The Clock is Ticking for Flemington, New Jersey

          Declining state; the phrase perfectly describes Liberty Village Premium Outlets. Once, it housed bustling streets and bright, open storefronts day in and day out. Today, many gutted buildings stand as tall and hollow tombstones amid the slowly dwindling outlets, and most patrons roll through like tumbleweeds in a drought.

Source: stanglpottery.org

          This dire predicament isn't exclusive to Liberty Village either. The whole of Flemington has felt the hard-hitting impact of the times as various commercial areas have been drained of life. Despite optimistic signage advertising, 'Premium Outlets' and 'Quality Shopping and Dining' it seems a majority of the public has lost interest in these small-town shopping centers and businesses. Take for example, the Pfaltzgraff Pottery Store; established over a century ago by Stangl Pottery, it enjoyed decade after decade of healthy patronage, but by the mid 2000s found its profits dwindling until it could not longer support itself. The location has long since closed and been re-purposed into a small coffee shop today. The large brick kiln in the back
stands as the only memory of the site's original purpose.

Vacant building in Liberty Village, previously a sub shop

          The disparity isn't solely a matter of aging outlets either. Small-name local delis and sub shops have been known to move into Liberty Village retail space then close down in a matter of months, unable to keep up with financial demands and disappearing without a trace.
Local photographer Mike Butkus documents the area on his website and offers some commentary on the many buildings now left for sale or simply abandoned. It's apparent that for business owners, Liberty Village is becoming a no man's land.

Walking path into Turntable Junction

          Turntable Junction, a close neighbor of Liberty Village also faces dangerously low traffic as its old buildings and local mom-and-pop shops try their best to stay afloat with the meager support of long-time customers who want nothing more than to preserve their favorite shops. Sadly these efforts alone may not be enough to save the local color if low profitability keeps its course.

Cinema Plaza's Final Bow (Source: cinematreasures.org)

           Worse still, in the past decade several long-standing local landmarks have been closed and torn down in the municipality of Flemington. The Cinema Plaza being a significant example due to it being the last nearby theater in the Hunterdon County area. Rather than erecting a new theater, property owners have opted to fill the theater's old lot with a CVS pharmacy, PNC bank and most recently a Starbucks. Though promises have been made for a nearby family entertainment center, years have passed with no hopeful words or development on the matter.

          Flemington faces a major loss of cultural hot spots in favor of chain stores -- of which the city is already bloated with -- standing where there were once theaters and bookstores. It's not just the locals who have taken notice either, as Tourism Adviser Roger Brooks listed several glaringly present issues in Flemington in exhaustive detail. From ugly banner signs to poor organization and disconnection between major shopping centers, Brooks notes the entirety of Flemington as a problem zone in major need of reworking and revitalization.

Source: photographybykendell

          What is there to be done for Liberty Village and Flemington at large, then? Certainly they should not fade into complete decrepitude. Liberty Village and the neighboring Turntable Junction and Main Street serve as commercial centerpieces for Hunterdon county residents, some of the few remaining large-scale locations to shop for necessities, food and entertainment.

          If steps are to be taken, municipal and local government officials should step up to the plate to organize public operations to allocate funds and begin restoration projects to breath life back into the city. Instead of banks and pharmacies, efforts should be made to pull in dedicated consumer-bases targeted by their interests. Shops like Turntable Junction's Comic Fusion scrape by on their consistent support by a loyal customer base, and without the prevalence of these kinds of stores, there is less incentive for your average shopper to seek out what's new in the area.

          Perhaps Liberty Village and Turntable Junction are beyond hope in their current forms by inherent design, but by jumpstarting new businesses based on consumer interest and with proper support and healthy investments, we may just see Flemington gain a second wind in coming years. The good news? Improvements are already in the cards. One step at a time, but Flemington will hopefully see more returning patrons in the near future and for generations to come.

