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Originally Posted by David_Old_Jersey Any suggestions as to pleasant towns / cities in New Jersey . . . |
When I was going to college for natural resource planning most of my profs would refer to New Jersey whenever they wanted to cite examples of the most f#@k'd up environmental messes in the U.S. At the time, I had only been to NJ once as a kid and all I could remember was that I'd continuously been asking my dad, "What's that smell?"
Then, I met a "Jersey Girl" in college and for the next seventeen years I visited the state about a half-dozen times a year. Most of those visits were at my in-law's "shore house" on Barnegat Bay. Whenever we'd arrive, my wife would take a deep breath and exclaim, "Ah, I just love the smell of the ocean!"
I, on the other hand was still asking, "What's that smell?"
Turns out she had grown up mistaking the stench of a state with more Superfund sites than anywhere else in the country as the "smell of the ocean."
She, like so many in the state, had adapted to the conditions and considered them normal - and sweet smelling. (I never did join her family in eating the crabs that they'd pull up through water that had fecal coliform counts 200 times the "safe" levels, though.)