The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn Twelve Times Around the World MANY years ago, I made my home in a green and mountainous corner of New Jersey and rattled into New York five days a week on a...
...Practically all of them want to be understood—-and if you will listen, they will talk...
...It is like catching a breath of ocean air in the midst of routine, land-bound occupations...
...For they have poured into my ears the materials for many a New Leader column...
...I am hesitant about putting to myself the question with which I embarrassed my friend so long ago...
...One experience lingers in my memory...
...I have written nearly to the limit of my space without mentioning the most important feature of a commuter's life, his fellow passengers...
...We approach the metropolis, of course, through the inevitable tunnel...
...And, glancing up occasionally, I see the University of Pennsylvania or Princeton or Rutgers...
...one thing I can say: The oft-repeated journeys have constantly increased in interest...
...his city is still safe...
...But this deprivation is compensated for by a 7- or 8-mile journey beside the lordly Delaware...
...Coming to New York, I always read the Times...
...For 26 years, I have journeyed almost every week from Delaware to New York and back...
...As I come rolling in each Monday morning, I see New York as the terminus of a mighty web of activity, and the realization of our physical achievement leaves me wrapped in silent wonder...
...Then I say to myself: "Old William is still there...
...When you sit down beside a fellow human being, you never know what will happen...
...Vessels bearing oil from Texas or Venezuela or untold things from Europe or Asia symbolize the wide, wide world...
...As we approach Philadelphia, my mind invariably plays a trick on me...
...A school-teacher friend of mine appeared one bright morning in a state of exultation...
...We clicked while the train was still standing in the New York station and talked incessantly till I dismounted at Wilmington...
...Sitting there on the red plush seats of the trains, I have had many a really exciting chat...
...With the passing of the years, the waterborne traffic on this great stream has steadily increased...
...I would be ungrateful if I failed to do j ustice to the conversationalists I have met between Delaware and New York...
...How much I have learned in the long tale of miles I dare not try to estimate...
...The New Jersey Turnpike, the Garden State Turnpike, the Pulaski Skyway and half-a-dozen rail systems all swerve toward a point in order to deliver their burdens of traffic to the little island of Manhattan...
...In a year, this adds up to nearly 12,000, and in 26 years more than 300,000—or enough to carry a fellow more than twelve times around this little planet of ours...
...He exclaimed for all to hear: "I've gone around the world on a Hudson River ferry...
...According to my timetable, this journey covers 118 miles—each week, 236 miles...
...Whether I approach from the north or the south, I am never content until I have seen that figure standing high with its authoritative air...
...One of the pleasantest features of this journey was crossing the lovely, lively Hudson River each day...
...The tower which rises from City Hall bears a mighty, leaden statue of William Penn, the city's founder and patron saint...
...On the way home, I invariably relax over the latest number of the New Yorker...
...Every Monday morning, as my train pulls out of Newark, I see the towers of our metropolis rising into the blue...
...Ever since I have known the town, he has patiently stood there under his wide Quaker hat, keeping watch over his people...
...Our amazing complex of railways and highways begins to concentrate...
...Great concerns like the Baldwin Locomotive Works, the Bethlehem Steel Company, the principal automobile companies and many of New Jersey's well-known chemical concerns have moved from the cities to roomy sites out in the rural districts...
...Most people are lonesome...
...Our time-saving tunnels now rob us of the thrills which accompanied the passage on the old ferry boats...
...Some of the most beautiful buildings which we have in this country were constructed to house these transplanted industries...
...Once I even found a friend...
...Modern engineering has robbed me of my view of the Hudson...
...THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn Twelve Times Around the World MANY years ago, I made my home in a green and mountainous corner of New Jersey and rattled into New York five days a week on a Delaware and Lackawanna train...
...Every time I slide along past it, I see three or four boats plying up or down...
...It was about 45 years ago that this slight incident took place, but I am still a commuter...
...This is one of the most important possibilities of commuting...
...Both of these weighty and interesting journals leave me plenty of time to observe both the landscape flashing past the windows and the manners and temperaments of my fellow passengers...
...When I asked what he had learned during his long composite journey, he seemed nonplussed...
...During these 26 years, I have observed the redistribution of industry along the mighty Pennsylvania's right-of-way...
...What he meant, of course, was that all his tiny journeys by water, added together, would amount to 25,000 miles...
Vol. 40 • January 1957 • No. 3
