A Fistful of Fig Newtons by Jean Shepherd Read Free Book Online Page A

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    Don’t get the idea that I don’t like Jersey. On the contrary, I love it. And why not? Life there is never dull. It can be many other things: irritating, terrifying, but dull–no.
    Take a friend of mine, an elegant, very social, much-monied doctor residing in a very lovely suburb in the Watchung Hills. For months he and his wife planned a summer gala; barbecued pheasant, cheese dips flown in from Switzerland, liveried batmen dispensing canapés from the kitchens of Maxim’s of Paris, the works.
    The guests assembled on his lush estate, the rich New Jersey grass cropped to putting-green silkiness. Women were never lovelier, nor men more handsome. The Japanese lanterns flickered in the soft summer air, when suddenly, with no warning, what at first had appeared to be an approaching curtain of smoke struck, and within an instant the elegant party had disintegrated into a whooping, hollering, slapping mob. A vast formation of New Jersey mosquitoes, flying in echelon, had attacked with the deadly efficiency of a squadron of P-51s strafing Berlin.
    Within moments the bedraggled mob, covered with lumps and scratching unashamedly, huddled in the living room, myself among them, taking solace in the obvious fact that Mother Nature bites and stings all men, rich and poor alike, especially in Jersey.
    And there is something distinctly real about a phenomenon which I have observed and which I call here New Jersey Nostalgia. One night in a remote college town in Colorado (and no state could be more different from New Jersey than Colorado, believe me), I was wandering along a darkening frontier street when suddenly my nose detected the sharp, poignant fragrance of Home. My nose began to sweat in excitement as I dashed down the street, following the scent. I rounded a corner and there it was–BIG VINNIE’S NEW JERSEY PIZZERIA. There, nestled amid the taco parlors, the chili joints, and the alfalfa sprout dispensaries (Colorado abounds in health nuts) was the Real Thing; a pizzeria straight out of Camden or Lodi, or Jersey City for that matter.
    An instant later I was inside, had ordered a rich slab of the Mother Food of New Jersey. Known to the pizza aficionado as a “Full-tilt Boogie,” it had everything: anchovies, sausage, green peppers, double cheese, onions, and the greasy thumbprints of Vinnie himself.
    I was back home. Two sweating former Jerseyites manned the place for expatriots, their accents redolent of the Meadowlands. One shouted at me over the hullabaloo:
    “Y’wanna bee-yah to go with it?”

    “Yeah!” I hollered over the din.
    “How ’bout a Rheingold?” he yelled back. “Real bee-yah, not like this Coors sissy stuff they drink out here.”
    “They used to sponsor the Mets games,” I contributed at the top of my voice.
    “Them were the days.” Vinnie smiled benignly as he shoved the beer toward me and nodded to a fading photograph of Bud Harrelson which hung over the cash register. It was signed To Vinnie, from a Pizza nut–Bud.
    For a few moments I was back in the land of the Margate Elephant, the Flagship, the Leaning Tower of Pizza, Two Guys from Harrison, Route One on Saturday night–in short, the homeland.
    Yes, there are times when I head west out of Manhattan at 4 A.M., hurtling through the deserted, spooky Lincoln Tunnel for an eternity, and then with a feeling of relief I spot the Light at the End of the Tunnel, and it hits me again. Yep, the Light at the End of the Tunnel that everyone is always talking about is New Jersey!

 
    The light at the end of the Tunnel–New Jersey?
    Awful thought! But then, maybe the Ship of State which Presidents are always threatening to pilot at last into A Safe Harbor could be the Staten Island Ferry, plowing through the murky waters of the bay amid orange peelings, 7-Up cans, and the occasional deceased Mafioso come loose from his concrete moorings at the bottom of the sea
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    Good Lord! Right above me a couple of those gunsels wearing cement