Life on the New Jersey Turnpike

I live at Exit 6 of the New Jersey Turnpike. Some of you may know it as Pennsylvania.

I've often thought that if I had used all the hours I spent on the Jersey Turnpike towards a single goal I might have learned fluent Mandarin, earned Olympic medals, or bought a beach house with my gas and toll money. And, I never used the highway to commute. I viewed my hours on the road as wasted time especially in the years when I traveled with an AM radio. But yesterday riding in the backseat of friends' car, I saw the turnpike differently. I recalled memories covering the entire span of my life. The Jersey turnpike is an unique position to do that. We are about the same age. Aside from the first few years of my life when I wasn't doing much traveling, the turnpike was my contemporary.

I don't remember my first trip on the turnpike. I took the highway, the concept of a highway, for granted. For me, it was always there.

The turnpike was the road to New York, and my family traveled there regularly. First, with my brother and sister and later, because I was the baby, with just me alone in the backseat.

Here's what I remember from the era I rode the turnpike as a child.

Playing WHO AM I. Mostly because everyone found it hysterical when I asked "Have you ever appeared on the 'Betty White Show?'" To this day, I have no idea why they found that so funny. (I loved Betty White)

Playing SPOTTING LICENSE PLATES. Did this game even exist before superhighways?

Stopping at the Joyce Kilmer rest stop, the first place I ever encountered chocolate mint ice cream. God bless you, Howard Johnson. Only recently did it occur to me that Joyce Kilmer was approximately 45 minutes from where we lived. Okay, maybe 50 at sixty miles per hour. Yet, we always stopped. Didn't want to hit New York hungry.

Smelling Elizabeth. I never failed to respond to the odiferous section of the turnpike with moans, groans, and calls to roll up the windows. (No AC in those days.) I recall flopping around as in pain when I had the backseat to myself. I was so happy when Elizabeth NJ stopped smelling. It smelled yesterday. The air-conditioning didn't help.

The last family trip I remember was the only one I made with my grandmother. I was old enough to do the driving, and the speed limit was probably then 65 mph. I now wonder if she had ever been on a highway before. She may never have gone that fast. She was frightened. I was annoyed that my father insisted I drive in the right lane at the minimum speed of 40 mph. I wish I'd been more understanding.

My brother and his family lived in New England so, as an adult, I found myself starting every trip from Philadelphia on the turnpike. There was a time I swore it was always raining on that road. It was not raining yesterday, but it poured on the trip home.

Later, when I lived in New England, I would start and end many trips on the NJ Turnpike. Eventually, out of sheer boredom,  I found many alternative routes. Many. Not as direct but not as familiar (i.e. monotonous). I guess familiarity can breed contempt. But my old VW convertible and I still found ourselves together on the turnpike on more than a few occasions. There is something to be said for familiarity. And, not just the rest stops.

There are benefits to driving the turnpike. 

One is the view of Manhattan. When I lived in New York, the sight of Manhattan across the river signaled I was almost home. But just passing by was a treat. The most beautiful view? The twin towers of the World Trade Center painted an orangish-gold by the setting sun.

Not all my memories are sweetly sentimental. 

One night around Exit 8 on the turnpike going south, I discovered the people in the car behind me had just gotten on at Exit 9. How, do you ask, did I learn that? Well. When you sit for five hours in the middle lane of the turnpike in what is increasingly becoming the middle of the night, you tend to make friends. There's not much else you can do in the center lane when just a dozen car lengths ahead of you, a car hit a bus that hit a Brink's truck that might have actually hit a semi. We sat while they not only cleared the accident but picked up all the change that fell out of the Brink's truck onto the highway. And New Jersey made us pay the toll. I was going to pursue the injustice of charging for that trip, but priorities changed. That was the last night I saw the twin towers of the World Trade Center. I don't recall looking, but I always did. Within a few weeks they were gone.

Things I learned:

Never change more than one lane at a time. I learned that when I chose to not go all the way from the right lane into the left lane. Luckily. Two cars raced by at about 100 mph. 

Never sit in the left lane unless you are going well over the speed limit. Well, never even venture into the left lane unless you are going well over the speed limit.

When traveling on Christmas, always use the truck lanes. It appears that most truckers don't work on Christmas. 

