Brian Smith is a teacher at North Star Academy in Newark. He has lived in New Brunswick since 1991, when he came to Rutgers to row on the crew team. He has lived on the canal since 1997, and chose to raise his kids there because of their access to the water. Brian discusses his life on the Raritan, his love for the area, and also the various storm experiences he has had living so close to the river.

ANNOTATIONS

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TRANSCRIPT

Interview conducted by Dan Swern

New Brunswick, New Jersey

June 19, 2019

Transcription by Mira Abou Elezz

00:01

Today is Wednesday, June 19th. It's 11:08 AM. This is Dan Swern interviewing Brian Smith. 

00:15

It started recording? Great, all right. So, um, earliest memory, probably two– two things stick out in particular. There was the superman birthday cake for my fourth birthday, um, with his hands on his hips, and I wasn't a big superhero fan or anything like that. And it is down in southern Virginia at my aunt Nita’s house. I think that's, like, the first thing I actually, uh, like, cognitively remember, and then the sound. My Dad, um, had hot rods. He had a ‘66 Corvette that was really, really loud that I was really afraid of, but also had to pretend like I wasn't. Um, and like the sound of that car in particular. And just hearing it also from far away, like, if I was somewhere in the neighborhood and he started up, I knew that it was his car, like, it had a very distinctive sound and, um, he would want me to go ride with him and I would go, but it was also horrifying. Um, and he would just do little accelerations probably from like ten to twenty-five miles per hour, but in a really loud engine, with a really fast car feeling, like, the kind of thrill but also being afraid. Um, that's probably close to 1977. I remember Darth Vader for sure. Commercials for Star Wars I saw in the theater going back, um, yeah, getting around age 4. 

01:42

Ah, and I grew up in northern Virginia just outside of DC, like, twenty miles south of DC in Prince William County. My Mom's a school teacher, my dad was a garbage man, and he worked for a small company that got bought out by a large company, and he spent twenty-seven years working his way up from, like, driver, to supervisor, to branch manager, and he was a football coach. I never played football but he coached some local kids and picked me up. I just remember him picking me up from preschool and seeing, like, his silhouette at the top of the playground for probably preschool, kindergarten and then first grade and on I went, I was at a babysitter’s and would walk to school with a bunch of other kids. Yeah. And then, uh, he had a green GMC Silverado. Is that a truck? No, he had a green GMC. It was a company pickup truck, but it had metallic green paint, which I distinctly remember always smelled like Big Red chewing gum. That was his brand. And whereas my mom's pocketbook always smelled like Trident spearmint gum and that's smells I know are, like, super associative. So, um, when I was six, he went to Kuwait to teach, um, Pakistani garbage-men how to pick up Kuwaiti trash. I didn't know those details then, but over time I've learned those details. But he went to Kuwait for several weeks, and then he came home, and he looked different ‘cause he had a beard, and then he went again like a year later to Saudi Arabia to Riyadh and Jeddah and did the same thing. Pakistani truck drivers, they didn't have any waste removal system there. So he and BFI was the company he worked for. 

03:31

This is important because I think this is where, um, while he was away, my mom met my step dad and, um, and my step dad, well I– we had met, and I knew him. They were, we were across the street neighbors from Craig who became my step dad and his family and his two boys that became my stepbrothers, but we were all really close neighbors. But while my dad was away, I think that's when the, uh, the love between my mom and my step dad flourished and my dad, as soon as he got home, um, not shortly after was separated and then living with his friend Jim, and then they were divorced. And, um, I thought it was cool because I was getting stepbrothers. I wasn't, like, heartbroken. I was sad for like a day or two that my dad wasn't around. He just told me I had to be the man of the house, like a stereotype of a TV drama about divorces.  But my step dad was super cool and my dad was never more than a mile or two away and was never, he never said a bad word about anybody. Um, and never really revealed any true feelings or truths about why my parents were not together anymore until I was, like, 19 years old. And so I had like a kind of a blissed, ignorant childhood in that sense. And I, you know, in hindsight I realized it's like, like a– what a man he was for– for doing that and what a good father he was for not, you know, making my life more difficult by, like, trying to talk trash or say anything bad about anything he might've known. And then my step dad too showed, like, no ill feelings towards my dad or no shortage of love towards me. I feel like I had, like, the best of two dads and they were always close.  They were both like my soccer coaches before the divorce, they were like the coach and the assistant coach. Um, and they're still friendly and still alive. And, um, yeah. So this is also important because the, I think in high school I wasn't good enough to make our high school soccer team. I played in like house league soccer and that was fun. Both my dad and step dad would be there, um, no longer coaches, but just supportive. Um, and I have a sister who's six years younger than me as well. Um, who played travel soccer. The point is I– I tried out for high school rowing. The crew team at Woodbridge High School was just a public high school, but they had a crew team, which I didn't realize was like a Ivy League thing at the time. I just thought this is cool. Um, maybe I'll try out. 

06:05

I know you, you have to be able to run long distances. And I ran track in middle school in, like, the 13-20, which is like three laps, and I was the anchorman on the mile relay. And I knew I had decent lungs, and my mom suggested I go off for the crew team my freshman year. And so I did that and it was the hardest thing I ever did and I loved it. And, um, they had the rowing machines, which basically your times on those rowing machines determine which boat you got in your freshman boat. You were stuck in a freshman boat, like, novice. Um, but I was good on the machine and I had the fastest, like, five mile run in the three mile run. So I was getting the coach's attention and my sophomore year I made the varsity boat and had really good rowing machine scores.  Uh, mostly because you're just sitting, um, on that machine and watching a split. And I think a lot of that was just, would've been, like, pent up anger of, like, teenage whatever. Um, and I took it out on the oar handle, and a lot of it was also just escaping from my house ‘cause my dad had remarried, he had a wife that I didn't love so much and she talked bad about my mom. She had a son who was opposite of me. He was, like, into wrestling and he got caught shoplifting and I, you know, like, we're friendly enough and I was, like, a decent role model. I was like three years older than him, but it was just drama. And then I have another one of my stepbrothers who's a twin. As soon as he got his driver's license, started partying and drinking and doing drugs and getting really popular in a school of 5,000 kids. He was known already as a freshman. Like, everybody knew his name because of the daring stuff he does around town and at parties. And I also was like, I don't want any of– anything to do with that. So I just rather than talk about it or whatever, I just took it all out on an oar handle and, um, let out all the anger and just would be a pile. Like after any Erg piece, I would just lay on the machine or on the ground next to it. Just completely wiped out. And– but I got the attention of the Junior National team and the– eventually the coach at Rutgers, um, and we, my senior year, we defeated TC Williams for the first time. They're from Alexandria, Virginia. They were like the powerhouse from Washington DC area schools for rowing. And that also got the Rutgers coaches attention. 

08:37

So he kind of recruited, you know, he came down, saw our race, met me, called, this is all pre-internet and, uh, it was in 1990, 91, 89 even. Um, but it got Rutgers in my head. I was going to go to– I was supposed to go to a UVA or, uh, a Virginia school. Like, my– my parents wanted me to stay in state because it's cheaper. So I applied to UVA, they'd had a crew team, but it's a club team. I visited their boathouse and their coach and they weren't in the, um, the Eastern Sprints League, which is like the Ivy League schools and wasn't as competitive. And the Rutgers coach was also on the Junior or on the national team and was gonna row in the ‘96 Olympics, which was on the, you know, an Olympic four-year horizon. That would've been a year after I graduated. And, like, pretty close to peak fitness for a rower. So I was interested in trying to be an Olympic rower. I didn't know, you know, anything about college or New Jersey or anything. Um, but it got me here, there, you know, like the coach, uh, his name was Will Porter and he said, “Why don't you come for a visit?” I neve–, I got into William & Mary down in Virginia and I'd never been there until two years ago on an eighth grade trip. Um, they didn't have, uh, a good crew team. I applied to Washington State and it was– I got in, but they said I would have to be a lightweight, um, which is cool. And now Washington, or not Washington state, Washington in Seattle, but they're like the best rowing program in the country right now. But I didn't go there and I came and visited New Brunswick and Will Porter. He was the coach. He took me around and we crossed the river like three or four times. And I noticed that the first place he took me, it was the boathouse and it was totally different than where I was rowing for the past four years. Prior to that I was on the Aqua Quan reservoir, which is all suburbia on the Prince William County side, and on the Fairfax side it's all nature preserve. So it's a beautiful rowing environment. Um, nothing remotely urban about it is super nature-y. Then I came up here and I– the boathouse is on an old wharf. There was a crane there from when they used to offload stuff, some graffiti, which I was– I found appealing, um, as hip hop was a huge part of my upbringing too. And so New Jersey seemed really exotic and different and just the wharf setting, the Albany Street Bridge Arches, the train bridge arches also came into view. 

11:02

And that just made me feel like I was in a super, like it might as well have been the bridges at Harvard and, you know, on the Charles River, and it was just exotic and different for me. And I wasn't, you know, the– the river, I wasn't, like, looking at the water and thinking, oh, it's brown and muddy. I just was like, this looks– it looked like glass when we were here. And I was like, it looks like a fine place to row. The boathouse was cool and old looking and– and– and modest. It wasn't like some big elaborate castle. And the boathouse that I had been in was just something the parents built together. It was like a giant woodshed that was about eighty feet long for about thirty boats. So it was just, you know, it was like a cool kind of, there was, you could tell there was tradition here. And then we went around town in New Brunswick and also that was saw several different restaurants from, like, Jamaica. There might've been an Ethiopian restaurant, um, whatever Mediterranean. Like headquarters out on Georges road. Like just different languages, different food. Totally foreign to me. Growing up in suburban northern Virginia, everybody was just kind of middle-class. It was pretty diverse racially, that's not actually true. It's diverse. It's about 50% black and white. But everybody was middle class and so everybody talked the same, liked the same music and we all, you know, just pizza on Fridays, taco night once in a while but nothing, no good, like, ethnic actual food from anywhere. And so New Brunswick seemed super exotic and exciting. So I was like, I'm coming and it was only 240 miles away from home, which is four and a half hours. And it was enough that I could get away from the drama of my family and not, not, um, feel too, too far away. Like it's, you know, a train ride– you can get right on the– the Amtrak and go right to DC. And I was like, I can just do that. And it also seemed like New England in my mind, and I'm also Dead Poets Society, it was just out and I went on the canal and it seemed like Dead Poets Society to me. Like it just, all that kind of romanticism about the northeast and the fall and New England Ivy League schools, Rutgers being colonial, it all just seemed like fit for college. Like this is where you go to get smart, this is where you go to row fast and make friends for life or whatever. And so my, those are like, those are like my first impressions of New Brunswick. It was raining, it was February, and it was actually snow that changed to rain. So like probably the worst possible day you could come visit New Brunswick and it was 1991 and a lot of, uh, you know, just urban decay around. Like community homes was still here. 

13:42

Um, and Route 18, there was a Crossroads Theater, which was for X-rated movies at the time down right where Route 18 is. Like dismal in most people's eyes maybe, but I was like, this is where I want to go. It was so different and exotic than, uh, than the suburbia I was used to. And it seemed also like a lot of the, um, the problems with overdevelopment, urbanization and industrialization had already occurred here and they were working on solutions like saving green space or turning what used to be an industrial area into a green space or a park. Where– where I grew up, um, it was a wooded area at first. Then they just kept bulldozing and paving and bulldozing and paving and making more kinda cookie cutter-like towns, suburban houses, which are all lovely. Um, but just destruction of nature with complete disregard for the environment. Um, in the name of, you know, the American dream or safety or suburbia or whatever, and it was just boring culturally. Um, and so here it was exciting, ‘cause I feel like most of the problems had already occurred on the overdevelopment, uh, stages of New Brunswick, and I was aware of that stuff. Earth Day 1991 was a big deal too. So, like, environmentalism was in my head. Um, and my step dad also worked for the EPA, uh, in DC forever for marines and estuaries, drinking water first and then marines and estuaries. And he never really talked about it at home or anything, but it's very close, you know, like that, uh, he– he worked for an organization to protect our rivers and waterways isn't lost on me. And I like the fact that I love salt water in particular bays, estuaries, rivers, things like that. The Raritan is tidal and you can smell the ocean on certain days with the northeast breeze, you know, it's like we're– it feels like we're a coastal city. And then at low tide on days where it's just hot and humid, it seems like we're in a swamp somewhere. So I mean, I like that variety too. Like that it's not a– it's not always the same. There's like just twice a day, two different tides and you get what you get with the tide. I enjoy all that too. And it also determines which way you can row from the boathouse. Um, so that's my, yeah, my first impressions of New Brunswick and I was, yeah, freshman. I mean I came a few months after that and I distinctly remember my parents– it was my mom and my step dad dropped me off and, um, unpacked me. I lived in Tinsley during my freshman year right by Brower Commons, and they were here for maybe thirty minutes before I jumped over a shrub and ran away to the dining hall with two other guys from the crew team. And I mean, I said my goodbyes, but I was like a free bird and I didn't go home for, uh, I didn't go home until Christmas, which I thought was great. And whereas a lot of the kids here go home every weekend, which I didn't understand either. I didn't know anything about New Jersey, how small it is. And you know, there's a lot to discover. But I loved being here when nobody was here too, um, and I would just train on the weekends or do whatever. 

