When I Was a Jersey Boy

I am a man with a deep, dark secret.

Most of the people who know me think I grew up in a small Midwestern town. They’re right—but they’re only partly right. There was a period of time in my youth when I lived in New Jersey. I was, in fact, for a brief time, a Jersey boy.

In 1959 my dad was transferred to Manhattan for a two-year gig with AT&T, so naturally the whole family went with him. Dad had found a nice little house in the quiet town of Westfield, New Jersey, so we loaded up the 1953 Ford station wagon and drove across the country to the East Coast.

I was only five years old and hadn’t seen much of the world at that time. Still, I could sense that some things were different. We’d only been in town a couple of days and I was out in the front yard with my mom. The garage was still packed with boxes from our move, so the car was parked in front of the house.

A woman and here young daughter were walking past our house when the daughter saw the license plates on our Ford and asked her mother, “Illinois? Where’s that?” The mother’s reply was classic: “Oh, that’s way out West somewhere near Chicago!” We were obviously strangers in a strange land.

That fact was further emphasized when we went into the City for a baseball game. Where I grew up, everybody I knew watched the Cubs (except my best buddy, Billy Mead, who for some reason beyond my comprehension was a devout White Sox fan). People out there seemed to have never heard of the Cubs—but they didn’t hold the Sox (white or red) in very high regard, either.

The team of choice in that area was the New York Yankees. The Dodgers had already left Brooklyn and the Mets had yet to make their miserable debut. Still, local fans raved about their Yankees, who apparently were a powerhouse (again, a foreign concept to a kid who was a Cubs fan). They also had a couple of sluggers on the team by the names of Mantle and Maris that the locals seemed pretty excited about.

We had tickets right behind home plate in the stadium that Ruth built. It gave us a pretty good view of the batters and the catcher. I was kind of excited—and then a bit disappointed—when the Yankees’ catcher turned out not to be a big cartoon bear, but a guy named Yogi Berra. Apparently, in addition to being a really good catcher, he was known for witty sayings, but I never heard him say anything interesting.

Not everything about New Jersey was strange or uncomfortable. The town we lived in was a nice small town, much like the one we had lived in while in Illinois. We even had nice, friendly neighbors (even though they were a bit challenged when it came to geography and baseball).

The very nice neighbors across the street had a son, named Dusty, who was also a bit different than anyone I had ever met. In those days, few people used the phrase “Down’s Syndrome” when talking about someone like Dusty (the term they used has mercifully been replaced). There was no question, however, that Dusty looked, spoke, and acted a little differently than the rest of us. It was a bit puzzling because he was big enough to be an adult, but he seemed more like the rest of us kids in some way.

The thing of it was, that all of the kids in the neighborhood loved Dusty. It was almost as if he were a celebrity. When there were neighborhood get-togethers, all the kids wanted to be at the same table with him. It wasn’t morbid curiosity, either. We all genuinely liked him and were attracted to him somehow.

At the same time, we knew that there was something special and different about him. We sensed somehow that he was very vulnerable and we felt protective of him. We would go to high school football games and everyone took turns accompanying Dusty to the concession stand. His parents would say something like, “Dusty, why don’t you walk Mike over to get some popcorn?” He would then take me by the hand and walk me to the stand, making sure I didn’t get lost.

He would do that with several kids. Each and every one of us knew that Dusty was “protecting” us. And at the same time, it was crystal clear to us, that he was our responsibility. We were to make sure that nobody insulted or mistreated him. That was close to 60 years ago and I‘ve never forgotten Dusty.

And to me, that was a huge part of being a Jersey Boy—even if I was only there for a couple of years.