The Bull Rider

I’ve got a bull rider coming over here to pick up some rolls of carpet padding. I got all excited when I found out that’s what he did. I told him we were barrel racers. I should have told him I have a broken back from my horse bucking me off. That would have impressed him.

I just checked and he’s the one that won the bull riding Saturday night at Cowtown. Won five hundred-and-something dollars for eight seconds worth of work. Of course it takes more than that to get there. A lot more. He probably has a few broken bones himself.

Turns out, here in Woodstown, New Jersey (this is Jersey I’m talking about), I’m only ten minutes away from the longest continuous running rodeo in America. We even beat out Texas. Oklahoma had rodeos but everything was far. When parcels like my 110 acres out there were considered tiny, you can imagine that just driving over to your neighbor’s house two thousand acres away, is a trip, never mind going down 40 to one of the rodeos. A couple of times we went to Oklahoma City and Tulsa, but they were far. I always wanted to go to the prison rodeo in McAlester, but we moved before we got around to that. Still, it wasn’t as close as Cowtown is to me now. By all rights you can ride your pony over there if you wanted to. And I don’t think any of them ran continuously. Here, every Saturday night from Memorial Day to Labor Day, Cowtown Rodeo is hopping.

We got lucky when we got this place. Of course every place we house hunted there were horses because that’s what we were looking for—acreage. And when people have acreage, they stick horses on it. But I had no idea this was such a horse community. We not only have the rodeo, but we have a half dozen tack stores, feed stores, trainers, Traffic Supply, the ag center, the fairgrounds where the kids attend their 4-H meetings on horseback, and country-and-western bars where the adults blow off steam. Everyone has horses. Horses even pass by my house on their way to trail rides or the old golf course which is owned by the parks department and which you can ride on.

Truth be told, if I would have known all this was down here, I never would have left New Jersey in the first place. But I had no idea. I assumed that all the land was as expensive as it was in Jackson and when the idea came up to sell our place, take the equity and buy land out in the country, I didn’t even think about South Jersey. It didn’t even enter my head.

Kurt asked me how much padding the bull rider needed. I said, “Uh, I don’t know. But I can tell you that he won the bull riding Saturday night (not that he was bragging—I looked it up) and his name is Mike Adams.”

“Well, what’s he using it for?” he asked.

“Uh, I don’t know.”

“Did you answer the phone?”

“Well, duh. There’s no one else here, is there?”

“We’re in the carpet business and you don’t know how much padding this guy needs but you know he won the bull riding Saturday night?”

Obviously I’m a little more interested in rodeos than nylon berbers and polyester saxonies. One time we sold some carpet to the guy who wrote “Jaws.” Talking about the beach was a lot more fun too, though not as fun as when Max Weinberg’s wife came over to look at a horse. Granted, it wasn’t Bruce. But I did speak to Max himself when he called me on the phone to persuade me to let his wife buy the horse. This was a special horse. You know, the one you shouldn’t have sold. I was deciding between letting her buy him and another lady who was married to a surgeon and spent all her husband’s money rescuing animals. Even squirrels. She was in the market for another horse because all the others she bought to putt-putt around on her manicured property were the kind that break backs, if you get my drift. But she kept them. Once she got a horse, he had a home with her for life, even if he was a bucker or reared or kicked. So now she was on the search again for that perfect horse who this time was well trained and well behaved and would spend the rest of his days moseying down to the end of the driveway to get the mail and being fed apples. So I had to pick her. But it sure was exciting talking to Max.

The bull rider arrived with a fellow bull rider named Billy Love.

Turns out they only needed some padding to pad the cans he and the other bull riders practice on during the week while they’re waiting for the rodeo. He said the cans are hard. We gave him a roll of padding for free. Then I got them to sign Kelly’s hat. Kelly collects rodeo guys’ signatures. I know they thought it was for me. But it’s not. What do I look like some star-struck teenager? I mean, these boys could be my children. I don’t even think they were born by the time I was running my first set of barrels. I just wanted to support the community.