12:30 a.m. - Utility Pole Maintenance

 
I was driving home late tonight after dropping my girlfriend off at her house, just the usual route. I reached Minebrook Park and took a left, heading in the direction of the short school zone road which runs alongside the circle into town and which would take me toward the path to my neck of the woods. As I drove this road, I saw in the distance before me the bright steadily flashing lights of two maintenance vehicles. It was dark, and it wasn't until I was close that I could only vaguely make out the shape of two men, one standing atop the vehicle's raised platform and the other pointing his flashlight up at the first man from below on the road.

I slowed to a near-stop, I wasn't sure if I was safe to pass through while they worked as two vehicles stood on each side of the road. I cruised until I was about to pass, opened my side-door window and called to the man on the ground, "Am I okay to go?" he must not have heard me, because he continued looking up and pointing the dull blue of his LED flashlight at his fellow worker. As I passed and continued down the road, I figured there was no direct obstruction on the road and I was fine to pass, maybe a branch had fallen on the line and the power had gone out for some unlucky families in the area and the two were sent out for some night shift maintenance work.

Then I wondered... Despite the flashlight's beams, I could barely see the man above, working on the utility pole, his upper half was concealed in complete darkness, not much more than an inky silhouette as I drove up to the scene, and after I passed I couldn't even see that much through my rear window. Why would they work without light? What if there was something up there that a passerby was meant not to see?

...Nah that's crazy. Otherwise though it was a perfectly normal drive, bar an unsettling but unfortunately not surprising streak of blood leading off from a small raccoon body left as roadkill and run over one too many times. The way the sight slid into view as I drove up the road was an unpleasant sight for sure.

Mice Beneath the Radiator

This post is about a dead mouse, and contains a picture of said mouse towards the bottom. It isn't gory or disgusting, but for those who are squeamish or uncomfortable with seeing dead creatures, I've placed only a link to the image rather than embedding the image onto the post directly to be respectful to those parties. That said, I'll move onto the story.

Less than a year ago towards the middle of the Winter season, when I was still enrolled in college, we had a couple reports in our hall of a mouse, or mice, getting into peoples' rooms. Funny thing about this was that my roommates and I lived on the first floor, where you'd expect it'd be most logical for a mouse to end up first, but we rarely saw head nor tail of the critters when sightings were common except for once or twice early in the morning in our hall's common room. Before long, signs started showing up instructing us not to leave food about, so as not to attract rodents. Regardless, the mice still came, and the common room continued to frequently house empty cups of hot chocolate and snack wrappers left here and there at any given time. As these things go, so it be.

Otherwise though, my roommates and I always heard about these mice from our friends upstairs; somehow the mice were traveling not only from room to room, but floor to floor, perhaps accessing upper areas behind the walls, or just through making some very stealthy maneuvers up the stairs and passing through when doors were left open long enough for them to slip through. One sighting came from the third floor, coincidentally by the same people who had also encountered and captured (and later set free) a baby bat in their room. So the point here being, we had mice, and these mice knew how to get around.

My personal experience with the mouse or mice (I really don't know if it was one single guy or multiple little buggers) was mostly aural, as in, I almost never saw a single pair of beady eyes or a fat little body or a pink stringy tail. I once saw a vaguely grayish-pinkish shape scurry behind the soda machine in the corner of the common room, but beyond that the only observations I ever made on the things were heard. And it was almost always late at night, when most everyone else had turned in and I was still up working away at something or just staving off sleep for the sake of it. A mouse's peeping in the wee hours of the morning would keep me company when the common room got quiet and lonely. I appreciated those times.

One of my favorite memories of this was  one particular night when I was up with my best friend and roommate from college, he had joined me in the common room late that night after having trouble sleeping, and we booted up Netflix to see what might be good to watch. We stayed up watching Eagle vs. Shark which was a simultaneously terrible yet amazing romantic comedy with Jemaine Clement from Flight of the Conchords who does a great job playing a really awful person of a character. Then, we followed it up with Mary and Max, which was a pretty heavy but touching comedy-drama done with claymation. It was a fun night and as we enjoyed our strange but enjoyable movie picks, the sun slowly came up until it was light outside and we were just then getting tired. Just as Mary and Max was finished and we were talking to each other, a mouse spoke up from behind the couch, just beneath the radiator.