17:05

You know, the crew coach, we had practices on Saturday mornings and stuff, but a lot of guys would go home after that. And I got to go with some, like, go to friend's houses around New Jersey and see that it wasn't all urban, it wasn't just New Brunswick and the Turnpike, which is all I knew. And then, um, yeah, something like, I don't know how many years later, it's been thirty. No, not, I don't know what's, how long ago? It was nineteen, twenty, twenty-five years. Twenty-five years later, I'm still discovering stuff that I love about New Jersey, usually along a waterway somewhere. But, um, how am I doing? Okay. Alright. So I rode for them. And this is, I guess the, um, mid my freshman– I was a heavyweight freshman and our boat was, we were really strong. We, um, so the season is set up into like dual races where you race against Dartmouth or MIT, Harvard, Yale, Northeastern, and they're kind of home and away depending on the year. So they alternate. Our first race is always against Columbia. And my freshman year I was here on the Raritan and the Freshman Eight, which I was in as a freshman, you're only allowed to row in a freshman eight. Um, and there was other guys that were recruited from a lot of the Philly Catholic school boys schools like, um, Monsignor Bonner, Saint Joe's Prep, LaSalle, all of these Philly Catholic kids were here. There was just also, um, a big deal because in high school rowing Philadelphia, there's a race called the Stoat’s Bay Regatta, which is like the ultimate race for high school. And then there's Schoolboy Nationals, which is, which was, uh, my senior year was at St. Andrews, which is where they filmed Dead Poets Society. And, um, my high school teams did really well on those races. So I'd beaten some of these guys. Um, some of the guys that became my Rutgers teammates, we had rowed against some of them. I had housed them when they would come down to Virginia to race. 

19:09

And so I had met some of these guys, um, cause a lot of, they don't stay in hotels. Usually we would take two crew members from another team and let them, you know, sleep on a sofa or, like, pullout couch or whatever. So there was a couple of guys that I met from New Jersey and then we all ended up at Rutgers as teammates. Um, which was just a small world type of thing. And it made, you know, like at the– the rowing community is probably pretty small. But anyways, so we were undefeated in all of our duel races my freshman year, which was like a first time in Rutgers history, and we were tiny for heavyweight rowers. Um, most guys are around 6’5”, 220 pounds. And our boat averaged six feet tall and about 180 pounds. Um, so we were really small but really fast and, um, fearless and tenacious, and our coach trained as harder than anybody else. So it's year-round training and you can't see your opponents, there's no offense, you can't block them or run into them or think ill things. You just have to train harder and then row better. And we were just fearless and every competition, we didn't care about the names of the people in the boat. Some of them were Olympians that we were going against. And there's a guy, Xeno Mueller, I remember from Brown University who rowed for Switzerland who was a freshman when I was a freshman, even though he looked 35 years old or whatever. So rowed against them and, um, did well. But then at the Eastern Sprints is where you race and, uh, six boats side by side. And, uh, we did not do very well in our qualifying heat. We were just, uh, they call it spinning your wheels. Like, we did not grab the water and move the boat. We were just stressed out and freaking out. It was really hot. I passed out at the end of the race and I had pulled harder than I'd ever pulled in my life. We just didn't pull right. We weren't pulling smart, we were just frantic and scared. And it could've just been because there were six boats all side by side instead of just two. And it was the first time we'd ever been down. Like in all the other dual races we were always in the lead early, and I could look back at the boats, and it's easier to stay in front once you're in front. And in this race we were not in front and it was really hard to catch up and we needed to get in third place. And we finished in fourth place. So we didn't make the grand final. We made like the, uh, the second final or whatever the highest you can get then as six place. 

21:24

And we finished in sixth place, we won that heat and it would've been enough to get a medal in the finals. Our time in our, and our, you know, our final race was we should, we just spazzed in that qualifying heat. And it was disappointing, but it like also made me know that we can do, we have one more race coming up in Camden and that we should do better and row smarter. So it just, um, the– the pageantry I guess, and the like seeing at a regatta all like every, all the colleges paint their oars, their blades, they're called in there, you know, like the Burgundy or whatever. The Crimson of Harvard is there. Black and orange of Princeton, black and red of Rutgers and Rutgers, it's the oldest sport at Rutgers. The traditions go way back and– and, um, being a state school competing against Ivy League schools and just, you know, being middle-class myself and competing against wealthier kids and beating them felt really good. And, um, I, you know, I was like, you know, proud to be, um, a Rutgers oarsman and knowing and like knowing that we, um, overcame a lot. Like a lot of the other crews have way better boathouses that I learned once we visited. They had like castles on rivers or like, um, just Northeastern had a brand new boat house bill that had like, you know, heated floors in the shower and, uh, or in the locker room and just a room specifically for ERGs for the rowing machine. And Rutgers boathouses still the same as it was in 1914 and it's just concrete floors, very modest. And, uh, and I remember, you know, maybe for three seconds being jealous, but mostly being proud of our modest setting and our muddy river. And, um, the arches, the bridges, the buoy, there's a– but we– seventeen is actually a channel marker just downstream from the boathouse, which was where our coach would tell us to meet every day. Um, so it's a landmark. The coxswains all have landmarks where the coach will tell you to, you know, in any practice. And we're out there basically all year. Um, in the winter when the river freezes, we move indoors, uh, for training. So, um, we have, there's tanks, uh, they call them over on the– in the old geology buildings on Kilmer, uh, on the Kilmer campus or the Livingston campus. Um, to simulate rowing, which is your moving water, but it's not on the river, but we'd be on the river, um, from September until December. Then when would go down south to train for two weeks in the winter to South Carolina or to Florida. And then during spring break when everybody else goes to Cancun or whatever, the crew team is here, usually rowing in March, usually in snow. But the river would be thawed by then. And if it wasn't, we would go somewhere, uh, take the boats, maybe downtown Mercer County. 

24:20

Uh, there's a reservoir down there that we would go to. Um, but usually on the Raritan, um, until late May, early June, the last races in early June. Uh, but the– the freshman team practices in the afternoon. I remember my freshman year too, this is a good rare memory, uh, it was the year of the Hale Bopp comet and it was visible every night for that fall season. And we had afternoon practices from four o'clock to like 6:30 or 7:00. And so in October, the days are short and we would see that comet every night right above the New Brunswick skyline as you pulled away from New Brunswick, you could see it. And it was just, I remember that distinctly, um, for those evenings to just going after a day of classes. I was an engineering student my freshman year and I'm getting to go to practice and do the same thing I was doing in high school, which was just taking out any type of frustration or pent up energy on your handle and also trying to pull harder than anybody else in the boat. And I had a really good coxswain, uh, who steers the– that's the person who's like driving them up from– from Philadelphia. His name was Pat O'Halloran and we were roommates a sophomore and junior and senior year, but he would always, then they all just called me Smitty. Um, but he would always use my, the bend on my, or to motivate the other guys in the boat. So that just means like I was pulling harder even when I shouldn't have been. I was pulling harder and it was just built in to just go full throttle all the time. I have no idea why. Even if they were saying, like they would say do quarter pressure, half pressure, I would pull full pressure. And I just remember him, like, that just made me, that was motivational. Like, it would make me even want to pull harder, uh, and got the boat moving faster. Cause if someone's not pulling as hard as you, you end up carrying their weights in your oar handle. And so none of us ended up being, like, freeloaders. We all wanted to pull and have the same bend on their blade or, or as me, but he always use me as the example, which I remember was just a nice, uh, and you don't– I don't– it's not a back and forth conversation. He would just be like, Smitty’s got the most bent. Let's match that or something along those lines. And you could just feel the boat pickup speed and move and get more spacing between the strokes. And, um, I think that probably made me want to do this, um, longer like my, that was my freshman year. My sophomore year it came back and I was on Varsity. Um, and then junior year, same thing. Pat was still my coxswain and I was still killing myself in practice. 

26:52

Um, they had a triathlon that we do that's like not a real triathlon but a rigorous two and a half hour long thing where you run, like, stairs in the basketball stadium for I think sixty flights you have to do, which takes about half an hour. And then you have to do 5,000, a five mile run from Livingston campus to the boathouse. And then you pull on the Erik for 5,000 meters. And I won that and that was a big deal. Um, and they got to, like, write my name on a plaque with other great whatevers. It was, it was all good. Like I was doing, um, if there was grades for rowing, I was getting an A, and if there was grades and engineering, I was getting a D to an F. So I, uh, was putting a little too much effort probably into crew, but also didn't enjoy engineering. Um, but there was a clause here too that the reason I was allowed to come to Rutgers, this is important too for rare memories, is that my step dad was an engineer and my mom was a calculus teacher. Eventually. She wasn't a calculus teacher when I lived at home. She was Algebra II and she taught in the high school that I went to. My Dad was still a garbage man and he had moved to State College, Pennsylvania. When I came to Rutgers, he saw it as an opportunity also, or his company gave him no option on that really. But, um, to– to move, uh, the same distance that I moved away from northern Virginia, he moved to the middle of Pennsylvania. I moved to the middle of New Jersey. Um, but the– the clause for me to be able to come to an out-of-state school was I would pay the difference, whatever. 

28:25

Like UVA for example, was $8,000 a year. Rutgers was like 12,000 or 13,000 at the time for out-of-state. Um, so I'd have to pay, like, my– my dad paid 4,000. My mom paid 4,000 and I paid the difference for the out of state difference if I went to an engineering school. So, like, my– I shook my parents' hands and said, yes, I'll major in engineering when I go to Rutgers so that I can get out of Virginia. I also wanted to get away from the– there's like 900 and some kids in my senior class in high school and they all went to UVA, Virginia Tech, William and Mary, James Madison, George Mason. And they were all just normal. I'm not just like J Crew. There was no J Crew at the time, but the clothes were all the same. They're just very preppy and into drinking and partying and football. And Dave Matthews didn't exist yet, but he was about to. So they would have been into him and I was way into punk rock. And, um, there was a handful of kids that were punk rock kids, but they didn't– none of them, a couple of them, um, went to college, but most of them that I knew weren't going to college. And so I just wanted to get away from the preppy kids and all the beautiful popular kids that drove Porsches to school and I rode a bike to school. Um, I rode a bike to every class at Rutgers too. I still ride bikes to the– that's the other thing that'll come up later I guess. But so the deal was to get to Rutgers, I have to be an engineering student, which lasted a year and a half. Um, cause I started to do bad, not because I wasn't trying, I was killing myself, but I didn't fortrend was a computer class I had to take for engineering and I couldn't pass it. And so I dropped it before I paid for the F, and I was down to like twelve credits and chemistry was tough. Even though I'd had AP chemistry in high school, I had like C’s calculus, calc one and calc two, I barely passed. Expository writing was my favorite class by far. And I had a great lesbian Jewish Radcliffe graduate. Cynthia Scheinberg as my professor. I didn't even know what it meant to be Jewish at the time ‘cause there were no Jewish people in northern Virginia. I had no idea what that even meant. And a few kids on the crew team were Jewish. I knew Hanukkah was something, but I didn't know anything. Um, I didn't even know that, you know, that what the Radcliffe was like the female version of Harvard or like one of the seven sisters of Harvard until later. But she– she said I was, um, had a gift for writing so that I should be an English major. So sophomore year when engineering got tough, um, I secretly transferred to Rutgers College against my parents deal, even though I shook their hands on the engineering thing. And, um, that freshman summer I had to stay and take credits to make up for what I had failed or whatever. 

31:23

I took an Art History class and fell in love with that in addition to, like, some– some math class or something. Uh, but that planted the seed. I ended up majoring in English and Art History. Um, and I loved– I got in over my head with English at first and then I, um, uh, started loving it and, uh, Tony Morrison was in vogue at the time, like, Beloved was out. So I read that in like six different classes that's going to become important later too. Cause I currently teach at North Star Academy in Newark, which is named after Frederick Douglass's, abolitionist newspaper and the seeds of all of that were planted, like, just kind of civil rights minded, um, different perspective, human experience as an American or like gossip growing up in northern Virginia, which is not southern, but my whole family's from southern Virginia. And having cousins that openly use the n word when I would visit, but also loving Run DMC that didn't make sense to me. And my grandmother also was– had no problem using the n word around us. And most of my closest friends were black from northern Virginia and they didn't know that cause they didn't, they didn't travel with me. But I've– I've now spent twenty-two years teaching, and in Newark, um, to many different cultures. But the school I'm at now, uh, has a super, um, you know, civil rights-minded mission, um, that just applies to any– anyone. But, um, I think those seeds may have been planted because I transferred to– to English and because I'm African American female authors because of Tony Morrison, um, in the early nineties, her popularity and proximity to Rutgers too, she was a Princeton professor I believe in, did some guest lectures at Rutgers, actually saw her speak a couple times, and I figured out her book and for– I sat in lots of classes where I was the only white student or definitely white male student and made friends and enemies probably, but mostly friends, but a just, uh, um, you know, open, open-minded for a different perspective on, you know, what it means to be American, um, like a female perspective. And the African American female perspective is completely the opposite of like the red carpet that's kind of rolled out to white men in this country. And so I was very interested in that just, and everything in between. Um, but anyways, so I transferred to Rutgers College and I started crushing it and loving Art History and English and figured out that like the classes were all the same. Um, in terms of even science still, I was still taking some chemistry classes and, um, the Art History kind of opened my eyes. There was like a modern painting class, uh, Modernism in France that's like the results of industrialization. Like once people had leisure time, they could go out into the parks and paint paintings or do– have picnics or whatever it was. They weren't always just working. And so it gave, like, the rise to leisure activities. Um, people had, like, Saturdays or Sundays off, which was new and certain painters or, like, Manet, Monet, Seurat, all these guys were painting the same impressionist style and they were kind of revolutionizing the way, getting away from classic realism and into like just the impression of the scene. 

35:08

But at the same time, novelists of that same era were kind of doing the same thing. Faulkner in particular writes in like a nonlinear. So the idea is that, like, I, and it was all technology driven, all science driven. So, like, discoveries and science would lead to movements in art and literature. And one guy was holding a pen and writing a book and the other guys were holding a brush and painting and they told the same story and all of it had kind of the same. So I just feel it was like an efficient way to learn. I was making connections between science and humanities I guess. Um, but then I started noticing classes that were, you know, an Art History or Architecture class that was like pre-1900 would match the literature or Postmodern would match Postmodern literature matches Postmodern art and architecture. And, um, so I thought the classes were easy for that reason. Like, I had a big picture kind of mindset and made lots of connections and was really efficient with my classes. I took eighteen credits per semester, started getting A's and everything, recovering the ditch, the hole that I had dug myself in and, um, just loved it. And also the proximity to Manhattan to go to museums. And see the actual paintings was exotic as well. Like– like New York City was totally a novelty to me. Coming from northern Virginia, like the tallest buildings in DC are only allowed to be five stories. They can't be, they can't exceed the height of the Capitol Dome. So I'd never seen, like, actual skyscrapers. Like if I saw a twelve-story building, I thought it was a skyscraper. So then Manhattan also just romanticizing hip-hop. Um, cause I was of age when, you know, MTV raps came out and saw Beat Street when I was in seventh grade and I thought I was a break dancer and all that stuff and punk rock. But I'm just seeing the actual places where, you know, guys like Eric B and Rakim were from or public, a De La Soul, like Long Island was only an hour away. And I was like, I love De La Soul so now I'm closer to De La Soul and somehow that makes me happy, so anyways, all that was a part of the love for this, this kind of place. Um, and all the while I was on– still on the river every day. And competing and in rowing and not really celebrating it. I didn't wear like the, um, the Rutgers crew jacket around campus. Not - Most people in my classes didn't know I was on a sports team or anything like that. And I was secretly training for the Olympics in ‘96, which are now three years away or two years away by my junior year. Um, and I had friends outside of the crew team, which a lot of the guys on the crew team only had friends on the crew team. 