The pictures though. I’ve got to admit. They are mine. I just wish I would have gotten one of Mrs. Weinberg.

Oz

The rainbow

We didn’t close. You heard that right. Slow Bob got the new job. He started it the other day. But then his bank wanted a letter from the old job saying that they would rehire him if necessary. I know! It’s crazy! It’s unheard of! First they make him quit his job and get a new one and then they demand the old one promise to hire him back if the new one doesn’t like the way his breath smells. Slow Bob has requested a letter to this effect, but so far, the old job hasn’t coughed it up.

I’ve come to the conclusion that this is not Virginia, but I am dead and this is some alternate Virginia, the Virginia Hell, and I will spend eternity selling this house over and over again but no one will be able to get a mortgage for it. I’ll get this close and then boom! The deal will fall through!

I am being punished for leaving New Jersey in the first place. I feel guilty for leaving my daughter Jamie when she was in college and we went to Oklahoma to begin with. I feel guilty when my mother was sick and she cried for me to come back, I said I couldn’t. I should have at least lied! Everyone always knocks New Jersey, including the ones who live there. I thought it was going to be so great here. I’ve learned there are good things and bad things about every place. But there is no place like home.
Flying monkeys

I need my ruby slippers! Or a bank that really wants to make a loan!

No One Knows Me

Ginger is gone. She went back to Texas. Ginger is one of my blog buddies. I follow her because she was a transplant like me and because I admired how she was trying to make a living farming. She and her family were kind of like hippies (I don’t know if she’d like that characterization but that’s how I thought of her because of the goat cheese, the books, and PBS) and they really lived off the farm. They milked their own cow, grew vegetables, heated with wood, and Ginger sold cake and bread down at the local farm market made with flour she ground herself. She ground it herself. Very hippie-like.

She didn’t know how to do all of these things at first. I imagine she knew how to bake bread, being a hippie and all. But she had to Google how to slaughter a chicken and castrate a bull. I could never slaughter a chicken myself, even if someone actually showed me and I didn’t have to resort to Google, but I appreciated that she did. Not that she killed an animal. It was her lack of hypocrisy. How she was humane and grateful, thanking the animal and taking good care of it. If you have to kill an animal, at least be humane and grateful. But I couldn’t do it even if my heart was in the right place. I think I could castrate a bull though. I’ve seen horses getting done. Afterwards you take the testicles and throw them up on the barn roof for good luck. I don’t know if Ginger threw the testicles up on the roof.

Everything was going well, as well as can be expected on a farm with goats getting out and weeds coming in and whatnot, and then Ginger’s husband Philip died. He was from New Jersey, like me. He and Ginger met in school and she also lived in Jersey for a time, until they moved here. That’s how we started talking, yakking on e-mails in between the blogging. She lived in Jersey, I lived in Jersey. She lived in Texas. I lived in Oklahoma. That was close! When you’re out in the middle of nowhere and you don’t know anybody, you’ll latch on to any little shred of something you have in common even if the link is as precarious as being from neighboring states.

But after a while, Ginger didn’t reply to e-mails. I don’t think it was me. She was busy with her church friends. (She was a hippie but she was also from Texas.) Besides castrating animals and butchering chickens, church is the other thing people do out in the country. They get religious. I’ve even seen it with my own friends who left New Jersey and moved to the country and all of a sudden they’re thanking Jesus on their Facebook and saying prayers for everyone who has anything whatsoever wrong like their car won’t start or a horse got kicked. I myself turned to it as well, even though I felt like a fraud. Then I quit when the pastor called gay people evil. But that’s a whole other story—how I found religion and lost it just as quick.

