This past weekend, my better half and I had the chance to briefly swing through Trenton, New Jersey on the way back from a stop on Jersey shore. What you're looking at here is the house I grew up in...well, my family lived here until I was 14 and we moved to New York State, but that's for another post. Yes, that is a lot of snow on the ground for central NJ: it's the aftermath of that nasty slush-blizzard that paralyzed East Coast air travel last week.

What I found amazing about driving down Lynwood Avenue is how little the street has changed in the past 25 years, inspite of its looking a tad run-down. No gentrified condos arose in the intervening years, no new big box outlets, no widening of the streets. As far as I could tell, most of the houses on the street were even the same color they were a quarter century ago. [And amazingly, we found our way there and back around town without a map or directions....we just drove from my memory! Of course, if we had gotten lost, I wouldn't have said a thing about it, now, would I? - L.]

At that old house (my family rented the upstairs apartment, while the landlord lived downstairs) the gutter downspouts and windows have been replaced with new white versions and the wooden wheelchair ramp the previous owners installed is gone, but the doors, the mailboxes and street numbers, and almost everything else about the place looks the same. Click on the image for a big, close-up look; click here for a Google Maps bird's eye view. Bizarrely, the couches and loveseat perched on the porch look exactly like the ones the old owners had inside their living room during the 1970's. Hell, they probably are the same brown and yellow plaid ones.

Why does this scenario remind me so much of Stephen King's IT? I half-expect a mouldering corpse in a nightgown to beckon us inside with a curved bony finger...[we ALL FLOAT DOWN HERE and you will too haaaaaaa]

(P.S) No, I did not buy any Taylor Ham® on this trip.

Labels: history, NJ, photo

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