And, don't forget to check out the New York skyline.

 

9/11

Written for Facebook post on 25th Anniversary: "I don't feel I have any right to write about 9/11 but neither do I want to ignore the anniversary. I made some notes in my blog."

9/11 was my tragedy only in the sense that it was everyone's tragedy. I wasn't there. I no longer even lived in New York. I knew one person who died. Some knew dozens. Thousands lost immediate family. 

I don't want to insinuate myself into others' tragedies but I do want to acknowledge them. Not to intrude but to honor. On the fifth anniversary of 9/11, there was a nationwide memorial. I know it was a moment of silence at the moments the planes hit. I think church bells might have rung. I found myself outside, about to get into my car,  across the street from the home of a family that had lost a father. I felt as if I was intruding on their grief, usurping their pain, pain that I could not imagine. To lose a loved one is always hard, but to be forced to imagine the last moments of those victims is horrifying.

I have a vision of the only victim I knew. I see her with black smoke under her nostrils, the way I've seen the faces of fire victims.  But that is just my imagination. No one alive saw her after the plane hit.

Valerie loved working at the World Trade Center. She loved showing it off. I remember eating lunch with her on the plaza while she extolled the virtues of the complex. I think of the crowds of young attractive people and wonder how many of them were at work when the planes hit.

Valerie had been a colleague with whom I was sometimes friendly. When she lived in Los Angeles, I'd get in touch when I was in town. She was serious about building her career. She thought I was hopeless, working too hard for too little money. She was right. 

I saw her infrequently, the last time a summer or two before she died at her house in the Hamptons. After the disaster I didn't immediately put together that Valerie worked at Cantor, Fitzgerald. I could remember someone talking about Cantor. "Cantor this." "Cantor that." But as I watched the towers fall, I thought that I was witnessing the death of someone I knew. I don't know why I blocked that connection but I did.

When I lived in New York, I didn't go to the WTC that often. A few visits stick in my mind. Going to the observation deck with visitors. Fighting the wind on the plaza on a cold winter day. Sitting in the lounge at Windows on the World and looking out thinking how far away the nearest rooftop was. I concluded that even if I could string a pulley from the 107th floor to that roof by the time I reached the other building I would be traveling so fast the impact would kill me. Years later someone might have sat in that same spot, wondering the same thing--if they could see through the thick smoke. I don't think when I was imagining my escape I ever considered that could be someone's reality. 

In later years, I'd go to the World Trade on business. I don't  know what classes I attended or what companies I visited. I do remember one office and one especially fun contact. I recall looking out the window by his desk at the Statue of Liberty, so tiny from that height. I don't recall his name, so I'll never learn his fate.

There are strangers I think of in particular. I was often in an elevator or in an elevator lobby at 8:46. I would arrive early, get a snack in the mall area, and head up at 8:45 to a 9am appointment. How many of my fellow passengers were following that schedule on 9/11? It is painful to think what they went through.

When I first heard a plane had crashed into the North Tower, I didn't find it inconceivable. One night flying home from Albany on a commuter flight, our path down the Hudson and around the tip of Manhattan to LaGuardia took us so close to the building that I recall saying to myself, "Veal looks good." 

I never went to the site after September 11th. I was in the area within a couple of weeks but didn't walk the few blocks to look.  It felt wrong. It was not a tourist attraction. I'd been to the site after the 1993 bombing but that was because I visited a friend in the area. There was disruption but not widespread destruction. I don't remember any odor. There was no escaping the smell in 2001. 

That night I took the Staten Island Ferry to my car (which I didn't even try to bring into Manhattan) and watched the site from the back deck. The scene was brightly lit letting me see the smoke that rose as high as the other buildings in the area. Maybe fifty stories of dust and smoke.

Driving out of New York on Christmas morning that year, I passed the wall covered with photos that had hung there for over three months. That is the closest I ever came to viewing the site with the exception of what I saw on a ride on the PATH train to New Jersey. I assumed the gaping hole had once been part of the complex. I've never been to the Memorial even though I once stayed at the W Hotel across the street. Somehow visiting the site felt intrusive. I think on my next visit to New York I will go. It's time. 

