I miss driving. If I could do one thing again, that’s what I’d do — I’d drive. No place in particular, just around like I used to do, up over Glacier Hill and down into Valleyside, and then up and into the reservation, or over into Dugan Crossing…where else did I used to go? After I moved downstate, I would crisscross U.S. 1, those long roads with no turn-offs that used to wind back around on themselves. A lot of barns in that area, even on the state highways. I saw a chicken walking along the shoulder out on Route 33 once — even when the cars passed really close to it, it didn’t flap off, it just kept walking. Who knows where it meant to go, but that’s the kind of thing you’d see in the south part of the state all the time. Guys in suits driving hay-balers to church. Snapshots, like that.

I loved not thinking about anything, just driving and listening to the radio and looking. Even when everything else would be bad, I could drive around and see everything just staying the same out there, there’s the diner, there’s that painted rock, there’s the upside-down swing set. And I liked driving to a thing, too — marking off the milestones between home and whatever I had to get to. I just liked being in the car, always, even as a kid, yelling at my dad to race the moon, or stretching out in the backseat and watching the power lines swooping by upside-down. Stephanie and I used to go head to foot in the back on car trips and do it until we felt sick. Drove our mother crazy. “If you know it’s going to make you dizzy then don’t do it! For heaven’s sake.” No arguing with that.

I liked driving the best, driving myself, but before I could drive, the best was to spend the day in the car with Uncle Petey. Stephanie didn’t like to go, because Uncle Petey smoked cigars nonstop — and because she could tell Mom didn’t like us to go. Mom didn’t have to tell Stephanie not to do things, she just knew she’d better not. I knew I’d better not too, but if Mom didn’t tell me not to do them…and I always begged to go with Uncle Petey. And Mom always let me, I’m not sure why. Maybe she thought I’d see something bad or scary eventually, and I’d come home shocked and wouldn’t want to go anymore. Otherwise — she knew what he was.

What I knew…well, Mom used to call Uncle Petey “a character,” in that way that let you know she’d like to say more, and at some length, but we were too young to hear it. I won’t dress it up at this late date — he was a bookie. A connected guy. I didn’t know what that meant at the time, but…you’re a kid, not blind. You know things even if you can’t put a name on them. Uncle Petey always had a new car, he didn’t wear a tie, he’d let you drink the foam off his Rheingold, and then you’d curse because it tasted bad and he’d just laugh. “Does the trick, though,” he’d say. “Does the trick.”

And of course that was the best part of Uncle Petey, and the worst part, I didn’t really see. Looking back at it, I can’t believe some of the stuff I got to do — but at the time, I just couldn’t believe I got as many Cokes as I wanted. Uncle Petey kept a foam cooler full of sodas in the backseat, and as soon as we got out of sight of the house, I would dive into the back and grab a bottle and just down the whole thing in about twelve seconds, and then I’d belch knowing I wasn’t going to take a slap for it. The best Cokes I ever drank were those first ones on a day out with Uncle Petey.

But then I remember sitting in a bar in Ocean City — on the bar, actually, turning five-dollar bills to all face the same way so Uncle Sticks could count them faster. On a Sunday afternoon, just a little girl, eight years old. Uncle Sticks…not really my uncle. He was nice, though. My first kiss was with his grandson…Mark. Mark Senzamici. He was nice, too. He smelled of peanuts, but he was nice. Died in jail back in the eighties.

I never saw anything traumatizing. Uncle Petey always had me home for dinner. I had all these uncles all over the place, and they had nutty names like Gats and Ninety, and I’d play with their kids and grandkids and learn the new jump-rope games and how to break into a gumball machine, and sometimes we’d be at the beach, and sometimes we’d be at a blues bar in Paterson playing dominoes with a man older than a rock and waiting for a pick-up. I got to see the world. The world of Jersey, anyway.

