It's my hometown

Where I'm from, the small forests are still dense and filled with entangled trees. The ocean, the rivers and creeks are still blue and clear, and still far removed from the smokestacks and the Snookis that have long defined what's "Jersey."

It's always a good time to take a 5-mile run around Twilight Lake, because the view is serene and timeless. The sun rays lay like sparkling rods of orange across the water, and behind it, a slow-moving train occasionally pulls in and out of the Bay Head station, a well-preserved reminder of the area's past and present.

Whenever I see it all, I'm always reminded: Point Pleasant is a great place to live; not just to visit.

In some ways, Point Pleasant, like its surrounding towns of the Jersey Shore, has more beauty than it had 17 years ago, when I last lived there. There are more parks for kids to play in. The run-down stores, and the beaten-down woods at the end of my old block, now have life.

My house is gone, leveled by a wrecking ball in 2003, soon after my mother died. But the block is better, and the houses that once looked like they were falling down are now solid and stately.

If only we had a Dairy Queen just a few houses away while I was growing up in the 1970s ad 1980s; now, the people of Barton Avenue do. Now, sitting on what was a vacant lot, where the kids once threw rocks and broke windows at the vacant stores at the corner, there's something else for the kids and their families to do.

With every community, however, there's always some attempt to taint it, and change what's there for what they say is better, but it's actually worse. Even Point Pleasant isn't immune to having a Mr. Potter-like political boss - like the one from "It's a Wonderful Life" - whose obsessive control ultimately threatens to drain the community of its spirit.

Even Point Pleasant has been threatened time and again by developers who want to come to town, build a big box store and pull away the small businesses that have kept the downtowns of Bridge and Arnold avenues afloat, and unique.

But even amid the name-calling and the potential lies of a political campaign, an ugly partisan battle that has dominated the local dialogue lately, Point Pleasant remains rich in splendor, and not so much because of its natural charm. It's the people, and they remain the glue that keeps everything together.

Now, in an ugly election year, they are fighting back against deception and fear. They are showing the strength that's helped keep the town the way it is, even as corruptive forces have, for years, tried to turn it into something else.

They have been tainted by the campaign signs, slogans and sayings of a campaign that's been marred by a candidate who serves as council president and, according to many learned observers, has taken control of the town.

Susan Rogers now wants to be mayor, and she's claiming to have roots in the community that likely never existed. She says she graduated from Point Pleasant Borough High School in 1985, though many of us from that class don't recall anyone named Susan Rogers - let alone Rogers - walking up to get her diploma on that hot day in June 1985.

Complaints have been filed against Rogers, the Republican mayoral candidate, that she misused her power as an elected official to launch a police investigation after two supporters posted comments about her son on a Facebook campaign page.

The whole thing would be puzzling, damning and even laughable if it weren't for the fact that Rogers is the product of a political machine that, in my hometown area, has become the dominant controlling force for decades.

Yes, that machine is Republican, but party-affiliation has little to do with it. It has to do with a one-party machine that's controlled the county I'm from for most of my life. This is a machine that has become unstoppable, and has even taken pride in flaunting it, as Rogers' political backers have wrestled control of nearly 90 percent of the towns in Ocean County, N.J.

In the neighboring towns, this machine has allowed growth and development to turn wide-open spaces into suburban sprawl, with filthy roads that are filled with traffic. The dirt paths of my youth are now four-lane highways littered with Home Depots and IHOPs.

There are a few exceptions to that rule, of course, and one of them is Point Pleasant. The people fought back against those who once wanted to tear down a swath of forest known as "Red Desert," a place where I picked leaves for my Biology project in the 12th grade, and played war games with sticks and cap guns when I was 8.

The developers that feed the coffers of those in power tried, and tried hard, to get their way. But it was the people who stopped it, and they banded to together to halt the bulldozers that would have flattened a thick patch of oak, cedar and maple trees that stretch for more than a mile.

In the end, the developers caved, as did the politicians, and the only thing they did build was a park.

Those same people tried to do it again, along Bridge Avenue, down by the road's intersection with Beaver Dam, where I used to get my hair butchered by Sam the barber, and where I bought records and cassette tapes at Boro Stereo. Across the street from the stores, another thick patch of woods was doomed by a developer who wanted to put up a supermarket, among other things, that threatened to finally extend the sprawl to Point Pleasant.

Yet again, the people fought it. Again, they won. Some trees were chopped down, but not to make way for another boxed store. This time, it was for another park.

Now, with Rogers seemingly trying to strengthen her grip on the town, they're fighting again. And it's not just the things she says that has them worried. It's not just the incredible resume that she's put forward.

As I've written on http://www.jerseyshorenews.org, my Jersey Shore news site for Patch.com, Rogers has sided herself with the same people who are siphoning money away from these towns, the same money that could keep property taxes low and educational programs functional.

My friend Bill, who just recently moved back to the town, has banded together with many others on Facebook, asking people to say whether they remember Rogers not just as a politician, but as their classmate. They hope to present a survey that will prove that Rogers didn't walk the aisle in June 1985, even as she continues to insist that she did.

Others have passed notes, emails and anything else around, saying Rogers must be stopped. They've enlisted the help of the local paper, which has probed into Rogers background and has revealed even more about her that's inconsistent and troubling.

Rogers has had it good, and given the political history of the town, one could easily say she'll survive. But I've gotten to know the people lately, reacquainting with them on Facebook. I recently became the Jersey Shore regional editor for AOL's Patch division, and I'm looking forward to delivering Jersey Shore news to Point Pleasant, as well the neighboring communities of Brick Township, Howell Township, Wall Township, Long Branch, Berkeley Township and Toms River, that's been sorely missed.

Now I look at the people, and I'm reminded about who they are. This is a town that once promoted the slogan "Only the Tough Survive" for its high-school wrestlers, when they could have been saying it about anybody with a Point Pleasant address.

For once, I think it's safe to bet against the machine.

My Hometown/Bruce Springsteen

I was eight years old and running with a dime in my hand
Into the bus stop to pick up a paper for my old man
I'd sit on his lap in that big old Buick and steer as we drove through town
He'd tousle my hair and say son take a good look around this is your hometown
This is your hometown
This is your hometown
This is your hometown

In '65 tension was running high at my high school
There was a lot of fights between the black and white
There was nothing you could do
Two cars at a light on a Saturday night in the back seat there was a gun
Words were passed in a shotgun blast
Troubled times had come to my hometown
My hometown
My hometown
My hometown

Now Main Street's whitewashed windows and vacant stores
Seems like there ain't nobody wants to come down here no more
They're closing down the textile mill across the railroad tracks
Foreman says these jobs are going boys and they ain't coming back to your hometown
Your hometown
Your hometown
Your hometown

Last night me and Kate we laid in bed
talking about getting out
Packing up our bags maybe heading south
I'm thirty-five we got a boy of our own now
Last night I sat him up behind the wheel and said son take a good look around
This is your hometown