I know it's dumb to think like this but the point the mouse chose to interject fit perfectly into a moment of silence between my friend and I, we both commented on it and laughed about how the mouse was this recurring companion in our lives. Maybe not described so significantly (and with a bit more profanity sprinkled in) but it was all good-intentioned nonetheless. We liked that mouse, it was our friend that night, and every time I heard a mouse back there for the rest of that Winter I knew I had a little companion back there, sometimes I'd even try scratching on the wood panel that separated us below the radiator to see if I could get a reaction, but they're skittish creatures and I never heard a response once they knew I noticed them.

So, finally, one night, weeks or maybe even a month or two after that shared experience between the mouse, my roommate and I, I was having another late night on my own, long after my friends had gone to bed. I tiredly trudged to my bedroom and quietly closed the door, lightly stepping over to my bed and sliding in to get some rest. I woke up that morning, groggy as ever because, as if it weren't obvious from my night-owl tendencies, I am simply horrible at mornings. I went to change out of my pajamas and there, just between the pair of jeans I had left on the floor the previous night, and my shoes which I placed neatly side by side a few inches apart from the pants, a dead mouse sat nestled on the floor, no marks of assault or any noticeable marks, no blood or cuts or anything, just a cold, stiff body, laying sideways on the floor as if it had just fallen asleep between my shoes and pants. When I entered the room just hours before, the mouse had not been there, or at least I hadn't seen it. I can only imagine that in a short span of time, it had reached that part of the room, then died right there in the open.

Surprise and mild disgust hit me first at the time, and I went about grabbing an excess of paper towels and a bag to hide the little body away in after I had spent a minute or two just taking in the strange sight. I grasped it up in the bundle of towels and placed it within the bag, noticing rigor mortis having gripped its small frame. The floor was freezing on mornings during this time of year, so for the mouse I can imagine it was frigid, a sad place to perish. It went in the trashcan and I carried on with my day until I thought about it again, it had become a piece of conversation with my friends that morning, but I had no evidence of the experience, dumb of a thought as that may be, so once I returned back to the hall after my morning classes I retrieved the small body and grabbed this picture of it:

The Dead Mouse

And that's where I left it, I tied the bag together and put it back in the garbage and never saw it again. I feel bad that I didn't give the thing a more proper burial, but I wasn't about to go touching it any more than necessary in case it had died of disease, nor was I going to explain to passersby that I was digging a hole in the front yard of our hall to bury an insignificant mouse that happened to keel over dead next to my clothes while I slept. Sappy of a person as I am, I just don't think that sort of sentimentality would be entirely necessary, at least it seems a bit silly to try to explain to others, as I'm attempting to here. I guess in retrospect I feel I had some small kinship with the poor thing, or rather its kind at large, seeing as they had broken the silence when I sat up late at night in the common room.

I don't think I heard many mice from beneath the radiator after I found the body of the mouse. Soon enough Spring finally showed up and maybe there wasn't as much of a need for the mice to hole up behind the walls of our hall anymore, but I still think about that mouse and what led up to it ending up not far from the foot of my bed. I don't suggest there's any meaning behind it, but it does make me a little sad to witness a death so close to me, I couldn't help but feel slightly obligated to know what led up to it, but of course, how would I figure that out at a glance? The mouse could've died from any amount of things from hypothermia to starvation, maybe a dose of poison from one of the traps laid outside our hall? What if, when I left my jeans or shoes on the floor I had accidentally hit it without noticing? I do hope its death had nothing to do with my own actions, bearing first witness to its corpse is one thing but to be responsible would make me feel guilt, even for a small mouse.


