Time for a Drive Down Memory Lane: The Belleville Turnpike, 1974

There is one road in New Jersey that has never changed, never been paved over and is still rather trippy. I recently took this route to NYC for the first time in many years. You should, too. Perhaps you can make the journey in a 1966 Ford Fairlane four-door sedan, kinda like the one I used to drive when I first got my license. It's nice that a piece of land has not been changed and for me, well, the trip was one right down memory lane.

I'm talking Hudson County here. South Kearny. Fish House Road. Pizza Land and The Meadowlands. Plans are underway to pave most of the Meadowlands over and dot it with the world's largest shopping center (replete with town home complexes and mini-malls), so this trip may not be available for long. The vast swampland had heretofore been a challenge to develop because of its naturally high water table, proximity to large rats and the unearthed carcasses of the occasional mob lieutenant or AFL-CIO official. But new, breakthrough construction techniques will soon see our favorite barren wasteland filled with all the trappings of suburbia. Which will have to share a time-and-space continuum with many restless spirits.

Start your trip at the corner of Ridge Road/Kearny Avenue following the signs for Route 7 East. Pizza Land (of the Soprano's fame, our favorte stoner haunt, the place where we would roll tabletop oregeno into joints to smoke, proclaiming we were in "Pizza Land," much to the Italian immigrant owner Fred's chagrin) will be on your left. Proceed past two of the most frightening cemeteries in New Jersey, the old Jewish one to your left and the other one, to your right. This was the cemetary you would have to be buried in (according to my mother) if your body wasn't able to be blessed by the Catholic Church. You know, if you did things like commit suicide or marry a Presbyterian. This is just past Schuyler Avenue. Sorry to say, Eagan's Restaurant is no longer there, having been replaced by (what else?) a CVS store.

You will now proceed over the hill towards New York City. It is a sight that still takes my breath away, but if you're driving you won't notice because you will be too busy dodging pot holes which, if not handled correctly, will swallow your car whole, leaving only a shattered tail light and specks of paint for forensics to use in your identification. Those large fronds swiping either side of your car are cattails, silly, and they cover the "meadows" here. The garbage dumps, no longer used, are also there, looking rather like the prehistoric burial mounds of the Bath Plains. You know you're not in England because they ooze the kind of heavy metal that has nothing to do with Metallica. Still, they look a lot better than they once did. The seagulls have all moved to the dumpsters at McDonald's. Tells you something about our modern diet, doesn't it?

I'm sorry to say that the junkyards with their frightening German shephards are no longer with us, leaving me to wonder what happens when your 1966 Ford Fairlane needs a new fender, which mine frequently did. Cross the Hackensack River over the old bridge but be careful: It still opens and two years ago, did so without its crossing lights. Two Hudson County Sheriffs officers plummeted to their deaths, may they RIP.

You will now see the Holland Tunnel just ahead. Literally billions of our now-grown children will take the left-hand turn just before it to make their way into Hoboken but don't do that, because in the '70s no one went there unless they were in the market for a stiletto blade or were a serious Frank Sinatra fan. I certainly should have because a friend of mine who bought a frightening brownstone there in 1978 for $20,000 recently sold it for $4.1 million. But I digress.

The Holland Tunnel, though no longer 75 cents, will take you to Canal Street and you may proceed to the East Village which is now scary in its own right because no one scary is there anymore. Iggy Pop couldn't take it and moved to Miami. The interior of CBGB's is in Las Vegas (where I sincerely hope the ghost of Johnny Thunders is pinching the ass of a housewife from Des Moines). Avenue A is dotted with all the trappings of mall-dom. There's even a $450 a night Bowery Hotel (SHREIK!). The bums must have moved to the South Bronx (a place I'm still to frightened to explore, but I hear they call it "SOBRO" now). I don't know if the ghosts even bother with the Lower East Side anymore.

But I do know that they still inhabit the Belleville Turnpike, Route 7 East., that frightening no-man's land juxtaposed between the town of my childhood and New York City. The trip from safety to another world, all wrapped up in a landscape of mystery and fear. This is truly the land that time forgot. Please be sure to go there on your next Sunday drive before it disappears.