What, you may be asking yourselves, do deciduous trees have to do with pizza? Allow me to explain.
These are two of the things (along with people, of course) that I miss from my early years in New Jersey.
In truth, I am happily ensconced in the Pacific Northwest, and don’t think much about New Jersey. Still, there are a few things I dearly miss, and deciduous trees and Jersey pizza are among them.
A number of years ago, while my husband, Bill, and I were visiting New Jersey, my brother and his wife took us for a stroll around the Princeton campus. It was winter. The trees were bare, and I walked around exclaiming over the beautiful, symmetrical shapes of the branches against the winter sky.
My brother and sister-in-law thought I was nuts. Bill was also a bit perplexed.
Earlier this month, we visited Indianapolis to visit Bill’s siblings. I once again spent a lot of time oohing and aahing over the airy profiles of deciduous trees. I was delighted by the openness of the views.
It’s not that we don’t have deciduous trees out here. We do. On our property, in fact, we have a weeping cherry, two maples, a Japanese snowbell, a Korean dogwood, a clarodendrum, and a winter hazel.
We also have six enormous Douglas firs (“Doug firs” to locals). These majestic trees are over 150-feet tall and over 100-years-old. They house birds and squirrels, and give our back yard a park-like appearance. I am deeply grateful that whoever built our home (and the other homes in our neighborhood) 60 years ago chose to leave these trees standing, rather than taking them down as is so often the practice.
Here’s the thing, though. I love the Doug firs, and they are problematic. They make our neighborhood what it is, and they are dangerous. Every year, at least one major windstorm comes roaring out of the Columbia River Gorge and takes out one or more Doug firs in our neighborhood. One came down in a nearby yard a couple of winters ago, landing on and uprooting an enormous big-leaf maple in an adjacent yard. A huge chunk of the maple landed in our backyard, killing several bushes, and creating a huge mess.
It's not the danger or the mess that is bothering me lately, however. Being surrounded by these trees is worth the risk. I’m also happy with the evergreens on our property, intermixed as they are with deciduous trees, shrubs, and flower beds. It’s something else that is bothering me (and I hope my saying so won’t get me in trouble with my PNW friends). Come winter with its gray skies, the endless lines of evergreens on the horizon can feel a bit, well, lumpen--a bit depressing. Here, for instance, is the view beyond our front yard from an upstairs window.
Ok, enough about trees. Let’s talk about pizza. Jersey pizza. I have eaten healthier pizza – is that an oxymoron? Heck, I have made healthier pizza. But, give me a Jersey pizza, thin-crusted and drenched in so much olive oil you have to pat it with a napkin to take off the excess.
Now that’s pizza. I make a bee-line for it whenever I visit my home state.
I wasn’t always a pizza afficionado, though. I didn’t grow up eating it. My British parents eschewed it, and, never having tried it, I assumed I didn’t like it. Hah! My first close encounter with a pizza was at the home of a friend over 50 years ago. We were young enough to still be living with our parents, and this friend’s parents had a pool in their basement, where several of us had gathered to swim. Someone ordered a pizza, and I, getting out of the pool without looking where I was going, stepped squarely on the poolside pie. Was that mortification what finally got me try a slice the next time one was offered? I don’t remember. Whatever it was that got me started, I have been a fan ever since.
Here are a few other things I miss from my home state:
Thunderstorms. Despite the many thunderstorms you may have seen on Grey’s Anatomy, intended to convince you that the show is set in Seattle, we hardly ever have thunderstorms here in the Willamette Valley.
I love a good thunderstorm, as long as I am indoors and out of danger. Every time I am back east, I wait in vain for one to appear. Sadly, I seem always to just miss them. I well remember the way the New Jersey summer sky would turn an eerie almost-yellow, followed by, thunder and lightening and drenching rain. (Wait. Was the yellow sky caused by pollution? This was before the Clean Air Act.)
The Jersey shore. Sure, it often took my friends and me four or more hours to drive to the closest shore points, a trip that would have taken less than two hours if the Garden State Parkway hadn’t been perpetually bumper-to-bumper. (I can only assume the trip is more arduous now.) But, it was so worth it to bask in the sun (before I understood about skin cancer) and to swim in a swimmable ocean. (The Pacific ocean off Oregon and Washington is, to put it mildly, rather chilly.)
Proximity to New York City. No explanation required.
Listen, I know Jersey gets a lot of bad press, but as you will have surmised, I believe this is quite undeserved. It’s true that, after so many years on the west coast, I won't be moving back, but I am glad I grew up there and got to eat that delicious pizza under a deciduous tree.