But the best part was the rides in between stops. Uncle Petey always had those new cars, always the fanciest cars money could buy. I’d drink my Coke, and it would burn sweet on the way down, and Uncle Petey would sing along with the radio. He loved the Beatles especially, so he’d sing nice and loud, and he had a voice like a goat, and I’d try to sing louder and worse than he sang to drown him out. I still can’t hear “Love Me Do” without laughing. If he didn’t like a song, he’d turn the sound down and tell me stories — about the people we were going to see, sometimes, like to warn me that so-and-so had a wooden leg that didn’t fit right, so I shouldn’t stare, but the story behind that leg, it all started with a flea bite — Ginger, he’d say, you can’t make this stuff up.

He’d tell me stories about the family, about growing up with my mom, about Gramma, about Gramma’s terrible cooking and how much worse it used to be twenty years ago, no, really, one time she won a bag of turnips in a raffle — gosh, I loved those stories. When you’re a kid, you can’t exactly believe that your parents did the same things as you. My mom climbed trees? No, not really…really? Because she yells at me for doing it.

I loved my mom, of course, I still do, and my dad and Stephanie. But sometimes I felt more like a family in the car with just Uncle Petey, with him hanging a tale about how my parents met that I’d probably heard half a hundred times — that out of all the cousins he had to pick from, he’d picked me? We were…friends. He was my first grown-up friend.

I didn’t go out with him as often after junior high — I had other things on my mind, I cared more what people said, you know how it goes. But I’d go out on a run now and then, and I told him stories in return as I got older. We still had a great time. He still had the Cokes back there, and they were still the best-tasting Cokes.

When I first came here, I missed everyone from my life and I hoped someone would come to keep me company — it can take a while to find people to talk to here, and you want to talk about the things you’ve seen. For years and years I kept a list in my head of all the stupid things the Dominskis said just in case my best friend Tammy showed up, or Stephanie, anyone who could appreciate it. But nobody came…and when you can drive, you can at least feel mysterious about being lonely. All alone, smoke curling out your window, Tony Williams on the radio…but when you can’t drive, it’s just boring. Stevie’s my best friend now, probably, but she didn’t even get here until the eighties, and anyway, nothing surprises her. Any story you end with, “Do you believe that?” she just shrugs. It’s not the same.

But talk about things you can’t believe — on Thursday I walked over to Glacier Hill, there’s a part of the walking path there where you can sit and watch the cars on I-78. I counted Volkswagen bugs for a while — thank God they’re back — and when I’d wasted a good few hours, I walked back through town, and when I got in, there’s Mary and Mr. Bruck coming in too, and there’s Stevie on her way out, and there’s Rob Rixon, smoking a rollie and talking to Uncle Petey. He had to be dead, the living won’t give Rob the time.

I didn’t know what to say first, so I just stood there, and Uncle Petey turned and said to me like we’d just seen each other last week, “So Ginger, you remember Little Billy Bills from the shore run? You know, the kid with the knife?” I did know him — he’d taught me that game where you stab a knife really fast between your fingers, mumblety-something-something. He was just Billy then, and he was a very jumpy little boy I’d never liked. “Twitchy little bastard, you never liked him,” Uncle Petey said, and then he said, “Well, get this — we were right, because that little puke shot me in the back. Twice. In a parking lot. In Allamuchy.”

Uncle Petey hated the Allamuchy pick-ups because they took him out of his way, and every time we went out there he’d say, “Ay, Allamuchy. Ginger, that town, that town is killing me.” And then somehow it did, in the end. Little Billy Bills followed Uncle Petey all the way to that nothing little town and shot him and took his budge to buy drugs. “Well, at least you’ll never have to drink the coffee again,” I said, because Uncle Petey also used to say Allamuchy was the town that good coffee forgot. And he said, “Oh, they got a Starbucks now,” and Rob said, “Eh, who doesn’t. Cards?” We walked over to the caretaker’s building, and I said, “Allamuchy. You’ve got to be kidding,” and Uncle Petey said, “Ginger, you can’t make this stuff up,” and I said, “You have no idea.” And he doesn’t. But he will.

My name is Ginger Alford. I died in a motorcycle crash February 14, 1976.

July 22, 2003

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