I understand why people are drawn to it. When you’re in the country and there is no neighborhood bar or crowd of mothers holding the hands of backpacked kids waiting for the school bus on every corner, when you are in a place that’s so remote (if you can count having Internet and Dish TV and everything a person could want at her fingertips down at the Minute Market as being remote), that you calculate the cost of a tank of gas and the time getting there in deciding whether it’s worth joining the book club or even going shopping, and the only sounds you hear are the birds and your own voice if you test it now and then by clearing your throat or talking to the dog, the only people you see are the mailman and Eldon on his tractor or Pearl when she brings you something—a pie, cucumbers, a flyer for vacation bible school—you need something. Church, out in the country, is the community. All activities come packaged with the church. The spaghetti dinner? It’s down at the church. The kids are going to the water park. It’s sponsored by the church. The bluegrass festival? It’s in the pastor’s field. You need to find a good plumber? Ask Ray about it in church on Sunday.
And so when Philip died, Ginger’s church friends rallied around her. I wanted to go and visit her when I heard. But I wondered if the death of one’s husband was a good time for blog buddies to meet in real life. Plus I knew she didn’t need me. Her freezer was jam-packed with enough meals the church ladies made to last for God knows how long and all the church husbands were stocking her up with wood and fixing her fences. They even helped outfit her kitchen with an industrial oven so that she could bake bread efficiently and make a living without Philip.

When my mother died, a few months later, Pearl brought me over a pie and took me to a flea market to get me out. She even helped me rescue some rusty old motel chairs discarded behind an old barn that I had my eyes on for years, which I later sanded and painted, saving them from the Dumpsters and making them look cute on my porch.
I’m grateful to her for that. But that was it. I don’t go to church so I had no other support system. Almost immediately I wanted to go home. My mother wasn’t there anymore but I was suddenly very homesick for where she’d been, for the people who knew her and would be shocked when they ran into me at the supermarket and I told them she died (she died—it still doesn’t sound real), and for all the things I took for granted that were linked to her, to my family, to me—the ocean, ticking spinning wheels at the boardwalk, taverns with diamond-shaped windows in the doors, stoops, docks, shamrocks, doo-wop, Bruce Springsteen, lobstermen, Italian bakeries, Soprano accents, Elk’s conventions, the tunnel, the garden, handball, skeeball, stickball, Hoboken, the Statue of Liberty, even the New Jersey Turnpike.

I remember when the turnpike was being built. My sister, annoying as always, called it the “turnapipe.” The pavement was brand new, bright and white and surrounded by crow-weeds and cattails like a road in a state park going to the beach. And it did in fact go to the beach; it went down-the-shore, to Keansburg, to the little town where we rented a bungalow in the summer. When we passed the real estate office that was shaped like a ship in Laurence Harbor, we knew we were almost there. And there was my mother, only 24-years-old, driving her 1968 Dodge Charger with the black stripe on the back end, Crystal Blue Persuasion playing on the radio, and three kids in the back seat kicking each other, vying for a window.

There is no one around here for me to tell this to. People smile and nod when I tell them how she loved her cars—a red Mustang, a gold Cadillac, the Charger, a two-toned Grand Prix that looked like it belonged to a pimp, to name a few—and how she was a flaming redhead until she got sick—this was no old lady who got leukemia and died! But no one around here knows her. No one really knows me.

I imagined that Ginger was having it even worse. She lost her husband, her partner on the farm. How would she manage without him? At least I didn’t have to worry about that. How would she castrate the bulls? Did she even know how to use a chainsaw? (For firewood, not the bulls.) Could she drive the tractor? What if the truck doesn’t start? She had it doubly bad. And with kids too.

But she seemed to be doing it. She got the oven. She planted seeds. They even wrote an article about her in the newspaper. They called her “the mighty widow.” Everyone was impressed by Ginger. Because, let’s face it, it would be hard to make a living on a farm with a husband, never mind without one. Yes, she was heartbroken about Philip and blogged about sitting on the deck at night all by herself, looking at the stars, listening to the whippoorwills and thinking about him. But she was getting on.

