Under a Concete Sky: Meghannraye Sutton
It’s 11:00 on a sticky July night in 1995. I am a frail 11-year-old girl traveling alone in a gray passenger plane that is circling through the air as it slowly makes it's descent towards my new home. A thousand feet below me is New Jersey, glowing fluorescent orange, the color of rust. Through the fog I can make out what appear to be millions of different cement and corroded metal objects that lace together like the wires of a cage. Thousands of yellow car lights dance along through the night and reflect off the cracked gray concrete. The industrial world below me operates like a computer.
I come from an island deep in the Pacific, approximately 6,000 miles away. I come from the Hawaiian Islands, a place where fresh pineapple and guava can be tasted on the early morning breeze. I come from a place where your skin feels refreshed, like it was just splashed with warm ocean water. I come from a place where the midnight sea looks like a shimmering-turquoise satin sheet. I come from tropical paradise: I come from the Garden of Eden.
Forget the Garden of Eden. I’m on my way to the Garden State. Forget the tranquil turquoise Pacific Ocean - I’m headed to the Eastern Sea Board. I am going to the dirty infested yellowish-brownish-greenish water of New Jersey.
Over here, they don’t like to eat pineapple, they like fried-fatty funnel cake. Over here, they don't speak a native tongue, they say "yo!"
I found out later that New Jersey is commonly referred to as the armpit of the U.S. I’m only a few seconds away from seeing and smelling my beautiful new armpit. I wonder to myself what these gardens look like in New Jersey.
New Jersey's most valuable "natural" resource, according to Wikipedia, is its central location to mega-cities such as Philadelphia and New York City. The second most valuable "natural" resource listed is its extensive and elaborate transportation system.
Colossal mega-cities and roadways like labyrinths don't sound very natural or nice to me. They just sound gross.
The infamous New Jersey Turnpike is one of the most heavily-travelled super-highways in the U.S. The toll road starts at the North-Eastern border of Delaware and ends at the Lincoln Tunnel into New York City. It is somewhat of an icon in modern day pop-culture. Simon and Garfunkel sing "counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike" in their 1968 song "America." The HBO series "The Sopranos" based on the New Jersey Mafia features the Turnpike in its opening credits. Al Gore drove along the New Jersey Turnpike as he preached against air pollution and car emissions in his eco-documentary "An Inconvenient Truth."
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