Bonus Story: The Nest

I have one last quick story from when I was much younger that writing the piece above brought up in my mind: A mother bird had built her nest on top of a heart-shaped wreath outside one of the windows of my family's old house. One day I noticed tiny eggs had been left in the nest, and went outside to examine them more closely. In my ignorance I tried picking the nest off of the wreath, but ended up dropping it, the eggs cracking and revealing the still-developing fetuses of baby birds, sightless and barely yet living. I told my mother what had happened and we took the nest inside, but there was nothing to be done.

Seeing the bright red marks of blood lining the cracks of those small pale blue eggs had a lasting impact on me, and since then I've always felt some guilt for causing the death of those infant birds, for having uprooted the mother's nest and leaving her without children. Sad as it was, I think it might have made me value the fragile nature of life a little more. Maybe I wouldn't understand the gravity of such an action had I not been responsible for it and seen the aftermath, or rather the lack thereof. The mother never came back, never built another nest there, and really there was very little she could do but start over again. I hadn't been malicious in harming her offspring, there was no purpose to it whatsoever, it was a terrible accident that had permanent consequences on four small lives, three of them not even begun, and I think it made me a lot more sensitive to the nature of loss, suffering and death.

I imagine a human mother in a similar situation, losing a child with no purpose, no assailant or outlet for anger or revenge, just a sad mistake, the grief and helplessness that would cause seems to me ineffable, and I hope I never have to share in such a painful experience. It's interesting how animals react to these things, they often (though not always) seem to take death in stride, as though it's acceptable and commonplace, which it kind of is, survival of the fittest and all. They understand seemingly better than us that it's just an unfortunate part of life, and go off to try again if they can. Maybe they don't comprehend enough to feel the emotional gravity of such an event, surely some animals do grieve and maybe some just don't show it in a way that we can easily see, or maybe those who seem not to care are just really tenacious, who's to say? Animals and humans alike are capable of taking on some strange behaviors in entering parenthood. We can only hope for the best with such a scary thing as raising an infant into the world.

Exhaustion

No. Nope, not even, don't even right now. I'm not really... Uh... Not really. No I'm not really able to focus at the... The time. I just, it was a, uh... Long day, yeah. Yeah? Yeah. Just laying back now I guess, my brain feels like a throbbing piece of mush. My legs are just jelly. I'm a big lump. I thought I was gonna type something of substance but I'll just do this instead. Good night.

Goooooooooooooood a-niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight a-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding.
Goooooooooooooood a-niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight a-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding.
Goooooooooooooood a-niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight a-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding.

The Brothermother - A Prelude

The Brothermother was born unto himself from the vast endless nothing, long after All-That-Was, the Old World had left behind That-Which-Remains, the New World. He did not slither out from some reproductive universal anomaly-orifice, nor did he reverse-implode his being from the endlessly bland landscape of this long stagnant realm. There was no chemical chain reaction due to the frequent atmospheric imbalances and seismic upheavals of the petrified rock, nor the coming together of just the right microorganisms in some primordial pool of long-rancid 2% milk and the contents of a cheap box of long-forgotten store-brand wine to beckon his presence right then and there; he simply became. Not even That-Which-Remains could deny the spontaneity of his existence, and so it ignored him and moved on. That is what he tells me.

Brothermother spent years traveling the vastness of the New World, its lonely vistas of dust and grime, old furniture from centuries past dotted the landscape, stained porcelain sinks and toilets, large palettes and planks of fiberwood and abandoned vehicles, sometimes crushed or ripped in half by the shifting plates of land below them. The land was always moving here, Brothermother observed, the Old World's biggest mistake was to settle down in such contained, fragile environments. Now, in That-Which-Remains, all there would be for survivors -- if indeed there were still others besides Brothermother -- was The Walk, and The Rest. Life was simply a walk from landmark to landmark, and there were often landmarks just in the distance, or at least there stood long, winding pathways of cracked asphalt and crumbling concrete connecting the landmarks. Some stood on towering masses of dirt, held aloft at ridiculous angles by naturally-occurring metal protuberances which spiked out from the tall dirt walls, which coincidentally was how Brothermother would make his ascent up the harrowing structures. He did so as sometimes these craggy towers were topped with great treasures, remaining relics of All-That-Was which others must have been too frightened to brave the climb to the summits of the deadly spires. It was in these very places where The Rest occurred for Brothermother. Sometimes The Rest was very short, as the ground would shift and ruin these places, yet sometimes The Rest could last for years in peaceful ignorance of the rest of the world, when Brothermother would think long into the night, before clearing his mind with sleep and meditation.

