A New Jersey Mystery

Ever since I've taken the NJ Transit train to New York, out the window I've noticed workers out in the swampy area around Secaucus. But instead of clearing the marsh area or dumping toxic waste like normal people, they've been laying down hundreds of wooden palettes. In the middle of bumfuck nowhere.


And when I say "nowhere," you have to understand, there's nothing but dry cattails and knee-deep mud in this entire area. Why these workers would haul a bunch of equipment and supermarket palettes out there is an annoying mystery to me.



I know what you're going to say: "maybe they're filling up the deep water with the palettes to help minimize soil erosion so that they can eventually build a high-end shopping plaza on top of that area with a nail salon that doesn't tear the shit out of your cuticles when they push them with their sharp little nail tool."

Right. But why would they do it so shittily and haphazardly like that? Are they just laying a few at a time as a little engineering experiment? Again, it would be a shitty and haphazard experiment.


It's certainly not meant to be a secret dumping ground, because they're obviously doing it in open view of thousands of train commuters.


In "Fraggle Rock," there was a little race of builders called "Doozers" that built little bridges and scaffolding for no apparent reason. The big difference being, Doozers worked in dark, cramped quarters underground, and these New Jersey workers are working in New Jersey. Pause for laughter.


I had taken it upon myself to name several of the structures:

"The Partial Trail"
"The Partial Dock"
"Ugly Stack"
"Wooden Line"
"Scheherazade"
"L-Shaped Half-Assed Project"



And just as baffling as the building of these structures is the fact that they've also been dismantled without ceremony or explanation. You have to wonder if this is all some corrupt Superfund project– millions of your tax dollars being spent on two guys playing dominos with gigantic wood palettes in a swamp.