I’m reconsidering the country and I’m not talking about the U.S., Israel, or even what should be the Palestinian State.  I’m talking outside Boston’s Beltway–aka, my idea of wilderness.

A bit of background.  Born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, I spent the early years of my life in Carteret (Exit 12, N.J. Turnpike).  Now Carteret was no sprawling metropolis.  It was the kind of small town loaded with bars, churches, and factories.  One where kids ran after the mosquito spray truck ’cause the smell was intoxicating.  But it was also a town when, not smogged from its factories’ exhale, you could see the New York skyline.  For me, country meant the empty lots scattered through town where I chased grasshoppers and lightning bugs, and the park where I played Little League.

I now live in New England, where rural is a spit away and many people I know have always spent some serious time in the hinterland.

When I first moved to Boston from Chicago, people used to pull me along to their cabins, farms, and tiny structures they optimistically called “country houses.”

Sorry, but I’m in the Fran Lebowitz camp.  As she said, “I am not the type who wants to go back to the land; I am the type who wants to go back to the hotel.”

My idea of civilization has always included running water and, most importantly, bathrooms.  We didn’t claw our way to the top of the food chain to shit in the woods.  Which was what my early years of going to the
country often entailed.  Sure, there were outhouses, but I was toilet trained decades ago.  Who wants to use a wooden porta-potty for days at a time–let alone ever?

Especially someone like me who prefers my own bathroom to all others.

In those days, if I really felt I had to go (both to the country and the bathroom) I devised ways to cope.  One way, really.  Kaopectate.  Yep.  I slugged that gunk like an alcoholic sucks down a bottle of whiskey thinking
it might be his last.  And it worked.  I could go nearly a week without excreting anything other than urine, and that usually from the porch if it were night.  The dark and quiet scared the hell out of me.  Who knew
(besides The Shadow) what awaited in the pitch black miles away from any streetlights.  I didn’t want to know.

Truth be told, days weren’t much better.  People wanted to hike and the problem with that was simple.  Unless I’m chasing a ball, the only thing worse than running is walking.  And walking uphill worse than that.
And god forbid I was dragged out into the boonies during winter.  That meant cross-country skiing or snowshoeing.  There are things more painful than traipsing to nowhere.

But age and upward mobility (mine and virtually everyone I know) does have its rewards.  Going out to visit friends in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine no longer means suffering a case of constipation.  Everyone has bathrooms, most have lakes, and nobody minds if I don’t swim in them or
shlep around them.  Sitting on the porch and reading has become acceptable.

In other words, I can actually pretend that I’m home.  There may not be a lot of wonderful things to say about aging (dinner conversations among us old Jews often have to do with everyone reciting their own litany of ailments) but these days going to the country with friends or relatives is most definitely one of them.

In fact, I just returned from my cousin’s half home in Monterey, Massachusetts, deep in the Western part of the state.  I say half home since he and his wife live there about half the week all year round.  An area of my state that houses summer homes for Bostonians and New Yorkers.

Rife with cultural activities (Tanglewood, summer home of the Boston Symphony, Jacob’s Pillow, a world famous modern dance company, Shakespeare and Company…) we aren’t exactly talking rural.  This is my
kind of country.  Satelite TV.  Birdwatching, but from a deck.  Plopping down in a comfortable seat in a tented pavilion, enjoying Dr. John and Wynton Marsalis.  My kind of “great outdoors.”  Especially when it includes great friends.  It’s doesn’t get any better if I’m gonna leave my beloved concrete.

I’m just a spoiled city rat, unwilling to spend my time in a retrobred context.  I wasn’t a Boy Scout, Cubbie, and the only knot I ever learned to tie was for my shoes.  I want to enjoy my country time without slurping bottles of Kaopectate.   And these days I do.

Q: Why is New Jersey called “The Garden State”?
A: Because “Oil and Petrochemical Refinery State” wouldn’t fit on a
license plate.