I was surprised. I thought she was going to go back to Texas as soon as the funeral was over. And jealous. I was not getting on. I suddenly hated it here. I didn’t even ride my horses anymore because all I wanted to do was go home. We put the house up for sale and I dedicated myself to selling it. Dedicated is too mild a word. I’m obsessed. Fixated. All I do is work at keeping up with it, cleaning it, improving it, marketing it.

I wished I could be like Ginger, and still like it here, still get all teary-eyed over the mountain view that is so beautiful it looks fake; I wish I was still tickled when Eldon, in his straw hat and overalls, waves to me when he drives past the house on his tractor, or I see the filly across the road sticking her head through the fence trying to get some clover that is somehow more delectable than the knee-deep grass she’s standing in. Like she’s doing right now, as I type this. But I don’t care about any of it anymore. Since my mother died.

If I went to church, I’d probably feel better because I wouldn’t feel so alone here. I’d have a community. But I’m not going to church for that reason. And so I suffer in silence, posting ad after ad for this house, thinking up creative ways to get it sold, analyzing, scrutinizing, second-guessing myself about why it’s not and what’s going to happen—am I stuck down here?—am I going to get cancer like my mother and die down here all alone?—and not living in the now, not being present and enjoying my life, because all I’m doing is dreaming of home and figuring out ways to get there.

Then, to make matters worse, Ginger up and left. First she started blogging about it. She decided to do it. She was leaving. Going home to Texas. In a way, I felt relieved. I was not crazy wanting to leave such a beautiful place after all. Even though she had all those church friends, that wonderful community who supplied her with wood and fixed her leaks, in the end, she still wanted to go home too. I warned her it was going to take time to sell her farm. I offered to send some of my prospects her way. She didn’t take me up on it. Such confidence! (She had no idea how bad the real estate market is.) Then I read about how she was planning to leave in the summer so she could get the kids settled in before school starts in September. I thought, good luck with that. I figured for sure I would be out of here before she was, but then the next thing I knew, even without selling the farm, she left. Poof. Gone.

And now I’m even more jealous. How come she can leave and I can’t? Well, technically the reason is because I have to sell my house and she didn’t. I don’t know why she didn’t have to sell her house. Maybe she got life insurance money when Philip died. Maybe she just doesn’t care and she simply abandoned it. I don’t know. Doesn’t matter.

What matters is I have to stop white-knuckling it because I can’t force it to happen. I have to find peace and acceptance, like it seemed Ginger had, when she was here, and when she left, so I can live in the now. Because the now is all I have. Stop the obsessive cleaning and fixing. Stop cutting the grass with a toenail scissors like they tell you to do on Designed to Sell. Start riding my horses again. Go back to the clubs. Take a good look at that mountain behind the hay field.

And maybe get a hold of some testicles to throw up on the roof.

The Simple Life

Five years ago, we left New Jersey to live the simple life. We figured we’d kick back a little, ride the horses, grow some tomatoes, maybe even spin some wool. Nah, not spin wool. Who am I kidding? I can’t even hem a pair of pants. But I figured I could manage a couple of tomatoes. This is what an average morning is like for me now:

I get up at five and get the fire going again. Even though we put in new heat, and the plastic on the windows, which are also new and shouldn’t even need plastic, and even with the woodstove going—which before we moved to the country, I thought would be romantic—I am still freezing my ass off here.

I get the coffee going. I read a few e-mails. Then I get the kid up and out to school. This involves cries about homework that was forgotten and suddenly remembered, papers that need to be signed that I wasn’t told about the night before even though I asked, the need for new pencil lead or hand sanitizer or a one-inch binder with a picture of Hannah Montana on it or else she’s going to get into big trouble, plus disagreements about whether the child is warm enough or looks nice enough (“You look like a rag-picker!”) and won’t she please let me make her some grits or a nice soft boiled egg?—Toaster Strudels are okay once in a while but not every morning. Might as well eat a candy bar. Kelly says that’s a good idea. Kendal’s mother let’s her eat candy in the morning. Then I let her go out the door with her coat hanging open and no hat because I can’t stand to annoy her one more time. I tell myself, she knows if she’s cold.

