It's All Right

This morning a miracle happened: the sun shone through the stubborn clouds and temperatures climbed to a sunny 48 degrees. Little birds darted out of their hidden nests, skinny deer starved from the cold long winter tip toed out of their bushy nests and the earth sang "Little darling, its been a cold lonely winter. Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here. Here comes the sun and I said it's all right" Somewhere in the woods there is a robin singing called Ringo Star, I just know it.

The lakes are melting. 

Can you see the deer? Do a deer a female deer, ray a drop of golden sun!

We decided to go to a new church and explore the area around it so headed off to Mountain Lakes, NJ. 

Mountain Lakes NJ. Where most houses cost over one million dollars.

Like most of NJ, Mountain Lakes was historically Native American territory. The Lenne Lenape Indians made Mountain Lakes their home for centuries and centuries. While the Dark Ages ruled Europe, the Lenne Lenape lived in Mountain Lakes. When the Pilgrims arrived barefoot and scared to America, the Lenne Lenape lived peacefully in Mountain Lakes. One day in 1664 a weird looking white guy (imagine never seeing anyone pale before then a pale dude walking in) with trousers and Quaker shoes showed up with a musket and ordered the Lenne Lenape to give him their land. His sputtering musket killed a few of them then more white mean dudes showed up and forced the Lenne Lenape to leave their comfy home. They were forced to travel westward or loose their life. Who knows what those people felt being forced to leave their home by mean people. Who knows how many died, what their conversations were and what they told their little kids. Who knows what the men said to comfort their women, if anything. Who knows....

Mountain Lakes officially became American territory as the new settlers knew. It was a Mountain but had no lakes. Really, all the lakes are man-made, fake and made to look pretty. Lo and behold New York City started to blossom out of a marshy pit. The Italians and Irish climbed scaffolds to build New York and somewhere in the city people began to get rich. These rich people, were grandsons and granddaughters of immigrants but now felt like they were American elite, aristocrats, American blue-blood. They claimed that it took 2 generations to wash away the dirt from their ancestry and become refined society. In my very humble opinion: if they didn't use a bidet they still smelled like George Washington's dirty britches. Imagine 17th century America with terrible sanitation, no bidet: the SMELL!!!!

Nevertheless, the high and mighty of New York that were not as rich as the Vanderbilt's, longed for summer cottages far from the madding crowd. A very smart developer called Herbert Hapgood said, (NY accent needed in tone of Cary Grant) "Say, I can sure build those high hats a place of splendor. By golly I'll do it!" 

 And Herbert (a very fitting name for a lazy cat) began to build "Hapgood" houses.

 Their architectural style is boxy and meant to fit into the woodsy surroundings. He built 200 houses around 9 man-made lakes and soon was selling houses before he built them.

 Herbert Hapgood then took his shillings and escaped to South America to avoid being mobbed by angry wives trying to beat him to death with their corsets.

The Hapgood houses are now the sterling prize of Mountain Lakes. They are beautiful, quiet and sweet and echo of a time when New Yorkers tried to get back to a quieter way of living.

I bet Mountain Lakes is the ideal place to have a BBQ in the summer, neck in the bed of a canoe. St. Catherine of Sienna Catholic Church was filled with hairy middle-school boys with bushy haircuts in their lacrosse sports gear, there were a good mix of women: the skinny ones that are all now gluten free and the chubby ones that are not gluten free but surely make a mean Thanksgiving day turkey, and their homes probably all smell of cranberry and apple. 

Then, to end my sunny day on a golden note, I ran into this darling Golden Retriever. If my husband were not with me the chances of me giving the puppy a hug were pretty high. Golden Retrievers are the sweetest dogs in the world.