City Roads, Take Me Home

the old places where I became me

The same weekend that I visited Bell Labs, I went to New York with my sister to see Jessica Kirson, a hilarious comedian. We also ate bibimbap and chicken wings at a great Korean fusion place, and paid for our indulgence the next day with a bike ride around Branch Brook Park, and a tour of our childhood haunts. The park is beloved for its cherry blossom trees, and on a sunny weekday we met people enjoying the wonderful weather in this beloved space: fishing, walking puppies, and flying drones.

The Newark Basilica, as viewed from Branch Brook Park

When we were children, this park was too far from home to safely bike; our stomping grounds were “the fields,” otherwise known as Monsignor Owens Park and Glotzbach Memorial Park, where baseball diamonds, soccer fields, and tennis courts abutted the town compost dump. We used to play in the leaf piles and forage through junk there; ruins were out playgrounds.

Development has stolen most of our old ruins; a dilapidated factory that gave us hours of window-smashing fun as we tested our throwing arms is long gone and replaced with condos, office spaces, and workshops. We circled our cars around the lot and marveled how every spare inch of space has been redeveloped. Across the street from the factory was once a lumber yard that we could sneak into for scrap wood to make things, it’s not a construction group’s office with a backlot full of cars and parts.

The Third River in Belleville where we used to play

One place that didn’t change much, and actually improved access to the creek we used to explore, was the Third River in Belleville. Our uncle owns an apartment complex here, where our dad was once the superintendent, and we’ve have free rein to explore the bamboo thickets, the creek, and the storm drain while he was fixing someone’s plumbing or electrical. He made us a net out of a window screen, and we caught minnows and crayfish with it. Dad being Dad, he patiently waited until he could catch small fish by hand.

Some of the land I used to explore has been repurposed into a park; it’s a dog-walking path along a creek now. Hoffman-LaRoche, inventors of Valium, sold their stake here and one of their loading docks where I used to ride my bike and daydream apocalyptic scenes. On Google Maps it looks undeveloped, and that will be the next place I check out when I visit my old hometown again.

Another place that changed a lot was my grandparents’ house, sold when my grandmother died. It was a duplex shared by two brothers. When I was a kid, I thought they built it; later I heard that my great-grandfather took ownership of it to pay off someone’s gambling debts or a street loan, and gave it to his sons. We played on the patio decorated with slate from the quarry where my grandfather worked. There was also once an enormous slate slab, “the stone,” that he placed there as a seat. It’s long gone. It must have weighed nearly a thousand pounds. The big trees are gone, too. The patio stones remain.

One thing that hasn’t changed much is Rutt’s Hut, which has been around so long that my great-uncle Jimmy, who died a few years ago at ninety-four, took his wife there on a date before they were married. “Old Abe Rutt” was from Denmark, and his famous yellow relish is known simply as remoulade in his home country. I learned this when I took my friend Sonny here, a Dane. He told me it was made with cauliflower and spices boiled down into a sweet, spicy mush. It goes quite well on a hot dog fried in oil until crispy, aka a “ripper,” which Rutt’s is (in)famous for. My sis and I took her kids there to indoctrinate them into the fold. Being cognoscenti, we sat down in the back room, where you can order a beer and get table service. The fried clam strips are great, too. Look at the old bar and menu!

Rutt's!

You can’t go home again, but you can still go to Rutt’s Hut.