailed by fresh from their momentum off the ramp, today a bevy of press people and assorted witnesses hung about, waiting for the great demolition. A few blocks further stood the empty toll booths; beyond, the smattering of troops. Behind them, looming above their heads, the wall of car wrecks they dared not stand beside. No Port Authority workers were anywhere to be seen. The soldiers clutched their weapons as if any moment a show of force might be needed.
A photographer named Carlo told him the first thing they did was arrest three men wearing Port Authority badges and held them for an hour. But having no evidence against them, and not wanting to detail a portion of their small number to watching prisoners, the troops soon released the men.
“What is the army doing here?” said Nicky. “If they’re trying to make a statement, they seem kind of lost.”
“That’s all they had.” Carlo kept his eye on them down the road. “And you can guess there’s no National Guard left either, needed for the wars.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“These boys, they’re place-holders. Greenest of the green. You don’t want one of them making mistakes.”
Just in case, Carlo began to advance carefully along the edge of the plaza. Nicky watched him wend his way to take up a perch two blocks closer. Kids were also gathered on the sidelines, including one girl helping her bald father set up a lunch stand because people were going to get hungry.
Gathering courage, Nicky ventured to approach as well. At that distance, the big weapons in the soldiers’ hands looked like playthings. Still, it would be awfully stupid to get shot.
In pockets around the plaza, gaining strength, people started chanting a sudden refrain.
It became louder, more insistent, defiant. The soldiers seemed not to hear the call of the voices. Then another chant replaced the first.
Shame, shame, shame on you.
Shame, shame, shame on you.
Those words, multiplied a hundred-fold, clearly had some effect. The soldiers waved their hands by their faces, as if swatting flies. Nicky debated whether to go over and interview one of them, until the noon whistle blew nearby. Before he could even turn, a line had formed at the lunch stand selling fresh tamales. The soldiers as well relaxed, long enough to pass around sandwiches and drinks; but they did not fraternize with the crowd.
He had not yet reached the front of the line, having decided on a carnitas tamale and also an eggplant tamale, when someone nearby started talking about protests in Newark and Jersey City. Nicky was not about to lose his place in line, but still he kept turning his head to keep the talkative guy within earshot. The two protests took different forms: one was a big rally down at City Hall, while the other was a wildcat march down main street tying up traffic half the afternoon. He didn’t hear which was where.
That meant at least he had somewhere else to go. The waiting here at the tunnel could last all day, and for what? It was a big state. He was glad to get his tamales, eager to dig into them, but time was short. Maybe he should move along and check out other actions down the road.
He was not alone in making that call: the troops appeared to be losing some of their audience. Savoring the tamales on the way to his car, he wondered if maybe a strange madness had seeped into the air. How else to account for its spread? Surely New Jersey was more complicated than he thought.
In Jersey City he got lucky—he had no idea where he was going. He found himself driving west on Montgomery Street; a few blocks after the Route 78 overpass, by the medical center, he spotted the tail end of the march up ahead and pulled the car over into a parking space. Quickly he gathered his bag and ran after the last stragglers in the march.
These last happened to be students, about nineteen years old, who seemed none too clear on where they were headed. They greeted Nicky like he might be their teacher.
“What’s with the march?” he asked them.
“Support for the workers. Port Authority workers.”
“We want a new deal with New York.”
“We want the feds out!”
Where did these kids come up with their ideas? Nicky hurried along. The march stretched on for two city blocks. There were shopkeepers and homeowners and immigrants’ rights people, and even a few lawyers; there were youth groups and city college people, and also transport workers, and families. They began to chant:
Fed up, yes! Feds out, hunh!!
Fed up, yes! Feds out, hunh!!
A 90-year old woman walking with a cane, who was born on the boat coming over and lived most of her life in Jersey City, was chanting every other line.
Nicky asked her: “And why are you marching?”
“Because I want the army out of our town. Get their stupid muddy footprints out of our community, they have no right to be here. And tell New York to mind its own business. They’re nothing without us, you know.” She seemed pleased to have a turn speaking out.
“Sounds like you’re ready for a fight.”
“Oh, you bet I am!”
Spontaneously a great cheer rose up through the full column of marchers as word got around that workers on both the local and national train lines, the PATH and Amtrak, were suspending all service into and out of New York beyond that evening. The military intervention motivated the decision to show their solidarity with the bridge and tunnel workers.
Further up in the procession, as he paced alongside, he noticed two gentlemen in suits. He had to wend his way around the crowd to reach them. “When did the march start? Where does it end?”
The gentlemen glanced at each other. “I think it’s going all the way to West Side Avenue, then it turns.”
“I don’t know where it ends,” his friend confessed. “But it started about eleven.”
“We were at a meeting near City Hall.”
“Big brunch. Ate too much.”
“Had to walk it off. We found this march.”
“Everyone seems upset about the armed forces showing up,” Nicky commented.
“That’s all it is, a show. They can’t do anything. There’s nothing left of them.”
“It’s a shame what they did to themselves.”
“Good riddance!”
Nicky interrupted. “So the march has grown quite a bit since you gentlemen joined it?”
“Yes, apparently it has. Bravo!”
“Look at us, we’re in the vanguard!”
Weaving in and out of the crowd became difficult as he drew closer to the front of the march, but still he managed to interview a union carpenter who had nothing but abuse to heap on New York, two sisters whose parents had migrated from the south forty years ago to settle in Jersey City and not New York, and the director of a preschool who maintained that military spending was a pure waste and hurting children everywhere, maybe it was time New Jerseyans put their taxes to better use. No one worried about who he was or what he wanted before engaging in such talk.
What continued to impress him, though, was how nobody seemed too disturbed by the blockades in the first place. He asked a teenage girl, sporting a jacket from some musical he’d never heard of, if she wasn’t concerned she might not ever see another show.
“You’re kidding, right?” she replied snapping her gum. “I mean, the amount of money we pour into Broadway? Really, they should thank us. They should come on over here and set up their stinkin’ shows on this side of the river. That’s what they’d do if they were smart.”
By now, he was a good distance from where he’d left his car. With no clear information on where the march would end up nor what would happen there, he decided to go back the way he came. The crowd had grown considerably.