It was a long period of time since Brothermother had first happened upon what the Old World called a "Grocery Store" atop one such jutting landmass, its shelves still stocked with long-rotted food products. He tried everything in a blissful frenzy, only to purge most of the shriveled, fungus-covered fruits and vegetables and softened, maggot-ridden meat slabs he had shoveled into his mouth. To be sure, Brothermother needed very little nutrition to stay alive, it was simply an exercise of pleasure that he desired to ingest the foods of the Old World, a sort of strange nostalgia. He was rewarded for his persistence, for after many failed attempts to hold down the rotten exposed food of the shelves, Brothermother found the well-preserved canned food section, two aisles stocked full with pet food, preserved baby food and anything from canned olives to tuna, he felt he was truly in heaven, and so he made a decision.

You may wonder why I call him Brothermother, it is because to me, that is his role, both that of a friend and rival found in a brotherly bond, but also as a caring and dutiful matriarch. He has taught me everything I know about That-Which-Remains as he has understood it, he raised me in that Grocery Store, brought me up on the sweet nectar of processed carrots and asparagus. He challenges me to better myself, become a philosopher and a scribe in this world we now inhabit, and on the best of days we would feast on desserts of canned olives and watch the dim red glow of the sun bask That-Which-Remains in its eternal evening light, so Brothermother taught me, and that is the reason Brothermother created me, I am Brotherbrother, I am his companion and his apprentice, and he shares with me in hopes I will one day grow to create my own Brotherbrother and become a new Brothermother, and in that way we may populate the new world with Brothermothers and Brotherbrothers who may travel together in a peaceful journey to rediscover that which was lost from All-That-Was.

Once, Brothermother told me of a long-gone age when the sun was young and healthy and shone a blindingly bright golden, and that our world was always slowly rotating, creating times which the Humans of the Old World called "Morning" and "Night" and that when the sun was gone a globe of white light called "Moon" would take its place during the Night. A fascinating idea, Night sounded so terrifyingly dark, not like the drowsy comfort of our constant dusk. I am glad we live in this part of That-Which-Remains, but I can't help but wonder to myself, if we live in the Duskscape of the world, what lies unexplored in the Nightscape? Brothermother says he does not know, he says maybe one day if we can travel far enough we will find out. We certainly have the time to do so, we have nothing but time now.

Brothermother has never seen Moon or Night, he has only existed in this lasting and eternal dusk. He wonders if Moon even exists still, he wonders why this planet ceased to turn one day, why it became this shifting mass of cancerous growth. Brothermother knows much about the Old World, once called Earth, he learned from the faded writings of societies since-destroyed or disbanded in a "Library" which is a structure filled to its brim with papers, written as I do in my journal which Brothermother gifted to me as soon as I learned to write. Brothermother taught me to read with the help of the labels which mark the various food and drink in the Grocery Store, and he says we will travel to a Library and he will teach me even more there, teach me of history and science, of entertainment and all these wonderful things. I ask him if he will teach my why the Old World had to change, but he only looks at me with sad, consoling eyes. He wishes he could tell me, but it is beyond even him.

I would like to learn. I, like Brothermother, do not need the same things the Humans of Old required to live, yet I am so fascinated to learn and experience those things. Their faces plaster the covers of some items in the Grocery Store, "Medicines" for when one's body would ache depicted a female with a face of scrunched discomfort, holding her belly with both hands. Brothermother is interested by the Humans of Old, but also afraid, as he has read of their past actions, and is frightened of what they would do unto one another in the worst of times, and thus unto us in the best of times. The world has changed so much, he knows not if there are even any Humans of Old left, as he has never happened upon them in his years exploring the wastes. I hope we can meet them one day, I hope they will accept us, though we do not share all of their features or designs.