37:53

So I got way into music photography. Um, I was just like a photo editor for the Rutgers Review, which is like, not– it's like the secondary newspaper, but they gave me free film, roll your own film in a dark room for– to– to fund my photography classes. Um, I took a couple of drawing classes, loved all that stuff and, um, got to go to the Rutger Student Center to take pictures of bands that like, um, Fishbone, who's like one of my childhood favorite bands. I saw De La Soul, I got to take pictures of them. Blind Melon, the God Who Ate Dynamite, we had Mick Jones from The Clash who was, like, childhood hero. I mean, and I got to see him close up Digable Planets all that, um, which was cool and exciting. Um, but just, um, making friends outside of the crew team, um, and not losing my friends on the crew team, but just, um, kinda discovering a world outside of, uh, you know, the microcosm of rowing and– and all that. And, uh, I kept doing my thing rowing-wise. And then my junior year, um, I started having trouble with my knee. Tendinitis was always an issue. Um, and this is now seven years into a repeated motion of rowing really, really hard all the time. Um, even going back to like high school and, uh, not really taking breaks and then being a small heavyweight. And as I got into the– the varsity boats at Rutgers, the guys were much bigger and they weren't necessarily pulling all their weight all the time. And so I would just pull my weight and there's– and the boats are rigged heavier. So that's like if the oar is a lever with a fulcrum out in the middle for heavyweights, they usually have longer arms, longer legs. You can set the boat wider, which means the load on the end of the oar is heavier. Whereas a lightweight, both, they'll rig it much differently so that the– either way my body got worn out. And, uh, the tendon that attaches to the bone right by your knee, uh, that was swollen, uh, so bad that it kinda stopped moving. And then I got a stress fracture, had to do some steroid shots, and then I had nerve damage or loss feeling, and my toes went through a lot of physical training with that. And, uh, this is right in the spring of my junior year, like the most competitive rowing season. The coach put me in the JV boat cause he didn't want to compromise the varsity boat with my injury. Um, so I was still pulling my brains out in pain in a less glamorous boat, which was really hard. But I was super team-minded. So I was like, I'll just pull my brains out in this boat and we want everything. That JV boat then got really fast and we did really well. 

40:43

Um, and then I– I finished my the last race I rowed in was the Eastern Sprints in the JVA in the final better than any other boats did that day. And we got fourth in the final, which was the highest position of Rutgers heavyweight voted, gotten in many, many years. And I couldn't walk afterwards and I told my coxswain, um, and this was a different coxswain his name was Kevin. He and he loved having me in the boat ‘cause we instantly got fat. I mean, I only knew this in hindsight, but, uh, and my coach told me years later, ‘cause I would have not stood for it then, but, um, you know, we, the JV boat did really well. Um, and he loves having me in there and we had one more race in the season. I couldn't do it. And, uh, the physical trainer guy that I was going to at Rutgers, he was like a football guy. But because we are Rutgers athletics and the crew team at the time was a varsity sport, we had access to all the medicine and trainers and all that. And so he said, you basically should stop rowing or risk not walking, um, for the rest of your life or walking with your right leg for the rest of your life. Like, um, you're doing lots of damage, um, from overuse and over, you know, over just seven intense years of repeated motion. And so I just throw in the towel and so I guess that's it. I want to walk some more. Um, so, um, and it sucked ‘cause I was like fit to be the captain. Um, the ‘96 Olympics were just one year away in Atlanta and it was heartbreaking. And the reason I came here was to– to go to the Olympics, but my junior year I actually introduced myself to who is now my wife Jill, who was on the crew team. She was a rower on the women's team. And so because of all this, I met my wife and, uh, we are still together twenty-three years later, twenty-five years later, ‘93 we met and we have two, seven-year-old daughters, and we live on the Raritan River still. Just yesterday I saw a guy out there rolling a single with a coach following him right in front of our house at Landing Lane Bridge. And so all that stuff, you know, brought us together and we met in Hilton Head on a training trip. I only introduced myself, but that following February, um, we officially started dating. And then, um, I would see her at the boathouse all the time. And then we have a different schedule, but the boy’s– men's and women's teams. But either way, we both rowed until our junior years. And then I– I blew my leg up and– and tried to do physical therapy my entire senior year. Um, instead of training in the fall with the crew team, I was just doing physical therapy to get healthy for the spring racing season and see if there was a way that I could come back. And, and, uh, get on the machine and get good Erg scores and make it into the varsity boat, or get in a pair with the national team, and at least, which is like the bottom of the, like the, uh, the prestige in rowing a men's pair is– is not the– the grand event. The men's aid is the grand event. But at this point I was as anxious to possibly run the Olympics still and tried everything. And it just never, it was never, not the most painful experience. Like just pushing down on my legs, on the seat of the rowing machine was mega painful. So I just stopped. And, uh, it sucks because the guys had voted for me to be the captain and I would come to practices and ride in the launch with the coach and it was heartbreaking to watch, but I think I, um, picked up a lot from him. And then the next year I was coaching at Rutgers for two years. I was a freshman lightweight coach and, um, I took out all my unfulfilled Olympic dreams on those guys and they were really fast undefeated. They medaled at the Eastern sprints my first year of coaching, which was the first time in like twenty years that a lightweight boat had gotten a medal. 

44:50

And we, you know, again, I'm spending more time on the river and that, so that was, I was working at Oldman Rafferty’s by day and then in the evenings I would go coach, and my girlfriend at the time, Jill, my wife, still had a year left in college, so she was finishing that. And then, uh, I had no idea what I was going to do with English and Art History degree. And I thought crew coaching would be fine, but it was, I'd only paid $7,000 a year if that, I don't know, it was not a– not a living wage really. So that's what I was working at Rafferty's but a I, two things, let's see. So I coached for two years, the second year because we did so well. I had a big recruiting class and a lot of talented rowers came and wanted to row for me. And one of them was actually a kid that went to my high school and he knew of me, um, cause my name was written all over the boathouse down in Woodbridge for all these great Erg scores and we'd beaten TC Williams. So to him I was a celebrity and also my mom was his math teacher, just small world stuff. But he, um, came and he was the stroke of my freshman eight and they were really fast and they won lots of races. They didn't medal at the Eastern sprints, but I had about forty kids each year in all of them. Came back and made the varsity team faster, which has a different coaching. A lot of those guys medaled in the Eastern sprints as varsity oarsmen, a lot of them coach still, one is at Navy as the head coach of Navy's crew team. Um, one coached at Dartmouth and moved around and, uh, they were all just, they're still in touch with me. Like, they'll stop by my house even now, twenty-some years later and just say, thanks for making them the men who they are today, which I don't know what that means, but my wife is always shocked at like, you know, like what did you tell them? 

46:42

Like that they're still, they still love me. Like they loved me then and I have no idea why. Like they– they, I just, I knew how to get them fast and I just told them to listen to what I said and stuff that I learned. Um, really, like, there could be a book of lessons on the Raritan, um, that I could write about. Just I'm not, like in rowing, there's no offense or defense and you just have to get your best out every day and also not worrying about the finish line when you're still sitting at the starting line. Um, cause each stroke is just as important as the next stroke. And so you have to take the– the first stroke perfect. And then take the second stroke perfect. And not be fearing the outcome later. And if you're not, you know, when you're training in, uh, October for race in April against Yale, you're not sitting next to Yale to see how fast they are. You just have to work harder than you think that they're working on that day in October for a race six months away. It's like all that stuff I told my fresh, like the kids that I coached, I told them, like, we're gonna, you know, like if you're– if you think you're rowing your hardest right now, there's someone at one of these other schools that's rowing harder than you in the seat, like the four seat in the freshman lightweight eight. If you think you're giving your all, someone at Princeton is pulling harder than you right now. So we have to, like, always have that kind of fire in our heart or whatever. So, um, those lessons I taught, I didn't know I was teaching, but I also, um, I got them to believe they trusted me. You know, like if I, and I made the stroke really simple. Some– some coaches make a whole bunch of artwork out of rowing stroke, which is basically three different movements that are just repeated in the only variable really is stroke rate. Like how many strokes per minute you're taking, which can affect the boat speed. But if you get guys doing something really simple in unison, that unison gives you half of the boat's speed and then adding, how fast do you do that gives you more speed or less speed. Um, and I just told them everything. 

48:56

I didn't make it mysterious and it's just, um, but they loved it. They got fast, really quick, and they were small for lightweights, and lightweights have to be 155 pounds. But they had no real pedigree compared to the guys we were rowing against. But they beat up on teams and they're fearless sorta like I was my freshman year. But I also didn't let them repeat my mistakes. I didn't let them pull harder than their– their teammates. Everybody in the boat had to pull their brains out, otherwise it just wasn't fair. And you're pulling someone else's weight and you could see that in them. And I think that's why they come back and they, um, you know, they still, I still have a relationship with them. Um, one of them was a US nuclear submarine captain who would send me email photos from underneath the North Pole or whatever.  Just random stuff that he's always would say like, “I wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't for you.” And in whatever crazy adventures he’s on in life, he comes and he'll send me an email or just in person will say, like, “I couldn't do this if it wasn't for you.” And I don't even know what that means. But, like, I was 22 at the time, I think, or 21 and they were all 18 or 19 and, uh, just easily impressionable. But the– the other thing that happened is a friend of mine, a punk rock surfer friend, cause I also surf, that has to do with the Raritan too. Like I didn't learn to really surf until I moved to New Jersey and spent my first summer down in Sea Isle City. Is that right? Summer ‘95, first summer after graduation. And like my view of New Jersey changed every weekend when anytime I would explore and find a new place, but just going to LBI or Cape May or Asbury Park at the time, which was just a bombed out war zone.

 50:35

But on the ocean, the super romantic and cool in my eyes, I would surf there. But one of my surfer friends, um, who was also really into New Jersey hardcore, which I wasn't necessarily into New Jersey hardcore music, but we had similar love for The Clash and The Jam, and just punk rock everything. He was straight edge vegan kid and I was definitely, I didn't drink or do drugs ‘cause I was training for the Olympics. I thought it would mess up my chances of that I didn't and my grandfather was an alcoholic, but I didn't– I'd never even really been drunk in college at all. I didn't try at Boone's Farm wine when I was like a senior and just remember losing my peripheral vision, which was my first interpretation of being drunk. But I didn't really know what that meant. But that came, that came later. But this guy came to one of my crew practices and he saw like sixty kids that would walk through a wall for me. And he at the time was teaching in Raleigh with severely disabled students and– and came again, like, just to another practice, my second year of coaching. And he was now teaching in Newark public schools within a broken school system. But he said, like, “If these kids would do this for you, um, you should come teach kids that actually need you.” Like these guys are going to be fine. Like, if they have me as a coach or not, they're on a crew team, they're in college. Their life is pretty luxurious compared to what the kids he's working with in Newark. And both of us had, like, similar views on class. Like Paul Robeson's is a hero of mine. I would've, if I knew what communism meant or what I thought it meant, I would've been a communist. Um, or just, I was pretty anti-capitalist I guess back then. And just like all college kids go through some weird phase and you meet a professor who's like, this is Marxism and this is socialism and this is a school of thought coming out. So I was very much for the people, like I believe in community, I believe in people. And, um, the founding fathers also saying that, like, everybody's kinda guaranteed the same quality of life and it's clearly not true anyways. He's like, you got to come teach. And, um, so I volunteered on Saturdays up in Newark teaching and then I did not get along with the, um, the varsity lightweight coach at Rutgers and he reluctantly invited me back to be the freshman coach my second year only because we medaled at the Eastern sprints. 

53:01

He didn't like my coaching style, which he's like a micromanager. And I'm the opposite. I'm just like, you need to do this, really simply and pull your brains out. He was like, you have to do just micromanagement down to like who you could date and all that stuff. And it just is, I didn't get along with him and I didn't know I get along with everybody, but I didn't, you know, like I just was like, okay, this guy, I don't know if I want to work with him again. He's– he's uncomfortable. Like he doesn't trust me that I'm producing these, like, future athletes for him to inherit. He didn't like what I was teaching them, I guess, which, whatever. So I stopped coaching crew and I had applied to teach in Newark, but didn't get hired for a year. Um, but I just kept calling every Monday, um, to the school or my friend worked and I had volunteered there. I volunteered there for a year, every Saturday teaching Saturday classes to get them ready for the state assessments, ‘cause their daily education was so subpar that we were supplementing it with Saturday school, which is not an actual solution, but it got my foot in the door. I loved it. There's is rough there. There's, um, kids with, you know, whatever problems that you couldn't imagine. Like there's kids that were prostituting themselves, kids who were smoking cigarette butts that they would find on the ground. Kids giving themselves tattoos of Mickey Mouse with needle and thread, uh, in ink or from a pen or whatever in the gym when I was there. And they were all lovely. Like they were all nice to me. So, um, they were just kids and eventually, and so that whole year I worked at Rafferty's, um, now longer, so I didn't have to coach, I wasn't coaching a crew team in the afternoon. But by then I had made really close friends with all the Mexicans that, excuse me, the Mexican guys who did food prep in the basement of Rafferty's. Um, I'd become really close with, um, and played in a soccer league with them on a team called Pumas. And I speak enough Spanish to get by. And they taught me all the bad words, the malas palabras and all the curse words. And I mean, there's some of my closest friends and I still am friendly with two of them that live in town twenty-some years later. Um, and have raised families here and I've gotten their proper, whatever you want to call it, your right to live here. 

