The Bridge
I had to get out of the house for a few hours. With nothing better to do, packed the dog in the Jeep and hit the road. Like the George Thurogood song, no particular place to go. There is a old fishing town, Tuckerton, not far away, in the bay marshes of the Jersey shore, behind Long Beach Island. I intend to explore this area when the weather warms and the boat is in the water; maybe a little advance reconnoitering.
New Jersey’s Great Bay is at the outlet of the Mullica River. The Mullica runs through the New Jersey Pine Barrens, a strange, beautiful, sparsely populated area in the most densely populated state in the Union. Much of the land in this area is state forest or National wildlife refuge. It’s pretty wild. (If you are interested in the character and characters of this area, read The Pine Barrens by John McPhee.) Just south of Tuckerton, the Great Bay Boulevard runs along the Northern side of the bay, out to the Rutgers University Marine Research Center. Drive all the way to the end and you can see the southern tip of Long Beach Island, the Little Egg Harbor Inlet, and the Atlantic beyond. The casinos of Atlantic City to the south.
I made the left onto the Boulevard, near the WalMart and the Autozone. A few houses, then nothing. Just birds, flat marshes and riverlets. A mile or two down the road, I came to a white painted bridge, with a foot path on the right hand side. On the left side in the bay, a group of students in waders were dragging nets through the water. I pulled over in the parking area on the other side to have a look.
The memory came back in a rush. The last of four children to hardworking parents, in the age of free range children, remembers the few times my father did something with just me. When I was about 10, my father took me to a bridge to fish. I had often thought about that day, but I never knew the bridge. This was it. As I was walking to the bridge, I passed a guy my age crabbing in the bay. I told him I thought I fished here with my dad for winter flounder. He said they were here years ago, in the 60’s and the 70’s. Gone now. I was 10 in 1965.
These were winter flounder. It was cold and the wind was free to whip across those open marshes. I don’t remember if we caught any fish, but I remember the cold. And, I remember a kindness. There was an old black man fishing on the bridge. Maybe he noticed how cold I was, I don’t remember. He invited us back to his place to warm up and have a cup of tea. Where he lived was small and cluttered … a trailer, an old bus? But it was warm and the tea was hot.
The dog and I continued to the end of the Boulevard. There were many smaller bridges, single lane, on the way out. At the crest of one bridge a woman was putting chicken parts in her crab trap. I dropped the window and as she looked at me I said what a beautiful day it was. Oh yes, I would take this all year. She radiated joy. There is something about these marshes.
