NEW JERSEY: Grapefruit in the Garden State

The "Garden State" of New Jersey (pronounced Goddan State of New J-eh-sey) boasts some of the most remarkably unsylvan areas east of the city dump at Gary, Ind. Its smoke-hung Hudson shore is littered, mile on dreary mile, with dingy factories, junkyards, piers, abattoirs, disconsolate old houses and drafty barrooms. When the wind is right, the indescribable perfume of some of the world's most thoroughly fermented tidal flats profanes the air. Jersey politics—a hatchery for grasping bosses—rests in this setting as comfortably as a bloated grapefruit floating in a sump pit.

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