55:17

Um, most of them at the time were undocumented and left undocumented, and a lot of them have stayed and contributed to New Brunswick and have raised their families here. Um, and so that's also a huge part of kind of loving New Brunswick and not being afraid of the culture that's here, but being a part of it. And I– I mean, we would just play pickup soccer at St. Ladislaw whatever school that is now, but it's like a old Hungarian school and a little paved parking lot. Um, and then Buccleuch Park and Johnson Park and New Brunswick High School, our games were played and it just opened my– I didn't know anything about Mexican culture. Um, and I learned our team had a Mariachi band that played before every game and the– the women of the team, like the girlfriends and wives, I guess they were, would come with tamales, and mangoes and chili powder, and little plastic bags and corn on the cob that was grilled and delicious. And, um, also I learned about they were putting money on our games and you know, there was some cash on the line. So there's a lot of fouls that were, um, shady at best. But it was a lovely, for the most part, uh, experience. I was also like the tallest player on the team, which is racist probably to say, but I was a great striker. They could the ball and I would hit it in ‘cause I was like a foot taller than everybody else. I was kind of fearless and naïve, not fearless I guess, combination. Um, and I played on that team for three or four years and just, um, anytime I saw those guys around town, you know, still will seek them out and say hello and I'm friendly and, um, you know, kinda transitioned out of my Rutgers world into that world of New Brunswick. And then, uh, after a year of waiting, I got hired in Newark, and that was basically a week before my wife and I bought a house in New Brunswick. Um, or the week prior before I signed my contract in Newark, we had just bought a house at Landing Lane Bridge and that was 1997. Um, like we thought it was a 200-year-old house. Um, but it was cheap and we weren't paying some stranger to live in a crappy, New Brunswick rental. Um, and so, we, I mean essentially made our roots more permanent. Um, and we still live in that house now and I've, I have, I'm raising seven-year-old daughters. They're seven years old now. Um, twin daughters and, like, definitely there because of the river and the canal that– that is our front yard. Even though George Street is between us and the canal, uh, we have daily interactions with the Raritan river that still go back to, like, probably my first or second visit and come into the boat house. Um, and we– we wouldn't live, I mean, I don't think we live in New Brunswick. If you lived in a different house, there would be no need or no real draw. Um, because we are the closest, I mean we have the best access to the river in terms of any resident. I think we have to cross one street and there's a crosswalk and then we’re on sixty miles of canal or eighteen or twenty miles to the ocean by water, by, you know, bike, canoe or kayak. And, uh, running paths and cycling. Like I use it also for, I'll go five or six miles out on the canal on my bike and then get onto some more rural roads before trying to brave uh, it's just a nice way to get started on a long ride on the bike rides, like, Pennsylvania or I've ridden to Frenchtown several times on the canal and then back home. Um, and yeah, so that's– that's like a huge– a huge draw. I lost my train of thought though. There's a lot I've got. Okay. So there's one other key thing in there that I have to, yeah, we've also seen the, um, yeah, the floods, people always ask us. Like when we first moved in, I guess ‘98, uh, we moved to ‘97, but ‘97 I think it was hurricane Floyd or Irene Floyd, one of them. There was the water got close. The– I'd seen the, um, the canal sits about twenty-eight feet above, um, the Raritan at our house right in front, and the Raritan and the canal had become one, which means the Raritan was up twenty-eight feet. And then once that happens, um, and we're on the, you know, the beginning of the floodplain. That's Johnson Park and Boyd and then Donaldson Park too. So that water can spread out some, but it was still all the runoff from essentially half of the state of New Jersey was ending up in the Raritan. Um, and we watched, you know, hour by hour as the water's just coming higher and higher. And this is the second year of living in the house. 

01:00:12

And we had the thought to move furniture upstairs and electronic stuff up to the upper floors, cause it got within three feet of coming onto George Street. Uh, and then for perspective to the canal sits, uh, or George Street is about nine feet above the canal, and the canal came up six feet and it was connected to the river. So it was all, you know, it was flooded. All of Johnson Park was completely underwater and the water was about three feet from coming into our basement for sure. And then who knows what, and it was for us, it was, you know, just our second year of living there. So we did just, like, good. We did– we, like, make a mistake and move into, like, a flood-prone area and it doesn't seem like it ‘cause it's twenty-eight feet above the river. Um, you know, barring like a crazy tsunami, there's no reason water should come into our house from– from, you know, a river that's way, way below us. Um, but, and that happened three other times. Two other times, uh, where the canal on the river became one. And that's usually the indication that, um, you know, it was Hurricane Sandy, um, not from rainfall but just from water being pushed up the Raritan and held up by a northeast wind. But the waterline, um, was really close to kind of reverse. Usually the– the runoff from upstate New Jersey piles up and gets backed up and then flows into the canal right around Boundbrook is where at first meets kind of, they're the elevate. As the elevation of the river increases, it gets closer and closer to the towpath and the canal and it usually enters there. Um, and then just the– the canal water is usually pretty clear and it became just like that clay brown reddish brown color. And you know that somewhere upstream the Raritan has entered the canal. And then on Sandy, that never happened. Um, but the high tide came within two feet of pouring backwards into the canal from our end because we're right at the terminal, the new terminal, which should have been the boathouse is where the old terminal the canals, but the new, where that spillway is in front of Buccleuch park, that what it was only about ocean water was only about two feet from coming into the canal, which would have been just kind of astronomical. Like, that would have been a twenty-eight foot surge. And it was probably like a twenty-five foot surge, um, that– that came. But there was no rain sitting on top of that. That was all wind generated. And so had there been eleven inches of rain or sixteen inches, which those other two storms put down, we would have definitely been underwater. So hopefully the– those circumstances aren't met. But it makes for, like, a thrilling, uh, you know, storm experience. And people always call and ask, you know, how's your house? ‘Cause they, you know, friends from around, I'll just be like, they know we're right by the river. Um, even some of my relatives in Virginia, they've seen pictures of the house or whatever. And that'd be like, anytime there's a hurricane up here, they'll just ask if we're prepared that there's been no a, I don't think there's anything we can do. 

01:03:09

So, but, um, I– the other thing I guess like adults, so post– post a rowing career and then starting to teach, I couldn't do, um, paddle sports with moving seats. So no legs up and down, motion of my legs, uh, killed me. So running and cycling, um, were huge factors. I could– I could still do that to stay fit. But kayaking, kayaking, I guess got really trendy to like, seems like everybody had, like, a kayak on the roof of their car there. And like the early 2000s and a friend of ours had a kayak touring business down in LBI. So he hooked us up with a couple of boats and he was a roommate of ours, um, at the house that we currently live. And we rented out some of the rooms to grad students that were friends of ours to help pay for the mortgage. And, um, so he had a couple of kayaks and I had– we bought a canoe up in Vermont. Um, once we bought the house, we went on vacation in Vermont and bought a canoe, came home with it, and then we– I would go out on the canal or the river at least twice a week for a good five or six years. And then I got really into mountain biking, really into cycling. But at first, like just being in the canoe, we would always paddle upstream. Not always, but we would paddle generally upstream on the canal to about Rutgers Prep, which is two miles from our house. There's an easy access to the river and the high tide stops affecting the river about a mile past our house. So it's a mile west of our house. And so at low tide you're going to hit the rocks on the bottom. 

01:04:44

There's like little, uh, kind of clay shelves or sandstone, I guess it is. I don't, or shale. It's gotta be shale, um, where there's some little minor rapids at– at lower tides or with lower rainfall. But with a plastic boat or aluminum boat, you can scurry over that or get out and just shimmy the boat over those little areas. But, so we would paddle up and then float down the river and get out and just walk the boat, um, up onto the canal. And I locked it up right in front of the house, and then we'd cross the street and home and I would just bring the paddles in the, uh, life jackets. I don't think we use life jackets, but we did a lot of that. And we paddled downstream, um, a lot of kayaking at night, which was fun, like, going under the Albany Street bridge or the train bridge with the green and red starboard and port lights on the underpasses of the bridge, which she can only see by boat, which is just kind of like a romance, nautical-type thing to do the bridge. All of it looks different by night. Um, and then, uh, the friend of mine who led kayaking tours was also great at just, um, being just, he's like a real naturalist. Like we would go kayaking and stuff that I had never paid attention to. He would point out like there's a ring-billed gull, there's a great black-back gull or the biggest seagull, like, just not in like just made it exciting, like, birds that I would never pay attention to or, you know, like a lot of terrapins and turtles and stuff that he was into. He could point out, or we pulled up some old crab traps that had snapping turtles trapped in them accidentally, and he had wire cutters and he would clip those out and free them or diamondback terrapins even. Um, there were seals and there is also– we would the destination, the cool destination in the cool punk rock kayaker destination was the Mary Murray, which was the Staten Island ferry that was parked that you could see if you went over the turnpike and looked east on the river. There's a big yellow Staten island ferry parked for as long as I can remember. Um, my– all my New Jersey memories is, I don't know when it actually got put there. And there was a yacht that belonged to the Shah of Iran. This is what I've been told. Friend is a friend of ours. So that's where we laid anybody that came. We would go kayaking there and that's like a two or three-hour trip and you have to time it with the tides, ‘cause you can't get home if the tide is going. It came back to our house. A low tide, really the highest you can get is basically the train bridge and a kayak. Um, and shipping vessels could only get to the boathouse. That's why that the terminal of the canal is there because, at low tide, that was the highest point upstream any boats could offload or unload their cargo from the canal and then they cannot get you to inland New Jersey all the way to Trenton or Philly, um, by waterway. 

01:07:29

But if we didn't time the tides right, we would have to either get out and wait for the incoming tide to give us enough depth to paddle home. Or we would get out and drag our kayaks up all the little rocky sandbars, or get out and walk on the trench path that runs along Route 18 with kayaks on shoulders. Or we could ditch the boats, run home, drive a car and come get them. We'd done that once but probably fifteen or twenty trips with different people that were visiting down to the Mary Murray ‘cause they all wanted to see it up close. But one guy was a photographer, a friend of a friend. I still have, like, black and white photos that he took of the Mary Murray that I should get somewhere on exhibit for, for the LWRP, Lower Rar– LRWP, got to get it right. Um, anyways, so all experiences like lots of, um, time on the Raritan and as adults, not as competitive rowers, but like 20-something years old, just going out on an adventures, cold, like February, it doesn't matter. Even better if there's like ice flow around to just, um, make it seem more romantic and cool. Um, that also hot summer days we did. And, uh, we have done a– left a car and Key Port and then drove back and paddled down to Key Port, a friend of ours and Jill, my wife, the three of us did it. And, um, we got to the train bridge down by Perth Amboy, between South Amboy and Perth Amboy with the incoming tide. And we were not able to really move, like, we were going out towards Sandy Hook, but the incoming tide on from the Raritan Bay getting channeled into the river at that point as things getting narrow got just like paddling on a treadmill. And, uh, my wife's spirits were low, and I remember we just had to get like another two miles to keep port, but we, that took seven hours from here. Um, but it was beautiful and cool and salty and, uh, saw porpoises up in that right before the garden state. The Driscoll Bridge I guess is that the Driscoll Bridge? The Garden State Parkway Bridge. Um, and I've seen porpoises out there several times on the crew team. Seals porpoises. A just weird for– is that what you expect? There's also really cool. Um, I guess it was a, I mean it looks like a type of cogeneration plant power plant or something down there that's got beautiful brick works. We called it the bread. Maybe they didn't make bricks, I don't know. But it was one of the landmarks for when we were rolling on that. 

01:09:56

The crew team that's down there past South River, it's probably in Sayreville on the Raritan, this huge monstrous, um, industrial looking thing. But it looks like it has space aliens from space invaders in the brick works. Just a really cool thing is still there. Um, so that was a big landmark to look at. There's osprey and eagles’ nest down there now. Um, but, um, all that, there's a really interesting industry, former industry between South River and here, just old wharves and remnants of– of, you know, like a bygone shipping era or whatever. Um, and then I guess, so that was like pre– pre-kid enjoyments of the Raritan and then, um, just so much time on the canal. Um, just for walks and bird watching. I– and the guy who I went kayaking with got me interested in birds really. And I got like a good pair of binoculars and just started noticing. I'm, like, I'm hyper observant myself anyways, but not necessarily for– for things like that. Um, and I've also– I've become a science teacher. Like my– my first year of– I taught all subjects that third graders. And then, um, my second year of teaching I taught sixth grade science ‘cause I think it was harmless. My principal knew that I suck so bad at teaching that he could put me in a science classroom.

01:11:26

Which was not a state-assessed year. It'd be like this is a safe place for you. But I ended up loving it and excelling at it. And I've– I've been teaching science a really well. I teach, like, eighth grade bio or ninth grade bio now. Um, and I've done really well on the eighth grade state assessments for the last fifteen years. And I teach computer science too. But I– I'm– I don't want to demystify everything in the world by naming it. But I also like looking at birds or just things in nature and knowing what they are and that they're in the right place. And that they're indicators of a healthy environment. So like if you see an osprey or a bald eagle, osprey more than a bald eagle, but or like herons, um, that there's– they're there for a reason. They're preying on something that means that lower parts of the food that had been food chain are intact. And if you don't see those things, it means it's a dead environment. Usually if there's no top predators, either they've been hunted to extinction or there's nothing there offering them energy. So when I started rowing on the crew team, there was no wildlife. Um, and then I guess like my– I remember one kid pointing out at some point, he's like, “Hey, that's an osprey.” And he was from, like, Cape Cod and said, you know, like, he– it was the first person that just was like, oh, that means that the rare ones, like, doing okay, it's not dead. And, um, yeah. Ever since– since I went with, uh, Andrew who told me about the black-backed seagulls, I've been naming birds daily. I mean, it's basically how I tell what time of year it is now based on the birds that visit the Raritan or the canal. 

