“Wilson, New Jersey”

The Battle of Wilson had raged on for several decades. It was never much of a competition and at the time of this writing the outcome of the war has been largely decided. The name of the town itself is the most telling sign of one sides defeat, but I’ll get to that in a second. There’s never been a proper instrument of surrender signed, then again there was never a formal declaration of war either. If the latter had existed, it would’ve been dated 1970.

It was that year when the first “immigrants” arrived from New York to the small farming town in a remote area of the Garden State. Most came from Staten Island–where they had come from Brooklyn–but to the locals “New York” was the only description ever needed. The immigrants came from the cramped crazy city because of the promise of big houses, on several acres, where you didn’t have to lock your door, for–by NY standards– a very low price. It was a trickle at first, so much so that the townies jokingly called them the “Five Families”, but this joke very quickly lost it relevancy. These families with names like Cappelli and Carracesse, lived in new houses built by Steinberg’s and Rosenblatt’s, on farmland once owned by Milton’s and Jackson’s. Year after year, more and more exotic-named people started showing up with larger and larger bags of money, looking to buy the wide open fields that hadn’t produced much in a century, which the owners–now rumored to be living in Florida mansions–were only too happy to give up.

It was
1976
when the
town’s name was
changed to Wilson.It was 1976 when the town’s name was changed to Wilson. Before that it’s name was of some Indian origin which the new inhabitants–and this author–found completely unspeakable and incompatible with the scruffy charm of Brooklynese. The locals, there numbers halved by then, never knew enough about the original name’s origin to defend it and quickly let there first major battle be lost. But it was it that same year when, you may remember, New York City seemed to be “falling apart” and white people seemed to be evacuating; the developers were now forced to build their houses a whole lot closer together, which didn’t matter much because “acreage” was no longer why people came. Thus came Shady Pines, Oak Ridge, Hudson Heights, and a stream of other wishfully-named developments.

The school building, which once fit all grades and now can’t fit the files of half the grades (even though the boxes are stacked wall to wall), was quickly overrun and just as quickly expanded upon until the lot it occupied ran out of room. The Hampe Farm, one of the last four in the town, was then bought and used to facilitate a new school building, which became two new school buildings, then–with the help of one of the last three farms–became a full fledged “school system” (which, I could probably get sued for not mentioning, is one of the best in the country).

With only two farms left and a handful of original homes, locals felt–rightly–that they were a dying breed and took every opportunity to get together and drink and bash The New Yawkers, who in-turn looked on their predecessors as inbred and, because of their small houses of a different era, poor. The children of these locals, although always the best at sports, were some of the first children in the state–in the nation–to be diagnosed with the various learning disabilities which are now all the rage among parents and psychologists; these thoroughly defective young people only furthered the immigrants suspicions of the locals and by 1989 just about all of them had reverted to the city tradition of locking their doors at night.

Despite these fears, the immigrants can certainly claim victory in The Battle of Wilson. Those last two farm were demolished a few years ago to make way for a shopping center anchored around a Best Buy and for a commuter parking lot to temporarily hold their cars while buses took them back to the city for the day so they could make the wages needed to live outside the city– or as their bus-driver calls it: Turnpike Exit 193.