Next I get Kurt up. I make numerous trips up the stairs. The first trip consists of loving kisses and cheerful statements such as, “It’s a beautiful day in Virginia!” and “Com’on you handsome devil!” On trip number four, there is rough shaking, lies about what time it really is and warnings that if he’s late, his boss might fire him. This causes hysterical laughter. It doesn’t necessarily get him up.

But I can’t keep farting around. I have to go outside to feed the horses before they start stampeding. I peek out the window and see them leaning against the fence, trying to pop the boards off. They are staring at the house hard. They think if they concentrate hard enough, they can will me to come out. Actually, it works. I tell Kurt he better get up because I’m not coming back—I’ve got to go feed. He kicks the blankets roughly like there’s a big spider after him and furiously pulls them over his head and barks “Go away!” Now his feet are sticking out of the covers but I don’t say nothing.

I go downstairs and feed the dog. After he’s done, he takes a drink and forgets to close his mouth when he exits the bowl area. Half the water dribbles onto the floor. I step in it. I grab a new pair of socks which I keep on the shelf by the phone just for this reason and put them on. I put his blaze orange collar on so he doesn’t get shot in the woods. I put on my boots, a ski mask like the kind burglars wear, my Giants jacket if it’s normal cold, or the heavy duty mother that’s made for Michigan or Maine, if we’re getting an Arctic blast. Meaning really really cold. I top it off with Thermolite gloves with micro insulation (don’t ask me, that’s what it says on the tag and I assume that’s how it translates from the Chinese writing on the other side). They are so thick I can’t wiggle my fingers. I have to keep taking them off to do things like pick up the newspaper or open up the trash can. Which defeats the whole purpose. My fingers are numb before I even get to the barn.

The horses are thrilled to see me. They adore me, those horses. Why wouldn’t they? A large part of our relationship consists of me feeding them. And it’s not easy. They all have to be separated or else the herd leader, who lives on air, will gobble up his grain and then go eat the next-in-line’s, who in turn will go eat the grain belonging to the one below him and so on. (Not unlike the Wall Street guys.) This will leave the old guy, who needs the most and takes the longest to eat it, with nothing. (Kind of like our senior citizens.) So I catch them all and separate them. (Similar to government regulation.) It’s tricky. When they see me, they are like a busload of sugared-up school kids let out for the summer. Run! Yay!

While the horses are eating, I fill the water barrels, drain the hose, feed the barn cat, empty a fifty-pound bag of grain and empty the ash can which weighs about thirty pounds. I carry a bucket of water with me to pour on the ashes in case they’re still hot and that weighs about twenty pounds. I’m like a Dutch girl carrying two buckets to the dam. Next, I get kindling, more batteries for the electric fence which is dead again since they don’t make anything in America anymore, and I bring some moldy hay over to Pearl and Eldon who will give it to their cows. Then I pick up manure.

This is when I do my best thinking. This is when I came up with the idea for this story. This is when I mull things over and decide what exactly my sister-in-law meant by that remark anyway and wasn’t that Amish guy who was selling ham steaks in the town market gorgeous? I didn’t know they could be that good looking. I mean, he was seeexxxxyyyy. I wonder if he is considered hot in the Amish world? Maybe they don’t think he’s all-that in those phoneless dark houses? Maybe they think he’s really ugly and that’s why they make him go and sell the ham steaks to the heathens in town who talk on the phone every waking minute? Every culture is different about what it finds attractive. Oprah did a show about a country that thinks fat ladies with big butts are the ideal. The fatter the better. Talk about paradise. We all ought to move there and take the pressure off. I mean, imagine being encouraged to gorge on macaroni-and-cheese and chocolate cake and bragging about your cellulite?

