The mainspring of Orcutt's character--and this...
The mainspring of Orcutt's character--and this she was sure of without having even to speak to him--was knowing all too well just how far back he and his manners reached into the genteel past, and so she stayed at home the day of the tour, perfectly content to be alone with the baby
Her husband and Orcutt, promptly at eight, headed diagonally to the northwest corner of the county and then, backtracking, followed the southward meandering spine of the old iron mines, Orcutt all the while recounting the glory days of the nineteenth century, when iron was king, millions of tons pulled from this very ground; starting from Hibernia and Boonton down to Morristown, the towns and villages had been thick with rolling mills, nail and spike factories, foundries and forging shopsOrcutt showed him the site of the old mill in Boonton where axles, wheels, and rails were manufactured for the original Morris and Essex RailroadHe showed him the powder company plant in Kenvil that made dynamite for the mines and then, for the First World War, made TNT and more or less paved the way for the government to build the arsenal up at Picatinny, where they'd manufactured the big shells for the Second World WarIt was at the Kenvil plant that there'd been the munitions explosion in 1940--fifty-two killed, carelessness the culprit, though at first foreign agents, spies, were suspectedHe drove him omega deville watch partway along the western course of the old Morris Canal, where barges had carried the anthracite in from Phillipsburg to fuel the Morris foundriesWith a little smile, Orcutt added--to the Swede's surprise--that directly across the Delaware from Phillipsburg was Easton, and "Easton," he said, "was where the whorehouse was for young men from Old Rimrock
The eastern terminus of the Morris Canal had been Jersey City and NewarkThe Swede knew of the Newark end of the canal from when he was a boy and his father would remind him, if they were downtown and anywhere near Raymond Boulevard, that until as recently as the year the Swede was born a real canal ran up by High Street, near where the Jewish Y was, and down through to where there was now this wide city thoroughfare, Raymond Boulevard, leading traffic from Broad Street under Penn Station and out old Passaic Avenue onto the Skyway
In the Swede's young mind, the "Morris" in Morris Canal never connected with Morris County--a place that seemed as remote as Nebraska then--but with his father's enterprising oldest brother, MorrisIn 1918, at the age of twenty-four, already the owner of a shoe store he ran with his young wife--a cubbyhole Down Neck on Ferry Street, amid all the poor Poles and Italians and Irish, and the family's greatest achievement until the wartime contract with the WACs put Newark Maid on the map--Morris montre cartier tank had perished virtually overnight in the influenza epidemicEven on his tour of the county that day, every time Orcutt mentioned the Morris Canal, the Swede thought first of the dead uncle he had never known, a beloved brother who was much missed by his father and for whom the child had come to believe the canal beneath Raymond Boulevard was namedEven when his father bought the Central Avenue factory (no more than a hundred yards from the very spot where the canal had turned north toward Belleville, a factory that virtually backed on the city subway built beneath the old canal route), he persisted in associating the name of the canal with the story of the struggles of their family rather than with the grander history of the state
After going around Washington's Morristown headquarters--where he politely pretended he hadn't already seen the muskets and the cannonballs and the old eyeglasses as a Newark fourth grader--he and Orcutt drove southwest a ways, out of Morristown to a church cemetery dating back to the American RevolutionSoldiers killed in the war were buried there, as well as twenty-seven soldiers, buried in a common grave, who were victims of the smallpox epidemic that swept the encampments in the countryside in the spring of 1777Out among those old, old tombstones, Orcutt was no less historically edifying than he'd been all morning on the road, so that at the chanel white j12 watch dinner table that evening, when Dawn asked where MrOrcutt had taken him, the Swede laughed, "I got my money's worth all rightThe guy's a walking encyclopediaI never felt so ignorant in my life
"How boring was it?" Dawn asked"Why, not at all," the Swede told herMore there than you think when you first meet himMuch more to Orcutt than the old school tie He was thinking particularly of the Easton whorehouse but said instead, "Family goes back to the Revolution
"Doesn't that come as a surprise," Dawn replied"The guy knows everything," he said, feigning indifference to her sarcasm"For instance, that old graveyard where we were, it's at the top of the tallest hill around, so the rain that falls on the northern roof of the old church there finds its way north to the Passaic River and eventually to Newark Bay, and the rain that falls on the southern side finds its way south to a branch of the Raritan, which eventually goes to New Brunswick
"I don't believe that," said Dawn
"I refuse to believe it
"Oh, don't be a kid, DawnIt's interesting geologically" Deliberately he added, "Very interesting," to let her know he was having no part of the Irish resentmentIt was beneath him and happened also to be beneath her
In bed that night, he thought that when Merry got to be a schoolgirl he'd inveigle Orcutt into taking her along on this very same trip so she could learn firsthand chanel black tote bag the history of the county where she was growing upHe wanted her to see where, at the turn of the century, a railroad line used to run up into Morristown from Whitehouse to carry the peaches from the orchards in Hunter-don CountyThirty miles of railroad line just to transport peachesAmong the well-to-do there was a peach craze then in the big cities and they'd ship them from Morristown into New YorkWasn't that something? On a good day seventy cars of peaches hauled from the Hunterdon orchardsTwo million peach trees down there before a blight carried them all awayBut he could himself tell her about that train and the trees and the blight when the time came, take her on his own to show her where the tracks used to beIt wouldn't require Orcutt to do it for him
"The first Morris County Orcutt, " Orcutt told him at the cemetery, pointing to a brown weathered gravestone decorated at the top with the carving of a winged angel, a gravestone set close up to the back wall of the churchProtestant immigrant from northern IrelandEnlisted in a local militia outfitJanuary 2, 1777, fought at Second TrentonBattle that set the stage for Washington's victory at Princeton the next day
"Didn't know that," the Swede said
"Wound up at the logistical base at MorristownCommissary support for the Continental artillery trainAfter the war bought a Morristown ironworksDestroyed by a flash flood, hermes wallet 179