No man's land - New Jersey Meadowlands

I arrived in the USA, throught the JFK Airport in New York, on the morning of Saturday, 2nd October 1971. The very first time I took the Interstate bus to Newark at Platform 61, at the Port Authority Bus Terminal on 8th Avenue - and it went West through the New Jersey Turnpike... I noticed this No Man's Land spread out in a sort of eerie prairie beetween Manhattan  and Jersey City. 

Every time the bus flew over it on tall bridges that covered the swampland for kilometres I could not help but wonder about such a mysterious place...

New Jersey Meadowlands land fill.

New Jersey Turnpike on flooded Meadowlands.

Newark Bay Bridge - North Bayone Park.

Pulaski Skyway.

Blue Moon day seen from New Jersey - 31st July 2015.

Blue Moon day - 31st July 2015.

sometime before 11 September 2001. 

Every time I took the Newark bus at plataform 61, at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, on 8th Avenue, I actually prepared myself for a Magical Mystery Tour of my own. As soon as the bus finished crossing the Lincoln Tunnel and entered the amazing New Jersey Turnpike, especially after dark, my mind had a will of its own and flew away in space and time. The Turnpike was a real highway... I mean, it was built many metres above the ground...it was almost like riding an airplane...one could never see the ground which is the famous N.J. Meadowlands pictured above.

One of the most common recurring fantasies I had while I looked back at Manhattan's skyline getting ever so smaller in the distance was the thought that my Grandfather Giovanni Darin who migrated to Brazil in 1888, when he was 17 years old, had once wished to have migrated to the USA, which they called it America in his native Italy in the 1870s... a hundred years back. 

I had this strange pleasant feeling that just by being in 'America' and looking at the Empire State Building in the distance I had it made; I had made my Grandfather's dream come true a hundred years later! Isn't it peculiar? Actually my Grandfather was born on 11 November 1871, which would have made him just a baby if we were to turn back 100 years into the past. It was a feeling that made me feel good. The dream lasted for a few minutes until the bus swerved to the left and entered Newark's area which made me wake up to reality instantly. 

Returning to Newark from Manhattan after dark - usually on Saturdays or Sundays - made me a little uneasy for it was almost impossible to see people walking on the streets for Americans are notorious for not walking when they can drive. So after I got off the bus in the Ironbound, I walked murky and deserted streets until I got to where I lived. I wasn't afraid of being robbed or assaulted but only despondent for being so lonely. Fortunately all this gloom would disappear as soon as I got home - whatever 'home' meant at the time. Once I turned the radio on or got myself something to read or a letter to write I was back being my old self again.