The Next Stop is South Orange

I know all your roads, your woods, your bridges and trestles and arches and walls, so intimately. Your lawns and fences, your pockets of undisturbed native glen. The damp bracing morning air reminds me of Kentish Town, of Mornington Crescent, of Golders Green and Islington. As the suburban libraries roll past. And the next stop is South Orange. The engineering is courtesy of the DL&W; the cut trees on the right of way courtesy of Hurricane Irene in August and that fluke October snow.

On my first day I spy the old men returning from town with their morning coffee, spinning tales of blocked arteries, leaky valves and doctors' preps. A moment after gliding past the playing fields where I spent grades 7 through 9 gym class with Lou DiParisi, the bells toll 8am from St. Theresa's tower, past Fair Oaks.

Ladies and gentleman, due to a disabled train there is no Midtown Direct service at this time. Hoboken is the next and final stop.

The Meadowlands -- Jersey's own ashes of Queens, with its mountain of coal fueling the Public Service power plant. All that's missing are the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg. Mile marker 2. DL&W 1908. Hoboken pentimento: Windsor Wax Co. Inc.

Four trains (NJT/Path/Q/N). Who was that fellow fast walker, the gray-haired woman who blocked tackles from the last car at the farthest track in Hoboken to the Path, who I was sure knew her way and a security camera would've thought I was casing for an assault, until I saw she knew not where she went, or only in the most general sense, and I left her, turning about at the handicapped and stroller elevator in favor of the stairway used by people coming from Hoboken streets, near the old Walker's Diner.

Everything near something that's "the old." In East Orange I avert my eyes as Sandra Day O'Connor does on her family's old ranchland in Arizona, to avoid seeing what's become of 512 Main Street, now a Walgreen's parking lot. I avert my eyes at only a couple of places, places with deep deep meaning and affection for me, places that protected and sheltered me where I grew up. Where love, affection and gratitude reside.

About an hour and thirty, door to desk, with a detour through Hoboken, where you notice things you wouldn't when a child. The DL&W tower, now capped by a blinking red light. The tiles at the control tower that're exactly the same as those that lined your junior high school walls.

And when I'm finally deposited and I scurry out of the rabbit warren, there's the hot dog vendor throwing pretzel crumbs to feed the pigeons. I had the most literary of mornings, without ever cracking a book.