While thinking such important things, I make two trips down to the manure pile to dump the wheelbarrow. Four if the horses have been in the stalls. On the way back up the hill, I say something slightly derogatory about Kurt—okay, I cursed him—because the wheel on the wheelbarrow is still broken and he hasn’t fixed it. I can hardly push it. I stop to rest. The guilt I was indoctrinated with in Catholic school kicks in. The poor guy’s been working day and night for God’s sake! He’ll get to it when he can! I make a mental note not to vie for the clicker tonight. If he wants to watch Two and a Half Men or CSI even though it’s a repeat and The Bachelor’s on, that’s fine. I look at the beautiful mountain behind my farm and remind myself that this is my dream. I cry, “Look at that mountain, will you?! Just look at that, you ungrateful thing!” The dog runs over. I bend down and pet him. “No, I’m not calling you.” Then, recharged, I start pushing again.

I get wood. I hose out the broken wheelbarrow and wash the mud off the wheel so it’ll turn easier and squirt off my boots. Clumps of clay fall to the lawn. No matter how careful I am, my ankles get wet and my sweatpants are spattered red like I’d been slaughtering pigs. Which I would never do. Farm or no farm, I’m one of those hypocrites who eats meat but who thinks the people who butcher them are mean and cruel. Someday I am going to get a pig as a pet and call her something funny like Paris.

I drain that hose. I fill the wheelbarrow with logs and start pushing. Even with the broken wheel, it’s still easier than carrying it by hand. See, here’s the thing. All the wood-getting I saw on the Waltons or read about in books showed the people carrying an armload of kindling into the house, whistling, leading me to believe that that was all it took. A simple armload. No wonder I thought it was romantic. Anybody can get one armload of wood. One armload of wood would be worth doing for the atmosphere alone. But in real life, one armload is nothing. One armload would barely warm my cute little button nose. One armload of wood is like spitting on the windshield of the truck, wiping it with your sleeve and saying you’ve been to the car wash. It’s nothing.

At any rate, I push the wheelbarrow to the deck and make eight trips up the steps to the sliding glass doors on the side of the house where the stove is. Up and down….up and down….up and down….up and down….up and down….up and down….up and down….up and down—just to give you an idea of what eight times feels like. Only carrying about forty pounds of wood per shot. (Funny how I know how much everything weighs except for myself—I don’t own a scale and I’m not getting one and if I’m unaware that I put on a few extra pounds from all that Peanut Butter Panic Ice Cream, well then, so be it; after all this work on the farm, I think I deserve it.) I stop and look at the mountain again.

Then I check the heater in the well house and I spend ten minutes (while squatting because you can’t stand up in there since the roof is only yay high) turning it higher, because I’m paranoid the holding tank is going to freeze, then turning it lower, because I’m worried about my electric bill, then turning it up again, then down again. No spot on the dial gives me peace. Finally, I curse Kurt again because he hasn’t insulated the well house or fixed the door and if it was insulated and if I didn’t have to hold that door closed with a rock, I wouldn’t have to worry about this and I can’t do it, I can’t do it all, I can’t do everything here, I’m a girl, I’m just a girl, I shouldn’t have to do the guy stuff too!

Then, the nuns from Catholic school again. Sister Grace Gabriel is poking me in the head and swinging that crucifix like she is going to smack me with it. It’s brutal. I better toe the line and be nice. I make a mental note to check if I have the ingredients to make Kurt’s favorite dessert tonight. Maybe even give him a massage while he’s watching Two and a Half Men.

