The Pines
The Culture
I think a few words about the culture of the pines might be in order. Much has been made about the natives of the new Jersey Pine-lands, It is said they are reclusive, clannish, don't trust outsiders, and while this may be true, they are also credited with other more positive traits. When I stand back and look at the culture, I see it is not much different than other groups, in that the same basic traits are displayed. It is normal for groups of humans to bond together, and adopt patterns of behavior that reinforce and protect the group. Trying to see the people of The Pines as one big culture is useless. They must be seen as a group of many subcultures that related to one and another more or less. The majority were white Anglo saxon Protestant, which gives us a clue into the mind set of the native. There was an underworld, but it wasn't called that, they were just outlaws and most folks did not want much to do with them. There were some, whom you could not believe anything they said. Others were as honest as the day was long. What made the people diffirent was The Pines themselves. More than that, it was the nature of the land. The pines grow on ancient sand dunes and have little nutrients, that is why you find what is sometimes called a Pygmy pine forest in the middle of the south Jersey Pines. This is also why we find sugar sand roads that began as wagon trails This made for hard traveling before the coming of good roads. It was an isolated culture.
Interdependence
The Garden State Parkway runs roughly along the Jersey shore on a line east of the Pine forest. In some places it cuts through Pines and in others Oak. It has become the habit to separate in our thoughts peoples from the Pines as people west of the Parkway and folk east of the parkway as shore dwellers. Natives came out of the Pines to work on the shore at certain times of the year and shore dwellers went into the Pines when work was bad along the shore. They knew each other and shared the same cultural values. I knew folks that came from Chatsworth to work on the bays or to work as Carpenters and in other trades. Of course it worked the other way also, many natives rode buses out to the Pines to work in the blueberry fields. I cut cedar out in Warren Grove when the bay froze over a couple of winters. Many family's depended on firewood from the Pines and The Pines and the Shore area were connected in many ways and the natives were depended on both as a resource. The outlaw community flourished on the Deer trade. Lighting or spotlighting went on big time in the pines. One old codger told me he had shot over a 1000 Deer and was proud of it. When I was young, the game warden used to stop at the Esso station to gas up for the night. Across the street at the Hamburger joint, everyone was watching. If he went north when he left, at least 2 carloads of boys with shot guns would pull out headed south. Of course if he went south, they headed north. A lot of the Deer were sold to folks in the city's, many were eaten by the native, and I knew of people that killed the Deer to feed the pack of hounds they hunted foxes with. As you might think, this sort of behavior was frowned on by the majority of the population. But the point is, in general the shore and the Pinelands were one diverse culture, with many subdivisions.
Isolation
I have read somewhere that isolation breeds paranoia, and I think this may be true. Before the population bloom of modern times, it truly was and isolated culture. My father grew up at Bamber lake, and Toms River was about 10 miles away. He said a trip to that town took the whole day. It was hard to get into the Pinelands and and hard to get out. When you live in a society where you encounter strangers every day, you adjust, and it is no problem. In a society where you hardly ever see someone you don't know, you become cautious with outsiders.
Music
Things were mighty tough, down it the Pines,
in 1929,
They said in the city, for a bowl of soup,
city folks were standing in line.
Didn't have a Chevy in every garage,
or a chicken in every pot,
Pineys never thought much, about that stuff,
cause Pineys never had a lot.
copyright Merce Ridgway Sr.
bravenet.com