Wayne is a large township in northern NJ, just west of Paterson. It's named after a Revolutionary War general, Anthony Wayne. It used to be a 25-minute bus ride from NYC when I was a teenager.
There were a lot of farms when we moved there in 1958. Dairy farms, poultry farms, strawberry farms, and more. Some of our neighbors kept chickens. It was a pretty town, with woods where kids could play safely.
We lived in a neighborhood that originally was a summer vacation community for people from NYC. The first houses were unheated log cabins. By the time we moved there, it had become a year-round place. There was a small lake created by damming a stream, and sand was brought in to make a beach. I learned to swim and ice skate there. We had cold winters, and the lake froze solid from December to March. In junior high school I'd walk home, drop off my books and head to the lake to skate until well after dark.
Wayne had a number of lakes, probably all man-made, that served as focal points for residential developments. The one I lived in was a lower middle class - working class community. Further down the stream was Pines Lake, where the rich kids lived, the kids who got their own sailboats and sailing lessons, and then cars when they turned 17.
The trouble with Wayne was that it was lily-white, racist, and Republican. The homes in one affluent development, Packanack Lake, had covenants prohibiting owners from selling their homes to African-Americans, Italian-Americans and Jews. I didn't know this until I was in college, but it made me sick to my stomach.
We had one African-American kid in my high school, and she had to stand on the bus because nobody let her sit down. She told me kids spat on her too.
My dad invited an African-American co-worker over one day, and afterward several neighbors threatened him and warned him not to do that again.
And then there was the asshole on the board of education who declared that Jews should not be allowed on the board because they were too liberal and spent too much money on schools. My friends and I picketed him at the next school board meeting. Even through I couldn't wait to escape Wayne, I kept my voter registration at my parents' address for years just so I could vote against that POS. Unfortunately, Wayne voters loved him and elected him mayor, then sent him to Congress.
Over the years Wayne got overdeveloped and filled with shopping centers and one of the first big malls, Willowbrook Mall. I haven't been back in decades.
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