01:13:08

Uh, even as recently as this morning and last night there was a black-cap night heron sitting on the spillway as we pulled in from my daughter's school last night, which usually means that summertime, I mean they– they come here in the summer, they go as far, they go to like the Caribbean. They're beautiful and exotic looking little, I mean they're two feet tall, uh, but great blue herons, alzheim, osprey, cormorants and then like these, uh, ring-necked ducks, golden eyes, a hooded merganser, common merganser with their winter feathers on, come buffleheads, like, late November, Thanksgiving around then. These black and white little ducks that look like, to the naked eye, just look like ducks. But if you get binoculars on them and you can just see like that, they're not from here, they're these migratory waterfowl that, um, you know, just are something to look forward to. Kind of marked the passage of time to, um, they're there for a couple months. And then if the river freezes solid, they head further south, and if the river doesn't, they stay a little bit longer. And, and, um, also just like if people knew that these things were out there, these kinds of exotic visitors, maybe they're not exotic, maybe they are common, but I just feel like, to me there, um, you know, they're not from here, but they need– they need here. They need to rest here and they need to, they need the Raritan. I dunno. Uh, I like knowing that and also just we've had, um, when the river freezes up our house, there's usually a couple of pools that stay unfrozen, just cause the moving water underneath that. I guess I've seen it frozen solid too. Uh, but hundreds of geese gather. Canada geese gathering, like, these holes and the eagle, there's– there's– the last five years there's been eagles. 

01:14:56

I named them Archie and Eddie. It's probably a male and female pair, but they have male names but, or whatever. But they, Archie or Eddie will hang out right by the goose. Uh, you know, there's hundreds of geese and they'll just wait. And I've seen them, ‘cause I cross country ski on the canal too when it's snow covered, and I've been out there in snowstorms and seen them grab a goose and then the carcass is laying there. And then I've seen foxes picking at the carcass, like National Geographic stuff right across from the– I hop on Easton Avenue that's just out of sight from, like, the world that I see is this beautiful, you know, like a nature show. And then there's just Easton Avenue and, you know, the rest of New Jersey. But right here out of everybody's eyes is this world happening. And so I know it's happening all the time, but the few times I've seen it, I've been, you know, I feel lucky. Like, that's my, again, like, just, uh, adds currency or value to, like, why, why we choose to live where we live and why we love our house, why we're spending 55 or $60,000 re-siding it right now to make it so it lasts longer and it's historically accurate, and hopefully someone will get to enjoy it later. Um, for the same reasons that we enjoy it now. And then my daughters have like a properly sided house to grow up in cause it has like 160-year-old cedar siding on it. But, um, and then all this stuff in between. So, like, there's the birds and kind of the big easy things to see. But also the– the walks that I go on with my girls and we just go, we call them snail walks or we just said, let's go look for snakes and frogs. And we take stock of what we see on every walk. Um, when we go rain or shine or snow or whatever. And, uh, like for Father's Day we were out and we also pick blueberries and raspberries from our canoe where nobody else can reach them. 

01:16:48

So that's, like, a special bonus of– of living there. Um, but they know, uh, I have, like, a picture of a baby snapping turtle in one of my kid's hands from last Sunday. Um, that's the size of like a quarter. So, like, little stuff like that. Um, just tons of eastern water snakes. We see the foxes. There's a little family of foxes down there behind the Harrison Tower, which no, none of the residents of the Harrison Tower know about. There's deer, um, the orioles or the northern orioles arrive usually in May and they're super whistled and chirpy and they build crazy looking nests. They'll just look like, I mean, they look like avocados I'll say, but in avocados, like something else. But they, uh, that's what they, they build their nest like that. And you know, they're here, which is also an indicator, like a time passing thing. Like this bird arrives. And I know that it's, like, May, um, and my daughter's noticed in one of the first things they were ever able to identify as lichen from the towpath, and just they would pick up sticks and just be like, “Papa, this is lichen, and look at the lichen,” and I don't know why that stuck. And then American Sycamores, the trees that grow along, you know, they look like kind of wintertime camouflage their bark and they have very conspicuous seeds that, um, when they hit the ground, they burst into little, like, umbrellas, like dandelion seeds almost. But there they can be, they can, whatever, they love them and they know those trees and they, that was like when they were three years old, they could point out, “This is a sycamore tree.”

01:18:20

I don't know if they know any other, I don't really know any other trees either. But they got, it's just part of like they definitely, it's going to be in their DNA. Um, like their memories of the canal and the river, um, cause they run a running stroller every day. My wife, the entire time that they were growing and developing, um, were either being walked or run in a– one of those Bob running strollers along Johnson Park. Um, for the first, anytime my wife had to run alone, she ran in Johnson Park by the river because the spillway was not passable by yourself with a stroller. The water was going over these historic rocks that they refuse to put, like, an easy passage for a wheeled vehicle, like bikes or whatever. Most people didn't go on the canal or the towpath just because it was, like, impossible until two or three years ago when they put down some gravel, which is all it would've taken. Um, when it was, when we were, like, on Saturdays and Sundays, if I was home, we would carry the stroller over the water part of the canal, get our feet wet maybe or just take what rubber boots with us and put them in the bottom of the stroller and then run. Um, but those girls have, you know, definitely three quarters of the days they've been alive. I've been on the canal or in Johnson Park on the river. Um, they learned to ride bikes there and they still now they're big enough that day while we run, they ride their bikes next to us and nature walks and they– they– they– they, the account turtles, like every time we go they just keep track of all the wildlife that they see and stuff like that. Um, and now flowers, wild flowers are big for them. I'm coming back. I don't know where they learned the word bouquet, bouquet, however you say it. They collect flowers, are definitely experts on poison ivy. Um, ‘cause my wife is kind of neurotic about not letting them get on the green part of the canal ‘cause it's just loaded with poison ivy. But to get to flowers, the honeysuckles, um, off the canal and far to greater quantity, um, and just, yeah, and it's gonna– it's part of their– their DNA. Uh, the only thing we haven't done, which I want to do is sail on the Raritan. Um, we– we had a beach house in Sandy, Hurricane Sandy destroyed. It was in Seaside Park on Barnegat Bay. There was my wife's family's just a little kind of modest bungalow thing, but nine feet of water came through it. And then we– we had spent as teachers, my wife as a teacher for many years too. We spent our summers down there, um, in between travels or whatever, but we had summers off. We’d go there quite a bit. And then our girls were six months old when Hurricane Sandy came. And that house is no longer there. We still own the property, but, um, for family and insurance reasons we haven't rebuilt and it's really up to my wife's mom. Um, but 

01:21:13

the heartbreak is, like, I miss having my girls grow up there, but it's also forced us to spend more time in New Brunswick and consider, like, I used to sail on Barnegat Bay every day when I wasn't surfing out in the ocean. And so now I have my, I have a sailboat here and I have one down in Virginia at my folks' place that I want to bring up here. I just need a truck that can pull a heavy boat with a trailer. But I would love to be sailing out here as part of people's experience of the Raritan. I think if you see, like, the crew team, it's a lucky day. Like if you're out on the river and you see crew boats go by, it's like, “Oh, that's a cool thing to be doing on the river.” But if you see someone kayaking, like, “Oh, I didn't know you could kayak here, maybe I should go kayaking.” If you see people sailing it go, “Maybe, maybe I should sail.” And so I think one of those, you know, like it would be good to– to show people that it's a safe river to be in and not be afraid of it and know that it's deep enough and windy enough to say at least to some fishing or something like that, that you don't need huge, there's no really low bridges. The unfortunate thing is to properly sail from here out to sSandy Hook. You do have to, like, radio in to the NJ transit to lift the train bridge or rotate the train bridge down by Perth Amboy. It's not a– it'd be really cool if it was a– a clean shot in terms of bridge clearance from here to Sandy Hook. ‘Cause like motorboat folks too would probably be more inclined or myself, I wouldn't, you know, I would be inclined to possibly get like a little Boston whaler and keep it on a boat trailer and take the boat out to Sandy Hook for the day instead of driving. And so you're on the water the whole way or just Raritan Bay and just go out in the bay, but to sail from here down to like Perth Amboy and back or just take, you know, like that that's a historic kind of a route. Unfortunately, like, there's a lot of landfills between here and there, but they're not as ugly as they used to be. They've done a lot down there. But, um, that's what I hope to if, if, you know, we ended up not ever using Barnegat Bay again, it'll force me to sail here and spend more time, um, doing summer kind of coastal activities right here instead of thinking you have to go down, down the shore. 

01:23:29

Um, you know, and if I do it, then maybe someone will see me doing it, and then maybe they'll want to come sail or whatever, build that kind of momentum. So, um, how am I doing? Okay. Still, I'm trying to think of what else is relevant. Uh, in terms of context of my, I mean, I'm hearing myself, I realize I– I don't give, I haven't given the river enough credit for who I am. And my wife to, she for sure. Um, we'd love looking out of our bedroom. I mean I do bedroom windows, you can see over the traffic and under the electric lines and all you see is water and trees. And in the winter it's really clear and you can just see, I mean, I mean daily now we have bald eagles flying by and they have a new nest in Johnson Park that's, it's kind of closer than their old or there was a different pair maybe, but it's also peregrine falcons, um, that are coming from the colony house. I think there's a nest of peregrine falcons there. But, um, I dunno the other– the other thing, I guess the other path to take from here is the, the historic path, which is, um, our house is the Condover– Voorhees Condover house, which is dates to the 1850s. Um, we thought it was a lot older when we bought it, but it's kind of a Greek Revival House, um, which we love ‘cause it had two fireplaces. Um, and when we got it, it was like just beautiful and amazing. And I'm not into bulldozing stuff and building new, I like to reinvest in old infrastructure. And so we did, we got together enough money for a down payment and we bought, you know, we were still paying for it, but either way, uh, our neighbor's house is probably fifty years older. Um, and two Thanksgivings ago, this is just an interesting story that a man appeared and his wife, um, or a man and a woman. I didn't know their relationship, but they appeared in our woods on Thanksgiving Day. We have– it's not even our woods. We have a tiny, like, less than a quarter of an acre of land, but next to us there's some, um, some rubble that's been overgrown with trees and everything. It's kind of, uh, probably about an eight– half an acre of just densely forested buffer between us and the traffic lane. Um, but it's nice, like it's nice to have nature there. We have raccoons and possums and deer and stuff that make their way through there and all kinds of, everything in between. But this man and this woman were in those woods. I have a path that goes to the stoplight through there. And they approached the house and they went around to the front and then I saw one of them across the street and one of them was on our front porch getting his picture taken. 

01:26:16

So my whole family was up from Virginia. We went out front and I introduced myself as the homeowner and if I could help them. And he just started talking. He said his wife, uh, had ancestors that lived in this house or they used to own this house, and they were very interested in the history around this area and said that they were Condovers. There's a couple tombs right here of– there's of those descendants or she's descended of them, those ancestors. Um, we're talking and I started talking about, you know, he had never really seen the canal and it didn't really seem like he knew much about the history. I thought they were just doing like one of those ancestry.com kind of family trips or something. So we're talking and there's a foundation of an old house in our backyard too. That was, um, I think a stone house, the last two story stone house in New Jersey or something ridiculous, some weird architectural fact like that. But the foundation is still in our backyard. Totally covered in Ivy, English Ivy. But anyways, I was talking all about the canal and where it goes and why it ends, where it does and how much time I'd spent on the river and what a gem it is and nobody knows about. It's Jersey's best-kept secret. And he's like, “Oh, you know a lot about history more than I do and as well,” whatever, you know, I live here in that– I've lived here a long time, so you just end up knowing these things. And then he said he lived in the colony house, which is the apartment behind us. And I was like, “Oh, that's cool. What floor?” ‘Cause my brother-in-law knows somebody that lives there. It's like the penthouse. I was like, “Whoa, okay, that's cool.” And we went our separate ways. Said nice to meet you. And then he– before we left, he's like, “Can I take your phone number in case I have some more historical questions to ask?” It was like, sure. So like a month goes by, he calls back, I don't recognize the name on my phone or anything, so I hang up on him and call back again. And he's like, “Hey, this is Bob from the Colony House. I would love to have you and your wife and kids come up to the penthouse and, like, take a look of how the world looks from up here,” which is like 23 stories up. Um, and so we did not enough it was like as like I brought my wife and kids as collateral ‘cause I thought like this guy was, he's like on the– he's kind of like you first appearance, he's accentric. Um, and I was like, am I, is this going to be my last day on planet earth? 

01:28:24

Like is this a weird invitation to have? I don't know anybody that lives in a penthouse. So I was a little skeptical, but also I'm, like, optimistic. And I was like, all right, let's do this. So we go up there and he was the nicest man in the world and they have a lovely apartment. He's a member of the New Brunswick Historical Association, and he wanted me to be a member of the New Brunswick Historical Association. And he only moved here four years ago from Arizona. Um, but because his wife has a lot of Jersey history, mostly South Jersey, but New Brunswick, Jersey history too. He just loves everything about New Brunswick and the history in particular as it relates to the American Revolution and George Washington's time here. And he's done a ton to get a national attention on New Brunswick as we approach the whatever, 250th anniversary of the American Revolution and all of that kind of foundational postcolonial America stuff. Um, but anyways, he got me mayoraly appointed to the New Brunswick Historical Association. And you know, I think, I mean, I'm–  I'll be 46 on Monday, but I think, like, they needed some younger folks in there and they're like 45 is not that young. But there's two of us that are 45 when I, uh, generally I'll also live in an old house on Line Street, but like getting homeowners of old houses that are not landlords to rent out to. Um, there's three of us on the historical association and four of us now that live in old homes in New Brunswick and, and, um, that too has been like a new, um, kind of chapter in this. Like we always loved our house for its convenience to the river, and it's a money pit and we fix it up, and stuff breaks and you fix this and something breaks and– but we now have like this historical perspective, which never really occurred to me before that, um, there's a lot of, a ton of history right in that corner where we are, um, that relates to the Raritan like there was, I mean a rare landing was on both sides of that. 

