Totowa Book of the Dead  

A Photographic Memoir

Most of my teen years were spent in the Irving Savings Bank parking lot on Union Boulevard in Totowa, New Jersey. In the evenings the boulevard was like death. Nothing ever happened. Few cars drove by. No life existed. I'd sit there in a car throughout the winter, spring, summer and fall, with a friend or two and watch nothing. We'd go for a drive, cruise Route 80 West for awhile; bullshitting, listening to music, getting high. Then we'd turn around, head back, and like a magnet, end up parking at that same spot, back on the boulevard, sipping our Dunkin' Donuts coffees.

The city of Paterson bordered the suburb of Totowa. Before the great urban exodus, Totowa was just a place to bury Paterson's dead. It has five huge cemeteries. At one time it was written in "The Guinness Book of World Records" that there was a population of more dead in the town than living. Totowa's population is about 12,000 residents but there are over 85,000 interments at just Laurel Grove Cemetery alone. Lacking parks, Totowa's cemeteries provided a wide degree of ritualized initiations into adulthood. At age eight you play hide n' seek amongst the tombstones. At 13, you smoke your first joint behind them. At 16, you sneak kisses. At 26, you put flowers on the graves of friends who didn't live through high school. At 35, you help your parents buy their plot and sometime, hopefully much later, you pick out your own.   Angel, Laurel Grove Cemetery

Monty at the Elk, Laurel Grove Cemetery

At least the cemeteries had trees. It was a place to cool off, smell green, and get away from all that blinding whiteness of aluminum sided, one family housing developments. Totowa neighborhoods didn't have many trees. I think working class people are afraid of them. Trees cause cracks in sidewalks and make too much mess in the fall. Someone might slip and break their neck. The biggest threat of our blue-collar existence is directly related to trees. Some injured party might sue and take your house away.

PHOTO Left: John Cangro's Skylark, Laurel Grove Cemetery

Above: Left Handed Angel, Laurel Grove Cemetery

Totowa's building boom started in the 1950's when the population doubled. Trees would often get in the way of construction and were cut down for the sake of convenience. As a family grew and that extra addition was built on the house, the trees again would be sacrificed. My father left the big old one in the back of our house alone because it edged the property and bordered our neighbor's fence. It must have been a hundred years old. I'm sure it was there well before my uncle owned the property, where he grew his prize-winning flowers. In the morning, that towering tree shaded the whole back of our house. Mom had three clotheslines attached to it and the neighbor behind our house had two. For some reason, it didn't have any low branches and we were never able to climb it. Its trunk simply went straight up and then ballooned at the top like a big round lollipop.  

Fallen Tree, Totowa Road

Mayor Sam Cherba

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