Tyler Sullivan Phenology Assignment

When not in Burlington for school I spend my time in the great state of New Jersey, specifically in the central part in a town named Bridgewater on Harry road. This area is mostly middle-class families that are mostly white that is sandwiched between the bad part of town, a major highway route 202/206, and the neighboring town. For starters the change living between the two, Burlington and Bridgewater, is so drastic that it could be described as almost a polar opposite. When I am home in a suburban area there is tons of nature in the forms of bushes and trees, but little areas of woods devoted just to nature itself. Being honest, my home is very similar and indistinctive from the rest of urban America. There are things that I can recognize it by, but the regular person wouldn’t be able to tell its Bridgewater, let alone New Jersey. The meaning to me thought is significant although only shared with the people that live there, Bel Air park down the street, foothill road and its hills and corners, Adamsville school on the corner, all the things that make it unique to me yet there are similar features with different names everywhere. The best way that I can describe where I live is generic for the northeast, so there is some distinction yes, but it is so hard to express the variation. The flat one story houses combined with basic architecture and shudders are the only things that give a clue to where you could be, the history of my neighbor hood is that all of the homes were constructed exactly the same in the 50s to house all of the veterans from World War Two starting families, a common occurrence for the timeframe. This history has also made it so the population of my neighborhood is all elderly or very young, thus being because the original owners are still living or they have died and their homes have been bought. This is one of the big changes that I have noticed over the past ten years, the elderly neighbors started slowly not coming outside anymore, then houses for sale, then the influx of new families. An odd thing but part of a changing and evolving community, healthy change. I have gone from feeling the youngest to becoming the age demographic and kinds of people now moving into the area once for the old, the same thing is happening when I went to college. I was going in as the youngest and then after my four years I will be the oldest in different more experienced shoes. I cannot deny where I live made me who I am and gave me the experienced that I will never forget, but I can’t just remember the good, since all my experiences and memories make me who I am. Stereotyped as a middle class white male is a correct assumption, but during 2008 and the following years, everyone in my town suffered and especially my area. Those hard years bred a sense of coming together and helping each other resulting in good relations with neighbors and friendships. A kind of feeling and respect that you can’t see on the surface, but the community can feel it through our interactions. Something that I miss, but also know what makes a home a home, the people that live there with you.