Next, I drag the garbage cans over to the truck, heave them up onto the bed and the dog and I go down to the dump. I pull over and pick up any litter that’s on the road. I stop on average from my house down to the main road about six times. Slam on the brakes when I see a Chick-fil-A wrapper, throw it in park, jump out, ding, ding, ding, the door’s opened with the key still in it so it’s beeping, the dog is rushing from window to window, whatever side I am on, getting drool all over the glass, grab the trash, shove it in the trash can deep so it doesn’t blow out, and jump back in. Effie drives by while I am bending down for an Old Milwaukee can. She taps her horn and an empty Wal-Mart bag flies out of the back of her truck. I get that too.

Back home, I clean the house (I suppose if I wasn’t a clean freak I could forgo this part, but I am, very anal and Felix Unger-like, so that’s not going to happen—I tried it once and went into a deep depression and I still have nightmares over those unmade beds and the coffee cup in the sink), do the laundry, stoke the fire, pay bills and make the phone calls. Kurt needs his cholesterol medication renewed. There was a mistake on the insurance bill. I have to call Kelly’s school where hopefully they won’t mention that she looks like a rag-picker and is not wearing a hat, and I need to make an appointment with the accountant and the horse vet.

On some days, I do what I call “an extra”—paint something, clean bookshelves or wash the blinds and the curtains which are full of soot from the woodstove. Sometimes I do errands. Sometimes they’re kind of fun like yesterday I got my hair cut at Wanda’s House of Beauty where the entire procedure cost me less than what my sister tipped the girl for doing my hair up in Jersey. I didn’t tell Wanda that—I don’t want her getting any ideas. Then I picked up ten bales of hay, two gallons of milk—whole for the coffee and one-percent for drinking—and one jar of peach butter that the lady in the bank sells for the rescue squad.

When the weather is nice, I somehow squeeze in riding a horse.

This is an average morning in the country. I didn’t spin any wool, but it was a lot. Next time I’ll tell you what happens after lunch.

Hurting Jersey's Feelings

My friend from up north thinks I’m picking on my home state. She said, “We’re not all mean, you know.” Duh. I’m from there. Well, I’ve been known to get mean when somebody eats the last of the Chunky Monkey or takes my favorite spot on the couch. She’s from there. She’s definitely not mean.

Let’s call her Jennifer. Jennifer complained that I depict New Jersey in a bad light. She’s never had a driver shake a fist at her or give her the finger. I don’t know what New Jersey she lives in. All the northerners who have read my stories about getting the finger because I was too far in the road with my horse or hesitated when it was my turn to go at a light, commiserated and shared their own stories about the same thing happening to them—many times. We shook our heads. And then we laughed.

Everyone has a story to tell about rude behavior on the road up there. There is even a term for it when it gets really bad—road rage. That’s how common it is. In fact, I just read an article in the newspaper about how Belmar, N.J. is trying to make a new law banning all obscene gestures—aka finger flipping—it’s gotten so out of hand. Sounds like a lot of it is going on if you have to make an actual law about it. Go here if you want to read the article:

http://information.travel.aol.com/article/news-feeds/_a/new-jersey-beach-town-scraps-rules-on/20080711100709990001?ncid=AOLCOMMtravdynlsec0145&icid=200100397x1205608557x1200261681

I, myself, have probably been given the finger dozens of times in my forty-three years of life in Jersey and I’m a good and polite driver—I’ve never even had a traffic ticket. Down here, all I’ve gotten from other drivers is a nod or a wave. I wonder when was the last time a stranger coming from the other direction on Route 537 waved hello to Jennifer as they passed each other?

But I don’t think it’s simply a matter of a difference of opinion about the existence of mean people in the north and disappointment over my lack of loyalty to my home state. No, there is more to it than that because after Jenny insinuated that my experience with finger-flipping couldn’t have happened in the friendly state of New Jersey, she added that she often goes strawberry-picking or peach-picking and for my information, she has a porch to sit on too. With a view. Ut oh. That’s when I knew there was more going on here than me outing the mean people and possibly hurting New Jersey tourism.