01:30:21

There were several inns and taverns on our side and Landing Lane Bridge. And on the other side, there's still remnants of wharves, uh, in front of our house on the– on the river, because at the high tide mark, that's as high as shipping vessels could get, so that if they didn't want to offload or on load here at the boathouse, they could wait for the incoming tide of the high tide and get up at least to Landing Lane, um, and do their– their business there. Um, but there was like the Condover Wheelrites, like someone who fixed wagon wheels, uh, for horse and buggies or for the– the barges for the– the mules. Um, there's two too, like, oh, there's a stone, there's a brick foundation right on the river in front of her house. That's all in ruins. But that had to have been, I think it dates probably from the 1800s, but it– it could be older. Uh, the canal I think is from 1830, 1834, sort of as finished, 1838, something like that. Uh, and then, uh, in front of her house, too, on the river facing side. And then now there's these two vaulted arches that are, have been, they're just filled in with dirt and tree roots and all this. But there would be a really cool thing to excavate. Um, but the idea is that I've found on these old maps that there are several foundations of old houses there. The River View House that belongs to J&J also has Native American burial, uh, mountains on their property, which should be in every New Brunswick tour guide. And it's not ‘cause it's on, like, corporate private property, but that building our house, our neighbor's house, there's another one that are all there that I feel like should be part of like a historic corridor or something just related to river life and canal life. The canal would've been, like, a lot of the houses predate the canal and then our house. Any, any, any house that's kind of wrapped in Greek revival or Neoclassical architecture is usually built on a canal. And canals were like the spirit, like towns like Sparta and, um, Iona and Syracuse, Ithaca that have Greek names all have, they're all on canals like the Erie Canal. And the Delaware and Raritan canal, the Morris Canal, they– this is what I learned as an Art History student in architecture. But like all– all the spirit of the times, it was like, um, we're going to build canals and then it makes sense for some reason also that, like, these towns that are all along there are named after these Greek places. And then we should have Greek architecture all along the canals and they're kind of, you can see that if you travel any of these east kind of northeast canal cities, a lot of just white and black houses with columns out front and little dentals up on top that are just a nod to Greek architecture. 

01:33:05

And our house is one of those. And it could be our house had an addition put on and it could be an older-style house that was really playing and then kind of wrapped in Greek revival clothing. Um, when that was in vogue, um, and our, we also found out our house was built, um, as a, like, mother-in-law's cottage for our neighbor from our neighbors house. Like the Voorhees Condovers lived or the Voorhees lived next door and I guess married a Condover and the mother-in-law. They built a house for her next to the original house and that's what our house was. It was just a two story, really simple house. Um, but it has a been added onto but still historically accurate. Nothing's been taken from it. And so probably could qualify for some type of a historical significance. All you need is like a model. You don't have to have some, like, George Washington didn't have to have slept there for it to be historical. It just needs to have like, um, extent architectural features from the time that it was built. So, but that's been kind of like a– a reinvigorating, um, uh, you know, one, it's– it fills my need to get involved with politics without getting involved with politics. Like, I feel like I'm contributing to my community ‘cause I kind of have a split personality, because I've devoted, uh, my professional career to teaching in Newark. But I live in New Brunswick and it would be so much easier to teach in New Brunswick and contribute here. But I love Newark and I've come of age as a teacher there. And it's a huge part of my life and I've seen that grow and change so much too. Um, while I've been there and I've seen so much growth and change here, uh, in New Brunswick too, and I just feel kind of split between Newark and New Brunswick and I want to be closer to my daughters during the day. But I also, I don't know, I love, um, like I love where I work, so I– I want to make sure I've got, uh, I dunno, when I come home, I feel like sometimes I'm on vacation cause I get to go canoeing or I get to go for a run on the canal and just be in nature far away from any urban setting.

[End of Recording One]

[Beginning of Recording Two]

00:01

You can keep going. 

00:03

So I guess the, um, that being involved with like the just, um, the historical association has opened my eyes. Like, I was really naive. I thought I knew some stuff without doing any official research and I just threw whatever. Um, I– I, um, thought I knew some stuff about New Jersey and New Brunswick. I mean I've also fallen in love with, you know, like New Jersey is home to me. And the other thing that's significant that I didn't mention, uh, twenty-three years ago, my wife and I drove across the country. She graduated from college. We went on a sixty-three-day– after I was done my first year of coaching crew I had no job really. Um, I was, I mean I was working at Rafferty's but I took off for the summer and I, we drove across the country, did everything you could possibly do as far north as Alberta, Canada, Vancouver, Joshua Tree, all the national parks. And we were basically looking for another place to live. Like do we want to go? Let's just see what the United States looks like before we go travel all over. She had been to Europe several times. I'd never been. Um, I was like, let's go see what's out there. And I feel like both of us, we were 22 or 21 years old at the time, but we both got on Route 18 after sixty-three days of traveling, and whatever the smells were or whatever was in the air. We were just like, this is home. Like, New Brunswick is home. This. We were like, it feels good to be home. And I, and for me, I'd spent eighteen years living in Virginia and only five years in New Jersey. But I knew that I was home. It's like where I became a man, that's where I came of age. There was also no internet or social media with daily reminders of what you did yesterday or a year ago or thing that you could, you could actually be someone different than you were in high school or a year ago in college. Or you could evolve without daily reminders of, you know, whatever– whatever's on social media, but you could escape your past essentially and become someone. And so like that, then it was just like figuring out what we're, how we're gonna make a living here and call it home. So that was really significant. And then, I guess with the historical stuff, um, now just, you know, caring about like, I know what I see, I want other people to see what I see and– and like usually that involves, it doesn't have to be just, um, through education. But I, I've– I've been– I've taken school trips to Charleston, South Carolina. We did environmental, uh, boat tours. This guy had a, he was just like Crocodile Dundee, but he was on a pontoon boat that had like bench seats for like forty people. And it was basically a floating classroom. And we went out to these barrier islands outside of Charleston, um, that are undeveloped, uh, and just east coast nature as it should be. Um, but just how even the boat ride out there. Like, even if we just took boat rights here on the Raritan and then talked about the Raritan watershed. I feel like getting kids, um, to know that when it rains, where their water goes, where that rain run off. Just anybody inside the watershed, the Raritan watershed should, should come to New Brunswick and take a boat ride out to Sandy Hook and back, or just ‘cause that's where it's titled, you know, that's where it's at sea level. Um, and then if not, I mean also there's people that have canoed through Ken Lockwood Gorge down to, uh, which is like the north branch of the Raritan, or the south branch. I don't know which branch, but there's two, you know, there's lots of rapids and waterfalls and all this stuff. This, it's only, you know, doable by canoe. But people have canoed those links of the Raritan to New Brunswick cause it gets here and it gets industrial and they're put off by it. You know, it's like I don't want to do the title and that's cool. 

03:54

Like, the Raritan has both of those, those aspects. I also feel like the Delaware and the Raritan are like two, two of the longest undammed rivers in the country. So, but, um, either way. So I've like, um, I guess my, I– when I turned 36, I had then spent more than half my life in New Jersey, um, or 37, so 18 years in Virginia, 18 years in Jersey and that was 10 years ago. So, um, I just, the– the– the history of New Jersey that is lost on the rest of the world, like, the, I mean, um, even my uncle came up here from Virginia and he didn't understand why, um, when I went to college and I graduated, I didn't go back home as he called it, you know, to Virginia and I was like that I, it never occurred to me to go back home. I was escaping Virginia and he had never visited in New Jersey and only heard what most people associate or think of New Jersey as I did too. When I was in high school. I only had bad impressions of it or whatever. And, um, he came and visited and he understood immediately as soon as he saw the canal and we took them for a walk. He's 70 years old or 68 years old and went out there and he saw our house and how close we were. And he's a fisherman and he's like, ah, like twenty-five years later, it's like, I totally understand why you never, and that just made me feel good. Like that made me feel right. That, um, you know, I mean there's just, there's like a huge thing. I mean, I felt like New Jersey hasn't on a larger scale, but like the Raritan too has like this, um, forgone conclusion that it's just something to avoid or stay away from. It is not a destination and if it is, it's a secretive one. Like, people that know about it, that enjoy it, uh, do so usually in solitude or in very small numbers, it's not something that's, like, celebrated or well known or there's, you know, there's a– of course this highway that divides the city from it is not an easy thing to overcome. As lovely as Boyd Park has gotten since the time when I was first, you know, on the crew team here. Um, Boyd Park was just, I mean we discovered two bodies. They're like on our way to crew practice one morning at the Albany Street kinda overpass there. Um, and it was mostly poison ivy and not a smooth canal path or to watch a crew race now from the canal is lovely and amazing. You can see every stroke for the second thousand meters of the race. Where's where, you know, the– the victor is determined. You can see all of that from Boyd Park, whereas before it was just poison ivy and a wasteland of weeds and whatever. 

06:39

And so, I don't know all that. Um, you know, I feel like the– the– the infrastructure to enjoy the river is much better, or the access or whatever the way points, um, to get down there is much better now. ‘Cause the only other way they used to use stuff to cross Route 18 or Albany Street was the only way you could get to the boathouse from. And we all have kids on the crew team, rode bikes to practice or jogs and, um, and it was just not, not, there was no easy access from Cook or Douglas. There's a stoplight at Commercial Ave I guess, but the, um, it's so much easier now, but there's no, like, guy down there renting canoes or, like, there should– I feel like there should be something like that. Um, just, just permanent, you know, like to get people out there, and people ask me all the time when I'm on the canal and canoeing, they just, walkers will be like, the, “Is that a rental? Where, where can I get a canoe?” And I'm just like, “No, I own it. I live on the on the canal.” But that's also like a– another retirement dream is to have, like, a bike and canoe rental right at Landing Lane. Um, and because just a three speed, not even, you need the– the canals flat, so you don't even have, there's no hills. So just like to rent bikes and get people out on the canal, um, and get people on the river or the canal in boats. And the other thing that'd be cool to like fix up an old barge or, you know, there's replicas of the barges that used to frequent, and you can put an electric motor on it ‘cause gas engines are banned on the canal, but it's an electric motor to move slowly, like ten or eleven people at a time and just give historic tours along the canal or something like that. 

08:20

Um, unfortunately it goes to like people's backyards. So I don't know if it'd be, you'd have to get a lot of petitions, but I feel like it's, you know, there's the foundation for all that type of stuff is exist. But, um, and I guess the other, I mean the, Oh, so the bigger thing, the American, so 250th anniversary, this is what, like, I– there– there is some pressure, there's some impetus here because, um, the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution is six years away now. And Philadelphia, New York, Virginia, like down at the battle of Yorktown, they're all doing, like, huge public celebrations and people are gathering already. They're making hotel reservations for the 250th anniversary to go to Philly, to go to New York, or to go to Yorktown. And Yorktown just restored that whole battlefield, too. There's a whole new visitor center, uh, where the, I guess the final, the final throes of the British war. But the New Jersey was on like the Rochambeau retreat route it went right through New Brunswick. Well, like Washington was in New Brunswick eight times. Alexander Hamilton was here once. Um, and the Washington crossing the Delaware moments, uh, is arguably like the moment that without which this country wouldn't exist. And it was from New Jersey to Pennsylvania. And then there's no, I mean, like that's a famous painting and people are like, but they don't think, oh, that's famous painting of New Jersey. It's a famous painting of Washington crossing the Delaware, which is the border between New Jersey and Pennsylvania. But nobody gives, like, it's like the Delaware gets all the credit in that moment in history. And I feel like the, um, the moment, like if, I mean New Brunswick in particular stands to benefit, but Perth Amboy too, which has the second– there's two standing English governor's mansions from colonial times, like, where English governors lorded over us. 

10:32

Um, because we didn't have our own government yet, and that mansion, that proprietary house in Perth Amboy, it still– still exists, the only other one’s in North Carolina, but it's like nobody knows about that. And if, like, you drive up the Turnpike, there should be a sign that says, “Get off here to go see the last standing English governor's mansion.” British people should be coming here to see it or would, you know, like any history nerd, um, even if they're not even, if you're into, like, civil rights history or any American history. Uh, but like our country wouldn't be a country without kind of the New Jersey portion of that story. And Washington's retreat from, like, the Battle of Harlem Heights in the Battle of Brooklyn Heights through Newark, through, I mean, eventually New Brunswick. Um, you know, like the– all that is– is here, but no one knows it. There's no, like, corridor or flags of the Rochambeau Retreat Routes that shows that, um, you know, the– the rebels essentially, they camped in Buccleuch Park. There's, like evidence that the rebel soldiers were camping right there next to Buccleuch Mansion and– and there's no plaque, there's no little flags along George Street. Half the people, the names of the streets are lost on the Hamilton Street is lost on them. And, um, I mean even George Street and– and all of that. So I feel like the– the, um, I mean just the– the, uh, the port, uh, of New Brunswick too, like that maritime history is not even a thought. There's a huge maritime history here, but when they built Route 18 and they built over there and Burnett Street is gone, all those, like, taverns and inns and all that should be, I mean, there would have been sailors and everything all around these parts. And, um, you know, like what– what's left of the history predominantly is Rutgers. Um, which is also important ‘cause I mean, any– any attention to history is important, in J&J’s history too as part of that. I mean, but half of J&J's history is maritime, like half of what they were, the goods they were moving, they were moving by boat and seaport. And, you know, if we wanted not only get environmentalist and naturalists and all of that, you can get history buffs, um, you know, grab their– those people's interest too, that perk up when they hear nautical stuff or seaport, or just getting a high school and middle school kids and boats out on the river or, you know, the shadow of the canal that's still there. That's like the entrance to New Brunswick. When you come down 18, that has usually just gravel and there's a man who's built a little homeless shelter in there. That should not be the first thing you see when you come to New Brunswick. You know, there should be this really cool kind of maritime thing, a sculpture or a boat that's dry dock, like Mystic Seaport that's just sitting there. But it's, you know, it's not, it's like on like a boat of the time that would have been like a schooner that we would've seen on the Rar– and– and its busiest time or, you know, a replica of that just so, when you drive into town, you're like, “Oh, this was a sea port city, this is a port city. ”

13:57

And then I think there should be, you know, a Raritan brewing company, Raritan brewery, or there should be a graffiti around, or signs that are like some of the murals, like right in the area where I live there's these two concrete walls, and I want one to say Raritan and I want the other one to say Delaware for the Delaware and Raritan canal. And just when people pull up from either Landing Lane or George Street, you're looking at Delaware or Raritan, and just those are Native American names or historical or Delaware's arguable. But the, uh, like just to sorta like in the exit through the gift shop, um, moment where he's like these, you know, Coca-Cola billboards and Budweiser and Lexus or whatever. All these billboards are legal. But then to write something political or that's considered graffiti as illegal or artistic is illegal. That is mind boggling to me. 

