Richard Ford - The Sportswriter

Republicans run the local show, which is not as bad as it might seem. Either they’re tall, white-haired, razor-jawed old galoots from Yale with moist blue eyes and aromatic OSS backgrounds; or else retired chamber of commerce boosters, little guys raised in town, with their own circle of local friends, and a conservator’s clear view about property values and private enterprise know-how. A handful of narrow-eyed Italians run the police — descendants of the immigrants who were brought over in the twenties to build the seminary library, and who settled The Presidents, where X lives. Between them, the Republicans and Italians, the rule that location is everything gets taken seriously, and things run as quietly as anyone could want — which makes you wonder why that combination doesn’t run the country better. (I am lucky to be here with my pre-1975 dollars.)

On the down side, taxes are sky high. The sewage system could use a bond issue, particularly in X’s neighborhood. But there are hardly any crimes against persons. There are doctors aplenty and a fair hospital. And because of the southerly winds, the climate’s as balmy as Baltimore’s.

Editors, publishers, Time and Newsweek writers, CIA agents, entertainment lawyers, business analysts, plus the presidents of a number of great corporations that mold opinion, all live along these curving roads or out in the country in big secluded houses, and take the train to Gotham or Philadelphia. Even the servant classes, who are mostly Negroes, seem fulfilled in their summery, keyboard-awning side streets down Wallace Hill behind the hospital, where they own their own homes.

All in all it is not an interesting town to live in. But that’s the way we like it.

Because of that, the movie theater is never noisy after the previews and the thanks-for-not-smoking notices. The weekly paper has mostly realty ads, and small interest in big news. The seminary and boarding school students are rarely in evidence and seem satisfied to stay put behind their iron gates. Both liquor stores, the Gulf station and the book stores are happy to extend credit. The Coffee Spot, where I sometimes ride up early on Ralph’s old Schwinn, opens at five A.M. with free coffee. The three banks don’t bounce your checks (an officer calls). Black boys and white boys — Ralph was one — play on the same sports teams, study together nights for the SATs and attend the small brick school. And if you lose your wallet, as I have, on some elm-shaded street of historical reproductions — my Tudor is kitty-cornered from a big Second Empire owned by a former Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court — you can count on getting a call by dinner just before someone’s teenage son brings it over with all the credit cards untouched and no mention of a reward.

You could complain that such a town doesn’t fit with the way the world works now. That the real world’s a worse and devious and complicated place to lead a life in, and I should get out in it with the Rhonda Matuzaks of life.

Though in the two years since my divorce I’ve sometimes walked out in these winding, bowery streets after dark on some ruminative errand or other and looked in at these same houses, windows lit with bronzy cheer, dark cars hove to the curbs, the sound of laughing and glasses tinking and spirited chatter floating out, and thought to myself: what good rooms these are. What complete life is here, audible — the Justice’s is the one I’m thinking of. And though I myself wasn’t part of it and wouldn’t much like it if I were, I was stirred to think all of us were living steadfast and accountable lives.

Who can say? Perhaps the Justice himself might have his own dark hours on the streets. Maybe some poor man’s life has hung in the balance down in sad Yardville, and the lights in my house — I usually leave them blazing — have given the Justice solace, moved him to think that we all deserve another chance. I may only be inside working over some batting-average charts, or reading Ring or poring through a catalog in the breakfast nook, hopeful of nothing more than a good dream. But it is for just such uses that suburban streets are ideal, and the only way neighbors here can be neighborly.

Certainly it’s true that since there is so much in the world now, it’s harder to judge what is and isn’t essential, all the way down to where you should live. That’s another reason I quit real writing and got a real job in the reliable business of sports. I didn’t know with certainty what to say about the large world, and didn’t care to risk speculating. And I still don’t. That we all look at it from someplace, and in some hopeful-useful way, is about all I found I could say — my best, most honest effort. And that isn’t enough for literature, though it didn’t bother me much. Nowadays, I’m willing to say yes to as much as I can: yes to my town, my neighborhood, my neighbor, yes to his car, her lawn and hedge and rain gutters. Let things be the best they can be. Give us all a good night’s sleep until it’s over.

Hoving Road this morning is as sun-dappled and vernal as any privet lane in England. Across town the bells of St. Leo the Great chime a brisk call to worship, which explains why no Italian gardeners are working on any neighbors’ lawns, clearing out under the forsythias and cutting back the fire thorns. Some of the houses have sunny Easter-lily decorations on their doors, whereas some still abide by the old Episcopal practice of Christmas wreaths up till Easter morning. There is a nice ecumenical feel of holiday to every street.

The Square this morning is filled up with Easter buyers, and to avoid tie-ups I take the “back door” down Wallace Hill through the little one-ways behind the hospital Emergency entrance and the train station. And soon I am out onto the Great Woods Road, which leads to U.S. 1 and across the main train line into the suave and caressing literalness of the New Jersey coastal shelf. It is the very route I took yesterday afternoon when I drove to Brielle. And whereas then my spirits were tentative — I still had this morning’s duties ahead — today they are rising and soaring.

Six miles out, Route 33 is astream with cars, though a remnant fog from early morning has clung to the roadway as it sways and swerves toward Asbury Park. A light rain draws in a soughing curtain of apple greens from the south and across the accompanying landscape, softening the edges of empty out-of-season vegetable stands, farmettes, putt-putts and cheerless Ditch Witch dealers. Though I am not displeased by New Jersey. Far from it. Vice implies virtue to me, even in landscape, and virtue value. An American would be crazy to reject such a place, since it is the most diverting and readable of landscapes, and the language is always American.

‘An Attractive Retirement Waits Just Ahead’

Better to come to earth ih New Jersey than not to come at all. Or worse, to come to your senses in some spectral place like Colorado or California, or to remain up in the dubious airs searching for some right place that never existed and never will. Stop searching. Face the earth where you can. Literally speaking, it’s all you have to go on. Indeed, in its homeliest precincts and turn-outs, the state feels as unpretentious as Cape Cod once might’ve, and its bustling suburban-with-good-neighbor-industry mix of life makes it the quintessence of the town-and-country spirit. Illusion will never be your adversary here.

An attractive retirement is Pheasant Run & Meadow. I make the turn up the winding asphalt access that passes beneath a great water tower of sleek space-age blue, then divides toward one end or the other of a wide, unused cornfield. Far ahead — amile, easy — billowing green basswoods stand poised against a platinum sky and behind them the long, girdered “Y” stanchions of a high-voltage line, orange balls strung to its wires to warn away low-flying planes.