The stories in Delinquency Lessons originated with a family writing project.  At the time of our mother’s dying my three sisters and I would pick a topic related to growing up and then e-mail our pieces after an agreed upon writing period.  The electronic sharing helped us to be together despite living far from home.  Mine ended up mostly about the trouble I got into as an unsupervised child running around Bound Brook, New Jersey in the 1960s.

 

This square mile borough located forty miles west of Manhattan is the oldest town in Somerset County, purchased in 1681 from the Lenape band of the Delaware confederacy by five British investors.  Only Thomas Codrington was to settle his claim by building the first permanent residence on top of a burial mound halfway between the boundary brooks.  The Codrington land which extended from Vosseler Avenue west to the Middlebrook and from the Raritan River north to the crest of First Watchung Mountain was later purchased by George LaMonte, a Virginia planter fleeing the captured south after the Civil War. 

 

Many of the place names in modern Bound Brook besides the namesake streets carry Codrington and LaMonte monikers.  Romney Road, Hampshire Lane, and Evergreen  Avenue were named after the Virginia town, county, and mansion of Rebecca Kerns LaMonte.  Developments known as Westerly Gardens, Downs Manor (Hanken Road), Piedmont Farms, and the Codrington Apartments were subdivisions of LaMonte land.  Donated parcels became LaMonte School, Codrington Park, and LaMonte Field.  These places turn up in many of the stories because my family lived in the West End which had once been the Codrington/LaMonte estate.

 

Bound Brook sits a few feet above sea level, pushed up against First Watchung Mountain to the north by the Raritan River.  Living up to the name, Bound Brook’s other boundaries are the Green Brook in the east and the Middle Brook to the west and north.  Situated just downstream from the Raritan’s north and south branches and just upstream from the tide line in New Brunswick, the town is prone to flash floods whenever there are torrential rains.  And lying along the coastal most ridge of the Appalachian chain, Bound Brook is haunted by crows.

 

Flocks of the everyday American variety stream across town at dawn, dispersing to trees overlooking yards, dumpsters, and road-kill.  At dusk the crows gather on the tallest sycamores along the brooks before flapping noisily back up to First Mountain to line the oaks for their nightly roost.  There they are joined by smaller numbers of both northern ravens done with their daily hunts along ridges and coastal fish crows finished scavenging the Raritan tidewater.  The Watchungs may be the only location in North America where all three native corvids can be found.  In Bound Brook it’s hard to do anything without accompaniment by big black birds, hence their appearance at turning points in many of these stories.

 

Landmarks along the Middle Brook called “the ditch” and “the poop hole” pop up in many of these true tales.  Unknown to us at the time, these were likely relics of a revolutionary war sentry post.  In the winter of 1777-78 General Washington set up camp for his ten thousand troops behind First Watchung Mountain.   The crest protected them from a frontal assault by the Cornwallis garrison at New Brunswick to the south.   Lookouts at various rock outcroppings along the ridge could sight the masts of the British fleet in Raritan Bay, determining if they sailed south for Philadelphia or north for Boston.  The encampment was susceptible to a nighttime raid through the one gap in First Mountain, the Chimney Rock gorge of the Middle Brook.  Our “ditch” was along a small ridge on the west bank of the creek and just below the gap.   It was an ideal site for a trench from which riflemen could snipe at redcoats heading up the creek.  The “poop hole”, so named because our neighbor Tommy Nossic once went in it, was a circular concavity at the southern terminus of the trench.  The hole’s size and location mark it as a likely remnant of a sentry hut fire pit.  Sadly, the poop hole was bulldozed with the straightening of the Middle Brook in the early seventies.  The trench remains as an unmarked memorial to the wars which took place there in the 1770s and 1960s.

 

            Central New Jersey in the 1960s had few social outlets for blue-collar boys other than the big three.  Baseball and basketball had their reigning seasons and passionate disciples but high school football captured the hearts and headlines, for better or for worse, in the small towns scattered along route 22 between Jersey City and Somerville. 

 

The sixties were a turbulent time in many ways.  Civil rights, Vietnam, and hallucinogenic drugs swirled through the culture.  Music moved from country to acid rock, hair from crew cuts to afros, television from Andy Griffith to Archie Bunker.  The times were certainly changing but not for ten-year-old boys.  My friends and I did what kids had always done if given the chance.  We smashed, robbed, burned, and chased our way into the seventies as if parents weren’t present and, for the most part, they weren’t. 

 

Little did we know that ours would be the end of unsupervised childhoods.  The next decade brought daycare, crossing guards, after-school programs, and neighborhood watches.  Before then we had the lilac bush, the Park, and our beloved brook all to ourselves.  They taught us plenty.

 

Dialogue throughout the book is reconstructed from a feel for the characters and events rather than word-for-word memories.  Names have been changed except for friends and siblings who have graciously consented to my interpretation of our shared early lives, and to whom I am eternally grateful for their interest and encouragement.