We’re all from somewhere. Being from someplace is being of that place. Where I’m from is as much a part of me as the color of my eyes and the bouncy way I walk that my friends can identify me by from 100 yards away. I am from the much maligned, often lampooned, grossly misunderstood home of Bruce Springsteen, Frank Sinatra and the absolute best pizza on the planet, one of the original thirteen colonies, The Garden State, New Jersey.

At the young age of 22, I decided to “go west young man” and seek fame and fortune in The Golden State. At first I was simply dazzled by California. All of those Beach Boys and Eagles songs that I had listened to incessantly all my life seemed to come alive daily right before my eyes. That and all of the girls looked like Joni Mitchell. California was everything that New Jersey wasn’t. I had made it to the promised land and was never going back.

I made a lot of new friends back then and like me, they were mostly from somewhere else. None of them had ever been to New Jersey, let alone ever met anyone from there. I felt so exotic, like an indigenous tribesman from the Amazon Basin. I’d often be asked, “You’re from Joisey?” Joisey? Where the hell does that come from? I can honestly say that I’ve never, ever heard anyone who’s from New Jersey pronounce the state’s name like that. And how about that buffoon from Saturday Night Live back in the 80’s with his inane catch phrase, “You’re from Jersey? I’m from Jersey!”, spoken in a voice like Elmer Fudd on helium. Then there are the tried and true misconceptions that Jersey is an industrial wasteland overflowing with toxic waste. Of course none of this stuff is true. As a transplant to California, I suddenly found myself defending New Jersey’s honor against those who would dare take the birthplace of The Boss  in vain. It’s true that Jersey’s industrial corridor is ugly but if that’s your only impression of the state, well you’re missing the point. Northwest Jersey is filled with farms and forests. My sister lives up there and her yard is regularly visited by bears. The Jersey coastline ( “the shore”) is beautiful. The Pine Barrens in the central part of the state are vast and sparsely populated. My hometown of Caldwell is a quaint and peaceful place, reminiscent of the fictional Bedford Falls in the film It’s A Wonderful Life. Angelo’s Barber Shop occupies the same place on Bloomfield Ave. that it has for decades. My dad and older brother still get their haircuts there. Some of the tastiest corn and tomatoes you’ll ever eat are grown in New Jersey.  

Jersey people are “real”.  When I’m back there visiting, there’s something reassuring in the way folks ask, “Eh, how ya doin’?” It’s a refreshing change from the “have a nice day” nonsense that I hear too much of on the west coast. There’s no beating around the bush in New Jersey though, people will usually tell you exactly what’s on their mind. That brusqueness is often mistaken for rudeness, another Jersey misconception. However, you haven’t been told to “fuck off!” until you’ve been told by someone from Patterson.

For a while when I first relocated, I really wanted to be from California. I was so enchanted with my new home. I pushed my Jersey heritage into the background, not disavowing it but also not exactly boasting about it either. But the older I get, the further into the past my life in New Jersey recedes and the deeper my appreciation grows for being from there. My parents still live in the house that I was raised in. My siblings all live in the state. My roots there are deep. I was raised with a strong sense of pride in who I am; an Italian-American from New Jersey. That pride still lives in me. Through the years, things would come up from time to time to remind me just exactly where I was from.

Like millions of Americans, I was glued to my tv set while the tragedy of 911 was unfolding. I remember watching these two eyewitnesses being interviewed on the streets of Manhattan. Listening to their heavy east coast accents, it hit me hard; these guys could be my brothers! It was my people who were suffering. One of my actual brothers was working in Brooklyn that day, he watched in real time as smoke billowed from the Twin Towers.

After Hurricane Sandy devastated the Jersey coastline, one image that’s permanently burned into my psyche is that of a rollercoaster sitting in the Atlantic Ocean off of the amusement pier in Seaside Heights. One of the highlights of my family’s annual trip to the shore as a kid was to ride that very rollercoaster. Like I said, being from someplace is being of that place.

The Mafia and Jersey are synonymous in many peoples minds, and rightfully so. The Mob does have a rich and colorful history in the Garden State. The Sopranos was one of the most critically acclaimed tv series of the past 25 years. I loved that show mostly because while watching it I felt like I was hanging out with my Jersey pals. Listening to Tony and his crew talk  was like eavesdropping on one of my aunts and uncles conversations. The producers of that show really did their homework as every cuss word and slang term for food (mozzarella cheese is “mootzadell”) was absolutely spot on. If you lived in Jersey though, The Mob wasn’t just an abstraction. About ten years ago I sat around my younger brother’s swimming pool one summer day listening to my mom and two of her sisters nonchalantly tell the story of how my Aunt Lizzie and Uncle Sal wanted to have the abusive husband of their daughter “wacked”. Evidently my uncle knew a guy who knew a guy… That same uncle nearly got wacked himself once. As a younger man he was drunk at a wedding and mouthed off to a guy who, unbeknownst to him, was “connected”.  I think my aunt saved him from sleeping with the fishes.

New Jersey is often the butt of jokes and misconceptions. That just stiffens my resolve and makes me all the more want to defend it, to tell people what Jersey is really like. For starters, only someone from New Jersey knows that you never refer to taylor ham as pork roll, or for that matter even knows what taylor ham is. A whole pizza is a pie, and eating it with a knife and fork or asking for your pie to be topped with broccoli could get you wacked. A massive sandwich on a soft roll loaded with every type of unhealthy lunch meat (“cold cuts” thank you!) is a “hoagie”. New Jersey does not have a coast, it has “the shore”, and you never go to the shore, you always go down the shore. When you mention The Boss, everyone knows who you’re talking about. 

Being from someplace is being of that place and I’m proud to be from New Jersey.