Brothermother keeps clothes for us, which we do not often wear as they are uncomfortable on our segmented skin-plates, but we keep them in case we see the Humans of Old. There are large, baggy shirts and pants for himself and smaller, child's clothing for me. I am still growing, as he did at the start of his life, he says I am not yet taller than a Human of Old in the double-digits of their life-years. This is okay with me, I like the feeling that I still have more to develop. Perhaps Brothermother too, will develop as I grow? I wonder if I will ever reach his great height so that we may see eye to eye, as equals. I wonder if upon that day, I will still call him Brothermother.

Tomorrow, Brothermother will take me further from the Grocery Store than we have ever gone, he says there is not much left to scavenge, and so we must climb down from the great pillar which has housed our shelter for so long and travel the long expanses of That-Which-Remains, as he did in the beginning. I cannot wait to see what the land beyond the Grocery Store has to offer, finally I will see the things Brothermother has told me of for myself. I will update my journal whenever we rest on our travels. There is so much I wish to explore, I can scarcely wait to make the descent, though I will miss this Grocery Store. It has given us so much... Perhaps we will return one day, but for now I must only look forward. Our adventure soon begins!

Step Aboard

Body weary, mind drained, you traipse past the sliding glass doorway and out into the bitter, windless dusk. The day is done and the sky bleeds off over the horizon line into a pale purple husk. The day is done, but your journey is far from over.

Sterile lights dot the platform, and the silhouette of a long series of connected buildings oppose you, half-shattered windows show their jagged teeth in the light here and there, and behind their transparent maws are glimpses into the musty, vacant bowels of the architectural cadaver. This is a place of transit, much of its surroundings forgotten and left for nature to slowly reclaim and over a short lifetime spread a layer of damp, deep green moss over the floors, growing a beautiful display of urban decay.

Yet that sight is not for many years to come, and so here you stand presently, waiting for an arrival, the smell of worn metal and drenched concrete subtly scent the air, you can still smell the thickness of precipitation from the since-passed rainfall. The muffled gurgling of water still flows down the rain gutters installed across the length of the station.

To your left, a distant light breaks a path along the dimly lit tracks, a handful of travelers shuffle out along with you, a band of silent strangers who walk together in a mutual communal safety. The train horn blares a solid dissonance about itself, the rhythmic churning of the locomotive's engines draws nearer and louder with each passing second until it is upon the lot of you, squealing down to an eventual halt, ending in a series of fatigued low huffs and the high-pitched whines of wheels in need of a greasing.

Sleeping faces poke out from the shadows of the passenger carts as they creep past, tired mugs of tired old men, soft and dreary expressions from youthful faces, locked in a temporary hibernation as they do their best to bear the tedium of the long-distance excursion with their families. You adjust the straps of your backpack and lean the uncomfortable weight of your carried luggage from one foot to the other and back again. A slow march proceeds up toward the opened doorway onto the train. You fumble in your heavy jacket's pockets for the tickets and are relieved after a second or two of digging and patting as your left hand brushes the sturdy slips.

Before long you arrive at the edge of the train, ticket inspected, the well-outfitted man hands it back to you and instructs you to head down the cart to your right. You tread carefully, arms tilted forward and backward to avoid any rough bumps from your luggage against the peacefully sleeping passengers. You find an empty aisle without too much trouble and heave some of your heavier belongings into the small compartment above. Taking your desired seat, you remove your backpack and place it between your aching feet. Letting all energy leave you, you begin to sink down into the yielding comfort of the cushioned chair until you reach the perfect spot, and before you know it you begin to dream.

What faint images flicker behind your closed eyelids do so  in waves of visions simultaneously vivid and strained. Your day is done and so you dream; your journey will continue as you slumber. In the light of day, your destination will peak out from the fresh radiance of the horizon, and once again shall you strike off into the new day.