14:48

So, like, there's a lot of space that can be used for kind hyping up or drawing attention to, like, those names like Raritan, or there should be, I mean, Raritan Ave is over in Highland Park in Woodbridge. We should have something, a Raritan Street or, I dunno, uh, all those, those, um, kind of more just to grab contemporary residents of New Brunswick and, like, you know, like, um, with a mural or graffiti, just the word Raritan should be, you know, there could be a huge, uh, piece that in a, you know, that says Raritan Landing or whatever wharf. There's names of several different wharves along the river that used to exist that– that, um, you know, just to celebrate those names. Um, I think it would be a cool, I dunno, way to just raise different demographic and age groups awareness of– of the history of the city and then its dependence on the river, I guess. Yeah, I don’t think I forgot anything. How am I doing on time and everything? 

It's one o'clock. We can keep going. Um, more a question of “can we” under convenience in time? I'm fine. I can do anything. Do you have questions that would help guide me. I feel like I'm all over the place. 

Sure. There’s a couple of things I wanted to follow up on. We were– actually yesterday you mentioned the evening fishing, you do that sort of thing. If you can share anything about that. 

16:28

Yeah, I mean that's on the canal specifically. Um, but probably once or twice a week, my friend Matt, um, uh, we– we would go, we'd put the canoe in at our house and just paddle up to Rutgers Prep and then just coast back, um, and just continuously caste, you know, with little lures and catch, uh, I mean tons of largemouth bass, perch, uh, bluegill, white bass, smallmouth bass and pickerel. But the pickerel would always bite the line and get free. They have really sharp teeth. I don't know if you're a fisherman but, um, and we would just go back and do that and just probably catch, you know, ten fish a night and just spend our evenings out there, rain or shine, doing whatever. Um, this is before I had kids and my wife was working and, you know, just, um, a lovely way to spend the evening. But also, like, after teaching in Newark all day as part of my detox of– I mean I love teaching in Newark. I– early on I needed, like, a separation between, like, work and life, and it would either be a workout or to go fishing or also just to make it seem like it's a Tuesday night. Not many other people are out here floating on the– kind of like, I mean the other part of this that is a huge part of who I am is that I like everyday like it's a Saturday or like it's a gift in, like, the same way I coach cruise. Like, every stroke matters as much as the next stroke and matters as much as the last stroke. So I say the same way with days, like, if it's a Monday, like people always, like, look forward to Friday on a Monday. 

18:05

I mean, yeah, they're like, they're in a prison basically. They can't wait until it's my birthday or I can't wait ‘til Christmas or I can't wait until Friday when it's only Monday. And that just means Monday is like a prison and like you're just surviving Monday. And I feel like you should do all the things you can do in a Monday if you're like, you're alive now one time, you only get this date once. You only get this stroke in this boat one time to do it right or to do the best you can. And if you mess up, just do the next one better. But like, um, and that got me through teaching to like one hour at a time. Like I taught like five classes in a day and if the first one sucked, it was like, let me just do the next one better and let me do the next and learn from my mistakes and move on. But not wait. You know, like at seven in the morning, not be looking forward to sixth period. I'd be like, I can't wait till today's over. I would just be like, let me– I can't wait to teach this class and do it as best I can. And that comes from like a whole– that's like Stephen Hawking Brief History of Time philosophy. But it, I think it matters. Um, but anyways, so the fishing thing was very much part of that. Like, and I didn't need, like, an escape or anything. It was just like a really nice way to just be outside. I'm, like, also addicted to being outside. I like the– I can only spend a certain amount of hours inside every day. And so that, um, the fishing was part of that and then, um, more and more he would– I would– I'm a really good canoe paddler and things like that. He's really good at casting and fishing and I hate touching the fish. I've just pretended that I enjoyed it. But, um, eventually he had a kid and didn't have as much time to do that stuff and I got busy with stuff. And got really into cycling and cycling alone. 

19:49

Um, and so I would do that instead. And I just, I think like always, I mean my dad was a big fisherman, but always, even since I was a little kid, I had, like, humanitarian or whatever it is, I don't know, like a soft spot for the poor fish's mouth. As much as I love fishing as, like, I felt bad about doing it, um, then I was somehow hurting them and I probably was. And so like I at, like, some point, probably constant, like about twelve years ago, I stopped eating meat and I had never really had a thought about it before. Like, I didn't care. I was like, these things were, you know, part of our food chain, we have all these different teeth to eat these different types of flesh and fruit and blah, blah, blah. And then at some point I was just like, I'm gonna leave the fish alone. I don't need– I liked– I like to look at them in their natural environment without being hooked through the mouth. So we just became spectators of fish, but we still see pickerel and the bass and all that stuff. And my daughters know the names of them. So, but yeah, that– that– that was the fishing thing. Um, and was that it for that, that experience or is also more about the guy who used to fish down by the boathouse? That guy too. So, I mean, there were several, um, older black men who, um, during– when I was in school in the ‘90s, uh, New Brunswick, um, some population, ‘cause community homes was here, whatever history was here was here, but there was definitely a five to ten fishermen down at the boathouse. And there's a concrete– there was no real fancy park there. Like there is now, it's just a concrete wall.

[End of Recording Two]

[Beginning of Recording Three]

00:03

Cool. Yeah. So they're, like, during– when we were on the crew team, every morning we'd shove off, I mean this just has to do– this is a fishing fishermen story, but the, um, I have a couple actually, but there's a– we would shove off the dock, and usually you warm up in forest, so you're going really slow. Like out of eight rowers, only four of them are moving their paddles. So you're going slowly as we start our practices right by, uh, there's– there was an old wharf, big crown concrete wall, there's probably 200 yards long and usually five to ten fishermen with their lines cast as far as humanly possible into our path where our boat was supposed to go. So we'd always have to go around them. And it was like a standoff. Like the fishermen were not moving their lines for us. They wouldn't be like, “Oh, let me reel my line in for these rich white kids that are coming down in their fancy crew boats.” And these are all, uh, residents of New Brunswick, generally older black men at the time during the ‘90s. And, uh, but often like, they would, um, you know, reel something in and catch it and we would, you know, acknowledge your look or cheer them on or whatever. And they also would cast this, like, and miss us by two feet, like, just to mess with us. But, um, always friendly. I mean, like for the most part, it was just like a little rapport that built up over the years. And you would know, like, the same guys that would have, like, the same kind of greeting. But there was a guy in particular who was only crabbing. He never fished. He just had like a– a one of those, like a bushel, like a wooden bushel of, for crabs. And every time we ever saw him, he usually, he would, uh, he would offer the coach, uh, you know, like I'll give you a dozen crabs. They got extras or whatever it was. Um, and so like, it's one of the other things too. They don't– when I first came here, I didn't– it didn't occur to me that we were even on, like, salt water or that it was salty enough or brackish, uh, tidal to support, uh, blue crabs and then how safe it was to eat the blue crabs. Um, but he was always pulling them up, um, just with the chicken body part of liver usually, or neck, and then would net them. Um, and so it was just a good, like, I dunno, like in– in hindsight, just that the river was alive, even if it was, you know, if the crabs were, had mercury in them. There's also a lot of eels. I mean, daily, like the– the thing we saw more of than anything were eels. Like the guys that were fishing would catch eels. 

02:20

Um, and that– that's common too. I feel like there's stories of Native Americans upstream doing, making weirs, uh, in the river for eels to get caught in and they could just get them. And my, uh, father-in-law grew up in South River and famously caught muskrats and eels in the South River and smoked them. Um, like smoked sausage, not smoked like a cigarette, but smoked eel. Um, they had a smokehouse in their backyard, so I know they were plentiful. Um, and they're probably pretty hardy so they can live, I guess crabs and eels can live in toxic environments, so not the best health indicator, but that the river was not completely dead, devoid of life. Um, even then, um, was– was a good, good sign, just like kind of people using the river in a real way. Um, if this man's feeding himself and, like, there was a saying that one of the gentlemen, um, said that stuck with me. Like, we would get on our bikes leaving practice and maybe go watch them fish or talk to them for a few minutes, these fishermen and we'd like one of my friends, Todd, just like, is that a keeper? ‘Cause it was a tiny little fish and he just said, “If it's big enough to fry, it's big enough to keep,” and clearly he was fishing for food, you know, and like that, um, just stuck with me. Like, ‘cause I always fished by the rules like my uncle Tommy, like if a bluegill is smaller than your hands, you shouldn't keep it. And there are rules for game and wildlife regulations, but these guys were real fishermen, like, they are feeding themselves. And so, um, it just made me aware of, like, the different kind of haves and have nots of New Brunswick, um, at an early moment in my time here. 

03:58

Um, I also got mugged my freshman year and so I learned about the haves and the have nots. Like, three guys beat me up for a quarter on Lewis Street where I lived my first summer and broke my nose and broke my ribs, uh, or broke a rib. And, uh, my, this is crazy. My grandmother on my mom's side, her name's Hazel. She saved quarters, like my whole childhood to give me when I went to college to work for the laundromat. Thanks. So I would have quarters for laundry and I used her quarters to go to Thomas Sweets and buy an ice cream on Sunday night. And that the change that was left was one of Hazel's quarters that these guys beat me up for. But I mean at the time, too, it didn't occur to me that I was like a walking dollar sign. Like there are people that live in New Brunswick and then there are people that come here for a few months to go to school, and the people that live here, um, would just see me as a walking dollar sign. And I also saw in the silhouette of the street lamp at Lewis and Somerset Street, someone getting their head kicked in by the same guys after they dropped me, uh, after they put me in a full Nelson or like a chokehold from behind, the guy asked me, well first of all, he's like, “What time is it? Yo, you know what time it is?” He said to me, and I was like, my foot was on the front porch of my house and I was like, oh God, this is– this is as I answered, I could feel the arm of a guy come from around from behind me around my neck. And then my feet were off the ground and they just smashed me in the face. And then the ribs with a bat or something like a piece of wood. And then there was, I just remember tasting blood and, you know, reaching for whatever's in my pockets. 

05:39

And I was like, I had a meal card from Rutgers, which was no good cause it was summertime and a quarter. And, um, a bank, I had a bank card but it wasn't with me, like, in a– that was in my bank was still in Virginia at the time and whatever. So they got the quarter and then threw it on the ground and left me kind of in a pile. And I walked the other way from my house. I didn't want them to know where I lived. So then as I came back towards my house, I looked at the top of the street, about ten houses down, and they were kicking the guy who I met at Robert Wood Johnson's emergency room where they reset my nose. I met him, he had a footprint on his head. And then years later when I told this story, the same guy who I went fishing with, Matt, it was his friend who we were, he was on his way to the Roxy. I didn't even know about the Melody yet or anything, but we were a block from the Roxy and the Melody. And these guys are about four or five years older than me anyways. But it was just a small world in New Brunswick that night. Me and this other guy bonded because we got the crap beaten out of us by these local kids. Uh, but yeah, that's the, I guess the other part of that, um, that's important is that when I told my dad, I told him like a month later, cause maybe I waited some time, but I had two black eyes and a crooked nose. And, uh, you know, I told him what happened and he and his brother being from southern Virginia, first, the first question you asked me is what color they were. And then said something about bringing a shotgun up here or something like that. And, you know, I just, uh, I don't, I– I understood him, but I also was, like, ashamed and I just said the, you know, like that would never make me want to– Like, they– they wanted me to move back home. That– that immediately– that they knew that New Jersey was what they had all heard about it, blah, blah, blah, and you know, so on and so forth. And so it just made me stronger, wanna dig in stronger and not be afraid of where I live and always have my handouts, um, at least halfway. So like, so there wasn't be, it wouldn't be like haves and have nots, but to be like, I– I don't want– I don't want there to be, like, a misunderstanding between cultures or between people. Like, um, and so like that I would always reach out if someone was willing to reach back. Like, we can meet at least halfway and not be avoiding each other. Like, I'm not gonna cross the street. If I see three black men walking towards me, uh, or in the opposite direction on the opposite side of the street or I'm not going to assume what I, you know, it was just one of those things where I got– I had to prove my parents wrong. 

08:23

I had to prove my dad's racist, southern upbringing wrong. And, you know, like it just sucks to ‘cause he was a garbage man and he was like the only guy that worked, the only white guy in his entire company for his whole life. There might've been one other white guy that he worked with you. I was like, he say his closest friends are black. And the first thing he could think to ask me when I got mugged was what color were they? So I was like, that I think probably also gave me some, um, whatever it is. Uh, I wanted to stay here and prove him wrong. They're, you know, it doesn't like the setting doesn't have to do with it in terms of, like, being mugged. It's just like, I am trespassing as a college student here in this city. Like the– I'm not from here and I don't know the streets and I haven't suffered these streets or suffered the ills of, you know, a hundred and some years of post-slavery America and, uh, you know, so that was, that was another, like, um, New Brunswick moment, but I feel like it was formative. Like, I feel like it just made me love the city more like that. I've, um, you know, like, uh, is my, it's a, I don't even know what you want. I don't want to make it less, I don't want to make it something that's not, but like, uh, it's my city. So, um, yeah, that's the fishermen story. Yeah. I guess the other one, like, there is a guy who I've met on the canal who fly fishes quite often. Um, he lives in the Colony House. He's an older guy and I'm an older guy, said he's like slightly older than me, but, um, it's just nice to see real, uh, like so fly fishermen are probably like, would never be caught fishing with a lure and like tricking fish that are like actually like pretending to do the fly dance. And it's a beautiful thing to see a guy like which is associated with like Montana or upstate New York, like fly fish or Colorado, like just these kind of beautiful bucolic settings and right there on the canal, if you're looking west at sunset and this guy's out there doing his, you know, little fly lower casting, it's just like, this is Montana and it's Colorado and it doesn't, you know, it's like one of those, um, I'm glad he's there, you know, like it's, uh, it just adds, it just, even, it's just for my eyes, it adds value to like where I live and– and, uh, you know, just adds beauty to the scene, if you catch it with the right frames, if you're looking the other way and all you see is the traffic behind him and, you know, the tractor trailers driving on small roads, then it's a different thing. 

