Monday, February 13, 2012

New Jersey









Some have been concerned about my delay in the Garden State of New Jersey. I have also caught some flack over the mystery of this stay. Come on, peeps and anipals! You sent me on a quest to find the secret behind the Mayan calendar, but how could I resist the secret of why New Jersey is called The Garden State? My search for the answers behind the Mayan’s The End of Times dilemma can wait. Maybe the world will end before I get to the jungles of Mexico? Meanwhile, the Eastern Shore puzzlement.

So, after I stowed away on the New York Giant float to celebrate their Super Bowl victory (Yes, Blumberg is an opportunistic oaf.), I shuttled with the team back to New Jersey where they wrapped up a thrilling season. I gave my congratulations to Eli and Victor Cruz and headed off to find the gardens of New Jersey. The boys told me I would find them back in New York City at Madison Square Gardens, but I already knew that wasn’t true.

The northwest corner of New Jersey use to have more cows than people, but that was when Goddess’ mom grew up there before WWII. There are the coolest mineral deposits in this neck of the woods. Odgensburg. The old zinc mine attracts rock hounds from around the world all in the hunt for rare fluorescent minerals. Pretty, but no gardens.

For a traveling cat the Turnpike and the Parkway is a precarious adventure. Skylines are littered with refineries and chemical plants and other intimidating gray materials (thinking asphalt highways, huge bridges and parking lots). Greenhouse effect has nothing to do with starting gardens. But interestingly enough the state is a low carbon emissions producer. One reason is nuclear power. Not green but glowing? Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station came online in 1969 making it the oldest operating nuclear plant in the country. Take that to your next trivia party. Still nothing looks like a garden.

It is winter but even in my wildest kitty imagination I can’t see green in this state.

The mystery of the name? I know for a fact New Jersey’s corn in mid-July is the best you can get. I love corn. So get over it. And Goddess won’t eat blueberries until the season hits New Jersey. She always said that blueberries raised south of New Jersey weren’t worth eating. But I’m not seeing the gardens.

So I trudged, accidentally into Camden. A tough hombre town. The last place on earth to find a garden. This is where I stumbled on the fact that a dude named Abraham Browning, of Camden back around the Centennial compared New Jersey to an immense barrel, filled with good things to eat and open at both ends, with Pennsylvanians grabbing from one end and the New Yorkers from the other. Well good things to eat sounded enticing, but when I hear anything compared to being an immerse barrel I think Governor Chris Christie. Not gardens. I think this is like naming Greenland, Greenland. A trick.

I prefer New Jersey’s other nickname. The Clam State. So I’m off to the shore. Following the old taste buds never did me wrong.

The classic view of Camden, New Jersey in 2010. Image Copyright and courtesy of The New York Times http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2004/12/28/nyregion/camden.slide.1.jpg

1 comment:

Rosie & Cheeto said...

Oh my cat! Furget the stoopid gardens....NOMMY CLAMS! Yoove hit the jackpot, Diablo!!!