Thursday, May 08, 2008
Yeah, This Shouldn't Further Cement Jersey's Reputation Or Anything
Periodically, I'll go onto the website for the local paper I used to subscribe to in NJ and check out what's going on.Today, I learned that the sterotype about New Jersey being famous for chemical spills, traffic and shopping malls was being neatly furthered in one single piece of news.
A tanker truck overturned on the highway, spilling 600 gallons of a chemical, forcing a major commuting highway to be closed for about 18 hours. Splendid.
"It's hard to keep track" of how long the traffic jam lasted, said Maria Stehle, a Knoxville, Tenn., resident on her way to Massachusetts. She guessed it had taken about two hours for her move a couple of miles.
Roger Perry of Texas said it took him, his wife Linda and their dog Roy about three-and -a-half hours to travel three miles. Like Stehle, the Perrys were also on a long trip, from Texas to Rhode Island.
"We've got to get there sometime this year," Roger Perry quipped. His wife Linda said waiting in such bad traffic gave her a feeling of extreme, numbing boredom.
"Complete nothingness," is how she described the experience.
How is it that they managed to interview people from Tennessee and Texas for a story about a traffic jam in New Jersey?
The sight of the emergency crews tending to the stricken truck attracted some onlookers who got a good view of the scene from the nearby Riverdale Crossing shopping center, which overlooks the accident scene and remained opened during the incident.
What, no mention of The Sopranos?
Oh, wait, a police raid on the Gambino crime family, with the top dog being from my county... there we go.
Labels: New Jersey, stereotypes, truck crashes
