Where I Live

Madison Heights – A Proud Community.

That’s what it says on the sign as you enter town.

Below that, “sponsored by Cedar Hill Tree Service. Visit us online at www.cedarhilltree.com”, but as the speed limit is 40 mph at that particular curve in the road and the font size significantly smaller, most visitors never log on. It’s a minor point but a telling one as Cedar Hill Tree is one of those local tradesmen who, for a modest fee, keep the community pride high.

Madison Height’s pride is not haughty, like say, across the Shmelkin Brook in Dunphey, Shmelkin Brook bordering the old Shmelkin landfill at our eastern perimeter. Shmelkin Brook and the new Shmelkin’s Corner Condominium Village are simply two of a large number of reasons to find pride in our town.

Shmelkin Brook, known prior to the mid-17th Century by it’s Indian name Loantaka Brook, was forded by settler Liam Shmelkin, a Londonderry Jewish tinker seeking the sweet air of Freedom unavailable to him in Dunphey. Shmelkin, a canny man by all historic accounts, had the foresight to see the new-world’s need for waste disposal which he supplied to the burghers of Dunphey for a modest fee thus becoming the first tradesman in the area to offer services at a modest fee thereby inaugurating a long-established tradition of services to the community at a modest fee which you can read more about at www.cedarhilltree.com/history/shmelkin.

Liam Shmelkin’s bold steps across the virgin Loantaka into what, centuries later is today’s Madison Heights may have been the first European incursion into the swampy uplands of north-central New Jersey but Shmelkin was hardly the first human seeking Freedom’s sweet air hard by New Jersey’s largest pestilent swamp. Native Americans had made that bold step before him as local lore tells of the original inhabitants, the Leni Lenape Indian’s who were shamed into moving from Dunphey when another tribe – the Loantaka, moved in and started building larger wigwams sparking a building boom which has continued unabated from that day till this. Although they were not Jewish, Shmelkin was welcomed by the remnants of this lost tribe as one of their own, even taking a native woman as his wife. But that’s all ancient history.

Past being prologue, the past of Madison Heights is a tradition of make-do, pioneer spirit, catch-as-catch-can, all-hands-on-deck and swamp dumping. These tangles in our civic skein warped and woofed their threads together in response to a local crisis whose antecedents reached back to the legacy of Shmelkin himself or, as locals at the Loantaka Café aka “Swampy’s” refer to it – Shmelkin’s legacy.

Shmelkin, as has been told, was an Irish Jew and, evident from his getting mixed up with an Indian woman, a non-observant one. And although Madison Heights is an open minded community worship-wise with Pentecostal’s rubbing shoulders with Papists at Swampy’s, no Synagogue has ever taken root here however, our Jews do get together of a Saturday, renting out the local Quaker Society of Friends meeting hall (Saturday’s being the only day available as our Koreans have it on Fridays). The Quaker hall is located on the “Shunpike” – ironically enough the alternate highway to the King’s “Pike” which, with the help of his wilderness wife, Shmelkin cut through the trackless waste to avoid the King’s levy on co-mingled trash hauling.

The Abrahamists are a quiet folk who come and go without a whole lot of fanfare and by any estimate did not call down upon themselves what happened that one Saturday in the Quaker’s parking lot. Somebody, nobody knows who and the locals at Swampy’s point no fingers, somebody stole into the Quaker lot on Sabbath and placed photographs of Adolf Hitler under the windshield wiper blades of the congregant’s cars. Everybody agrees that was a bad thing to do. Hitler caused a lot of trouble, but that’s all ancient history. Insult to injury, the creep also placed nails and broken glass under the auto tires. If Hitler didn’t get their attention, a flat tire sure would send a message.

Madison Heights got the message.

We’re a proud community and, rumors to the contrary, not unwelcoming to outsiders having long ago let in some Catholics and should not be unfairly judged as a result of a necessary local referendum declaring Madison Heights a Guido-Free Zone. A particular point of pride is that Madison Heights has one of the largest Hispanic communities in the whole state of New Jersey. During the summer, between the hours of 7A.M and 3P.M.

We got the message. The Town Council got it. Civic Leaders got it. The Chamber of Commerce got it; the Country Club set got it. The folks at the Yacht Club (note: another point of civic pride, Madison Heights is the only land-locked community to boast of a Yacht Club) got it. Even the locals at Swampy’s got it but then, nothing gets by them.

But what to do?

How does a community respond to a vile act of hate perpetrated on families simply seeking, centuries on, Shmelkin’s sweet air of Freedom? It only took a short five months, but Madison Heights mobilized and responded.

They planted a Garden of Diversity.

It died, but that was only because money to tend it ran out (it was funded by donations after all). While gardening may strike some as an odd response to anti-Semitism, that measured response was born from the self-knowledge of what Madison Heights does best. How best we marshal our best intentions and for a modest fee (or donation), provide that which keeps us a Proud Community, our Civic pride. Pride in trimmed lawns, fine homes, tree lined streets. We work hard to maintain the values of home, family and security. It’s not unlike the mini construction boom that occurred after 9-11. If we can fight terrorism by building swimming pools and gazebos, why not racism with gardening? But that’s all ancient history.

Bud F.X. Landry