10:57

But it's still beautiful in a different way. But, um, and just also like the sunsets from Landing Lane Bridge looking west are lovely. Like the– a lot of times just the reflecting off the Raritan. Even as people, if you'd come off the off ramp, you're out river level almost in the evening and it's just, it looks just the trickle of the river and there's Landing Lane Bridge and the Route 18 bridge are there, and there's usually a bird of some, like, an eagle or something around a heron. There's turtles hanging out, like just, it is a, uh, you know, hidden in the, like a diamond in the rough, literally, like, there is just all this New Jersey going on around it. All this rat race movement of goods and people that right in the heart of it all is, you know, this– this, uh, estuary that's like a nursery for sea life and whatever. It's just right there. And, uh, nobody really gives it credit. So that's my– the fly fishing story. And I have some, I've seen guys come up there and waiters in the evening, in the fall, uh, just Atlanta Lane Bridge catch stripers as long as their legs, like striped bass, three feet long. Um, as they– they follow the tide in, usually at high tide, and there's carp that are also as long as your leg that ride the tide up stream. And they just, you either see like really swift current's from them ‘cause they're huge, powerful, muscular fish. Uh, they usually have ten or fifteen, fifteen or twenty, you know, schools of fish that long. And the first time we ever saw them, we were in a canoe and it looked like a dragon had just swim, swim, swim, swim under the boat with these huge scales. And the head was on one side of the canoe and the tails on the other. 

12:37

And I remember, like, we were in like six inches of water and just not knowing what it was. And I stood up to look down so I could see them better. And there was like twenty of them. And as soon as I stood up, they all just jetted away and just tore the water up. They're super powerful and, um, you know, bottom feeders and maybe disgusting, an oily to eat or whatever, but beautiful creatures nonetheless. And, uh, just let me know too that the river was very alive and we see them, um, now, like we looked for them on purpose. Like I know if we're canoeing and tides coming in, I tell my daughters to, like, “Let's, like, stand up and look for the carp.” And then, um, they're almost always in the same, same little spots. I know where they like to hang out. So, like, that's a cool fish story too from the Raritan. But the stripers in the fall, like seeing guys out there, uh, in the evening, like, you know, fishermen, workers, whoever likes to go fishing, uh, catching huge fish. Um, I've never seen the shad that used to fill the river or some snapper blues they say can migrate up here, like younger blue fish. I haven't seen that, but I've heard people, a guy that I know fished up here and caught them. Um, I guess the most bizarre fishing story has happened in the last two years at night, uh, from our house, there's bright glow of, like, floodlights on the river moving slowly up the river. And I got my binoculars and looked out from our guest bedroom window onto the river and I could make out the silhouette of a man with, like, a bow and Arrow with a line attached to the bone arrow. 

14:09

So as like a guess that's fishing, but they're using the river. Um, I– and I've seen them probably five or six times over the last two or three years, and I imagine they're coming up from South River or I don't know, but it's that high tide in the evening. I mean, one time I was around midnight and I was just like, I can't imagine how much beer they've drinking or drank or whatever. But like, just bow and arrow fishing by flood light was, and I'm sure they're fishing for carp or something that's at that with the high tide. But that's my, like, probably the most bizarre use of the river I've seen. So, yeah. Any other questions to go back on or we're good.

[End of Recording Three]

[Beginning of Recording Four]

00:02

Yeah. All right. So my step dad, Craig, who's been my step dad's since, I think officially since I was 12, but he saved my life when I was 4. He pulled me out of his own swimming pool. Um, but we were across the street neighbors either way. He worked for the EPA. He grew up in Portland, Oregon. He was an engineer doing research out in the Puget Sound in Seattle. And then for the EPA then, or the army corps of Engineers. And then he got kind of a bureaucratic EPA government job in DC for more money, probably, I don't know. But he came east, he had two boys that are twins. They're a year older than me, six months older than me. But they became my stepbrothers. And, uh, the earliest memories of his work life were, uh, drinking water related. Like, he was all into regulating drinking water nationwide and doing, you know, managing all these tests for municipalities for drinking water. But then he got a promotion, which I didn't know the title of or whatever. But I remember on the 4th of July, there was a research festival that used to be like a battleship that the government had converted to a lab called the Peter W. Anderson. That was the name of the boat. And I'm sure he's someone important in the EPA as well. But we went out on this on the 4th of July in New York harbor. Um, I was probably 18 years old at the time. So this is as I'm like, uh, getting ready for college. He's in charge of the marines and estuaries, uh, marine and estuaries for the east coast from like Nova Scotia down to Key West, essentially. Um, any title water and as it relates to dredging and commerce and also environmental protection, uh, for, um, ocean dumping, mine tailings, anything that has to do with, um, you know, probably within a hundred miles of the east coast, uh, to sea and probably ten to twenty miles depending on the river body that is still tidal. 

01:48

Um, inland. He's in charge of. Um, and I, so I mean, I didn't know at the time, but clearly like I think like that I've, we, you know, I have a house that's on a coastal river. Um, I'm in it all the time and we had a beach house on Barnegat Bay and I was in Barnegat Bay all the time and I was in the Atlantic Ocean surfing in Jersey. And we go to the Outer Banks in North Carolina as kids and surf there. And, uh, I have friends that live on the Piscataway or Piscataway River and, uh, New Hampshire, um, between the border of Maine and New Hampshire, also on tidal river tidal water. And we swim there and played there. Um, so I think definitely the, um, the faith that I have in the health of those river bodies and bays that I swim and play in and stick my head under water and all of that, um, have to do with my step dad, Craig's, uh, position in the EPA. But one in particular, uh, when we first bought our house in New Brunswick and we went– we went, took like six kayaks and a couple of canoes upstream pass Rutgers Prep like two miles from my house. Got in the river where there's like a pool and then, uh, a nice little rapid that you can play in. My step dad got out of the boat and swam in the Raritan up there as an EPA guy and he knew all the stats and data and what the Raritan used to be that all the industry had shut down. There's no runoff coming from upstream. As long as you're catching an outward flowing Raritan with, you know, not following a major rainstorm, there's not going to be any reason to fear. And you know, like that I didn't realize it at the time or whatever, but that probably had– has a lot to do with, uh, our enjoyment of the river and also like our need to constantly pick up and clean. 

03:49

Um, the, I guess the most offensive, uh, pollutant now is human garbage. Like, just what litter. ‘Cause since all the industry has ended, just what people put on the ground that ends up in the river, um, is like the, uh, the river's main enemy. And like that's something that can be changed. Like that is easy to regulate. You just have to get people to care. Um, and so I think like the fact that he spent a lifetime, he still works. Um, he's a consultant now for other governments. Um, but he's retired from the EPA. But I think, like, that you make a living fighting, defending, um, something that can't defend itself is in me. And I mean like– like I mentioned yesterday, like my wife and I, when our kids were still in strollers, we'd fill the stroller with garbage. There was, like, little stowage compartments underneath and behind it just going on walks along the river and on the canal. And probably almost monthly, the woods by my house where people just throw stuff. I just finished cleaning the canal bank on George Street by Landing Lane Bridge, which was six garbage bags full of just plastic. And it's annual. Like that's in a year, I get six garbage bags out of there. Um, because so many people, it's just a ditch or some somehow that they can't manage to have the plastic container they bought stay in their car after it's done holding the liquid. It was intended to hold and they have to throw it out into the world and not in a garbage can or we say, I don't understand, but the– anyways, that I feel like, um, it was just built in like anytime I see, uh, just literally like that even say we're running in Johnson Park and I knew there was a garbage can in half a mile. So I carried garbage that I saw someone just threw out there, fast food bag out their window and I just carried it for a half a mile or a quarter mile, whatever, to the nearest garbage can. 

05:41

And like that– that's a daily routine too. But that's got to come from me, I think. I mean, I imagine it's from my step dad's lifelong, uh, career choices and whatever he just got some award to for being like the, uh, and I don't know, he regulates dredging rules now and harbors, the imports that are developing and developing nations so they don't stir up heavy metals and re-release them into the environments and all that stuff. So he's– he's still active and all of that. And I think it's definitely, um, like I said earlier, I benefited from having two great dads for different reasons, uh, letting my stepfather, um, you know, has a huge influence on who I am now. And so it was my dad even, like, he and I mentioned his racist-ness this, but he also was like a great man otherwise, and, uh, you know, sometimes just doesn't know his own, his own ignorance. And so whatever just says humility around, like, making sure that I had a happy childhood, um, and never vilifying or faulting my step dad, allowed my step dad to have an influence on me in a good way too. I also know their faults and I try not to repeat their faults, so I dunno. Uh, yeah, yeah. Step dad, Craig, 

Um, anything you want to leave me with? 

God, I don't even know. 

Um, the Chris Catholic thing is over here. You read that actually, yeah. 

Oh, this is huge. This is actually a great way to end. Um, yeah. Okay. We're still rolling. Right? Okay. I guess there's like four or five years ago. Um, but anyways, um, the– there's a man and his wife, uh, who walked on the– the canal, they still do, they live right up the street from us, but they're always out there. And we would see them pushing our little twin daughters when they were babies and they are the parents of twin daughters as well, but their daughters are now probably 30 years old. 

07:50

And so we kind of bonded over that and talked and, uh, just every time we'd be on the canal, they were usually finishing up the morning walk and my wife and I would be going for a morning run. And it just became, you know, conversation gets broader and broader over time. And the man, how he– he mentioned that he needed me to join the environmental commission, New Brunswick Environmental Commission. And it was like a day after, maybe it was a little bit longer, but I had just been appointed by the mayor to be on the historical association. I couldn't give away that much time. Um, that's like a meeting, you know, one like a late night, whatever, 7:00 to 9:00 meeting once a month. But it would be two meetings once a month. And I just to be fair to my wife and my kids, I was like, I can't and I'm a robotics coach because I can't do it but I'll come to the meetings, I care about the environment. I– I would love to meet like-minded people. So I started showing up to these meetings and when I came to the first meeting, I didn't know, it was like I was like a guest and I shouldn't probably be talking. I was just supposed to be like a concerned citizen listening and all this stuff. But I had planned on like what inspired me most about, um, defending the Raritan I would say. Cause I've like, there's a whole thing of like defending New Jersey, but like defending the Raritan. So like there was a podcast, This American Life, that I'd heard years before about, um, a Rutgers student. Chris Gethard was his name. He's like a comedian now. And, uh, he also had a really funny story, um, earlier than I really enjoyed that he talked about New Jersey and just some of the weird stuff that was, I've believed that was the Mark Marin one. 

09:27

Um, but this one had to do with him going, I guess when like Instant Messaging first came out and like some trash talk had happened on AOL, and he went down to Princeton to confront this person who had said something, uh, offensive on– on the precursor to texting, I guess like chatting, I don't even know. Um, anyways, what he said before, like the, um, when he went on that trip, he was a Rutgers student in like ’98, ‘97. He went to Princeton and couldn't believe that there was like this Hogwarts Castle and Ivy just seventeen miles away. I'm from New Brunswick, which he described. Uh, and the following words, uh, these are his words. He said the view from my dorm was the Raritan River, which doesn't move. It's just like a streak of liquid malaria. And he also, and like, so that, um, that– that perception of the river I feel is not uncommon. Um, I mean, malaria is like not the most accurate word in the fact that it doesn't move cause it's tidal, but I know what he's talking about. Like it looks like a brown oil slick to passers by on the highways or the trains or whatever. It doesn't, you have to be walking or riding a bike or in the river on a boat to see. It's actually a river. And I think, um, I mean that's true of anything like just New Jersey anywhere. And if you go buy it at car speed, you're not seeing the details that make it special. Um, and then the other thing he's, he just said like the, uh, to drive from the banks of the muddy Raritan to Princeton. Like that was the two worlds. He, you know, Rutgers, it at low tide, it does have a muddy banks and often after rainfall, the river itself is discolored, muddy brown. Um, but that's also, you know, rich and to trite, that's nutrients for young and developing, uh, sea creatures or birds or fish or whatever. And so, like, the mud is not bad. Um, but Lake Carnegie and Princeton, which is manmade and artificial, um, you know, surrounded by it now Frank Gehry architecture and all kinds of Michael Graves and then also, you know, Gothic arches and castles and ivy, it is a different world and it's only eighteen, seventeen miles away. But like the, um, you know, I think like that's why, like, I immediately took like a, I understand his viewpoint and, um, I wanted to do something about changing that. Like, I don't even know what that is, but that's what I was bringing to the environmental commission. And at the same time, the seeds had been planted in my brain for my five-year plan, the last five years of teaching. 

12:08

And it doesn't have to be the last five, but I've been teaching twenty-two years. And so like two years ago, I had this idea that I wanted to get a boat on the red river and have a floating classroom. And I would use this as my, um, my mission statement, almost like a reverse mission statement, not to educate the youth of– of New Jersey and the Raritan watershed on the beauty and the importance of the river, but, like, to change everybody's perception, um, from this, the streak of liquid malaria river to the fork river, that it gets its name from like Raritan or forked river or whatever the other, there's like a Native American meaning to, um, that that has meaning that should be celebrated. Like the change– change the perception. Yeah. That's my, the tale of two New Jerseys. 

[End of Recording Four]