Although I had lived in Hightstown for three years I had never really been to Hightstown. All I had really seen is Main Street with its expensive houses and nice cars. Through the gates of our well known school we walked out into new open ground. Walking at a brisk pace we went past the first light and turned right at the familiar Theo’s restaurant. A bird house caught my eye in someone’s yard, and I just stopped and looked at it for a while, just starring. It was a six foot tall sand castle with five turrets jetting out in all different directions with this shiny green snake interwoven through the castle leaving me to think only one thing, “What the hell.”
The houses continuously got smaller as we moved away from main street, and one house had an “Open” sign on it. Curious as to why this house would have an open sign I peered into the window and saw that it actually was a little shop. Now I had always heard on the radio and through local New Jersians that there were a lot of Hispanics that couldn’t speak English. I had always doubted that fact because everyone that I had ever met had spoken English, but when I went in and asked if I could get something wrapped up and put in a box, she starred in bewilderment and started speaking Spanish to her younger daughter. Normally I would have become impatient very quickly but I waited it out and she said, “Forty five minutes”. I had successfully bought something for Mother’s Day through the language barrier.
Time was getting short and we decided to walk to the fabled broken down yellow mansion. The street was called Bank Street, and it was as if a street from Philly was dropped down into Hightstown. On the left there was a huge deserted warehouse with the old fashioned broken glass in all the windows and the rusty siding with scattered two by fours randomly placed on the walls. The right side of this road was barren with a broken down house and litter on the grass, with no signs of life whatsoever. No cars passed by us for the first time on our journey, as if the community shunned this street. Walking slower as we approached the mustard yellow house which was dying with age, we seemed to be solidified at the point on the sidewalk that was farthest away from it. I decided I wanted to see their Mercedes that I heard about, and so I strolled over into the driveway and saw an old black Mercedes convertible with a half pulled off black tarp over the car. This broken down house that lives on this desolate street has some expensive cars, and at that point I laughed back to the sidewalk where I took in the sights of the house again. I noticed things that I hadn’t at first glance: there was a beautiful green house with roses in the corner, magnificent golden doorknockers, and the gate. The gate which I initially saw as black and jagged also had gold throughout it, and then I noticed how the gold came to together at many points to form golden hearts. Again, this house brought a smile to me from its surprises.
Heading back to Peddie, I noticed the familiar cop that hangs out in the Wachovia bank parking lot. This guy was no Rent-a-Cop, he had the guns, the cuffs, everything, and I decided this would be the perfect opportunity to strike up a conversation with a person I’ve seen many times but never talked to before. Initially I was a little nervous talking to this guy, but I quickly found the conversation to be an interesting and fun one. We started talking about which places are safe in New Jersey, but then got onto a subject we both had strong feelings about, the shoot to harm policy that was thrown into the air by some politicians. We had a nice conversation and we both concluded that those politicians don’t know what the hell they are doing and left it at that. Walking back to Peddie I recapped all that happened and I was glad that throughout the journey I had stepped outside of what I normally would have done and looked a little deeper into what was around me.
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