Telling Plainfield's Story

While I was in the hospital last month, my daughter Audrey decided to tidy up my small apartment. The process unearthed some long-forgotten items, one being a green folder with receipts for my free-lance work 30 years ago for a local weekly newspaper.

The obvious next step was to get rid of such old stuff and yesterday I went through the folder and shredded most of the contents. Among my thoughts: Did I really do all that on top of my day job? I covered council meetings, interviewed local merchants and personalities, highlighted cultural events and overall just tried to reflect the liveliness of Plainfield in the early 1980s.

Eventually, working at the weekly became my day-and-night job. It took many long hours each week to produce the newspaper. The owners were able to attract an eclectic bunch of contributors, including a well-known financial analyst and a writer who later became an expert on everything Apple. The work was hard, but it was exciting and, to hear the amount of laughter going on, you would think we were having the time of our lives.

Things broke down later, in part because of a situation that left me missing a whole year of earnings on my Social Security statement. It took me four years to get it straightened out and the necessary confrontation with the owners poisoned our relationship. I left, the newspaper's format changed to a regional one, but by then I had begun free-lancing for the Courier News.

The green folder also contained some old checks that added to the impression of lively times. At least three independent bookstores and an art gallery were represented in those checks, along with a venture that became part of many celebrations - does anyone remember Culinary Hearts and its exceptional cakes? The store was on Somerset Street in North Plainfield, but it was the creation of a Plainfield woman.

The green folder is now empty, but my mind is full of thoughts about those days. Did I really get to interview Pegeen Fitzgerald at Questover? Jon Bramnick was on the Plainfield City Council then and now there is speculation that he might run for governor. The way we had to make a newspaper - pasting up copy and taking the pages down Route 22 to a printer - sounds antiquated in these digital times.

Plainfield still has stories to tell, except now the griots tend to be bloggers. I'm glad to be one of them.

--Bernice