This was not the first time she shot me down for bragging about my new life in the country. One time I tried to tell her about how I got peaches right from the orchard and was making homemade cobbler. This was all new to me, these country things—making cobbler, picking strawberries, growing tomatoes, buying jars of sorghum molasses at bluegrass jamborees. Simple things. But things I’ve dreamed about my whole life. And I wanted to share it all! Especially with my friend. But every time I tried to tell her, she would say something like, “We have strawberries here too.” Like I don’t know there are strawberries in New Jersey. Like my strawberries canceled her strawberries out. She stopped me in my tracks. I wasn’t allowed to gush about how I love it here without getting into a competition.

Yes, I know there are farm products in New Jersey. It’s not called the Garden State for nothing. But since she brought it up, agriculture is on its way out up there. Only twenty percent of the land in New Jersey is still farmland. Chemicals are the number one industry in Jersey. Other important manufactured items are oil refineries, pharmaceuticals, instruments, machinery and electrical goods. Agriculture is the number one industry in Virginia. It is followed by tourism. Maybe she has never been here before. Anyone who has visited both states can see with their very own eyes that Virginia is mostly farmland and New Jersey is cities and suburban sprawl with a few farms left people are selling off in bits and pieces because they can’t afford to pay the property taxes anymore. Or they’re cashing in big time, taking all the equity and…coming down here.

But I am not writing about New Jersey. Other than the occasional anecdote to illustrate a point—whether it’s the bad behavior that makes me appreciate being here, or simply to show why being here is like being on another planet, both of which give me colorful material to write about—I am writing a love letter about Virginia. I am talking and writing about strawberry-picking down here because this is what is going on right now. City girl gone country. This is what my stories are about.

And yet, I admit, Virginia is not perfect. There’s good and bad in every place and in my defense, I think I’ve written about some bad things in Virginia even though that’s not what the subject is. If anyone was eavesdropping on Kurt's and my conversation with the tack guy at the barrel race the other day, they might have thought we hate Virginia. We complained there are no good bakeries down here and I cried, “I’d kill for a real cannoli.” Then we snickered about how everything’s on a biscuit. We followed that with complaints about how they nickel-and-dime you to death down here and agreed that nothing is cheaper except for real estate and car insurance but the pay is a fraction of what you get up north, so, in reality, you are behind the game. We continued with jokes about hunting season, rants about Wal-Mart, and bewilderment about so much religion going on. Then we said how much we love it here.

I’m not sure why it bothers Jen so much that I make fun of my home state. Like she said herself, she has a porch to sit on too. Maybe she’ll feel better when she reads the story I am writing about how I think all the women down here let themselves go. (Not really all of them, lest I offend someone else, let me clarify—I am only exaggerating for effect.) Of course, since I am infatuated, in new love where the lover can do no wrong, I find that a plus—there’s freedom in not caring if one has a muffin top or make-up on.

I guess in a way I’m like Larry the Cable Guy who makes fun of himself and the south. I make fun of where I come from. Gosh, if you can’t laugh at yourself, who can you laugh it? I want to tell Jenny, lighten up. Everyone else laughed or nodded knowingly. Plus, I honestly don’t think it makes a bit of difference what I say about Jersey. People are leaving in droves without my help. In fact, there’s a bumper sticker up there that says, “Will the Last One Who Leaves NJ Please Turn Out the Lights?” Ha! I guess I’m not the only one who hates the finger-flipping. And the ones who somehow have never gotten an obscene hand gesture, like Jen, or who don’t care because other good things are more important, are staying up there and enjoying all the culture, the shopping, the jobs, the open-mindedness and yes, the cannolis.

Perhaps in another post I will talk about what I learned in sociology about why people are meaner in cities so that no one thinks I believe New Jerseyans are inherently bad. And to be fair, I will also write about some wonderful things in New Jersey. Things that I miss. Like the smell of creosote on the docks and salt in the air, Bruce Springsteen, Italian people, the New York skyline. But for now, it’s time to go and get a piece of peach cobbler, still warm from the oven.