The last time I recall seeing the Twin Towers was while landing at Newark on a flight from Seattle. I'd gotten to know the two boys beside me. In their early teens, they were on their way to a year in Israel. When I saw the WTC appear out our window, I interrupted them to point it out. They were excited. The sight of the Twin Towers could be exciting. When I lived in New York whether I saw them from a plane, train, or car, it was a sign I was almost home. When I didn't live in New York and drove by them on the New Jersey turnpike, they were part of a gorgeous view of Manhattan. I wrote a blog once about the ten most beautiful sights I'd ever seen. The WTC at sunset was one.

My plans for that week were to attend a wedding on 9/15 and fly to England on Monday 9/17. While I watched 9/11 unfold on TV I called my friend in England and asked if she was watching television. While she went to turn hers on, the Pentagon was hit. She asked if I was okay and I said I was fine. "I'm in a small town in Pennsylvania." We hung up and the next event was that a plane had crashed "in a small town in Pennsylvania." It was nowhere near me. 

My trip was postponed. All flights were cancelled leaving the skies oddly empty except for the occasion military flight. I drove to the wedding in DC. 

On that day I heard the most meaningful best man's speech ever. I can only paraphrase the ending. Walking to the ceremony in Georgetown, the best man passed an older woman who asked if he was headed to a wedding. When he said he was, she said, "I am so pleased that there is something happy happening today." 

Hope. It really does spring eternal.

Can AI Make Me Laugh?

I chose not to let any AI app anywhere near my writing. I do use Microsoft Word, so I am constantly fighting off Copilot's offers to help. Thanks but accurately: butt out.

I 'm not here to condemn writers who use AI in ways that I choose not to or to debate the issue. I am horrified by the idea that there are folks out there who throw a few ideas into an AI app and ask it to write an  essay, a short story, a novel. That's a major concern but not today's topic. 

Today I am here to investigation an issue. Can AI make me laugh?

This topic was actually suggested to me by an AI app. I won't say which one for fear of retribution--you know when they take over and make us all use em dashes--but let's just say it was one that was willing to chat with me for free. (Misplaced footnote: em dashes are considered a sure sign of AI authorship by some.)

Having decided I needed to know more about AI,  I picked a random paragraph from a novella I was working on and fed it to the bot. I asked for an edit. It changed two articles, changes I did not agree with and ignored. But then the ever-helpful chatbot asked if I would like it to make the paragraph more suspenseful or funnier. Why not? I selected funnier.

The results weren't horrible. But they weren't funny. Then again the paragraph I gave them was not a laugh riot to begin with. I moved on. Or so I thought.

At 3am this morning when I found myself unable to sleep but not awake enough to do real work, I decided I hadn't given the chatbot a fair shot to show me what it could do. 

I set the bot free and asked it to write something funny on four topics. 

*Going back to school at 57

*Becoming an orphan at 25

*Traveling constantly on business 

*Moving to New York in the 1980s

The bot tried. It applied some of the basic conventions of comedy to produce hackneyed results. My opinion was that when incorporating what it considered humorous elements, the bot forgot style. 

I thought I'd help it out by giving it three styles to emulate: Dave Barry, David Sedaris, and Andy Borowitz. Of course, it issued a disclaimer that it could not imitate their style. Then it listed the characteristics of each style and wrote accordingly. Let's just Dave, David, and Andy could have done better.

In an effort to understand my bot buddy, I next asked for the rules of comedy. After reminding me that there are no rules, only guidelines, it created a comprehensive list. 

As I read the list, I could see that the bot took the entries seriously. Especially the rule of three. I can sympathize. I too love the rule of three and have to fight the urge to overuse it. The bot did not fight the urge.

If I might digress for a moment, I once read a review of Tina Fey's "Bossy Pants"'in a major political journal. The reviewer who was not familiar with the idea of a comedic triple, noted with some disdain that the author tended to make lists of three where the first two items were the same and the third was the same but somehow different. (I offer as a sample one of my favorites not from Tina Fey but from my nephews: Larry Bird, Big Bird, Sheryl Crow.) Shortly after that Tina Fey observed on "Thirty Rock" that her character did tend to make lists where the first two were the same and the third one was different. I always wondered if she was responding to the review.

Anyway, the bot described its work as playful, but it didn't impress me that way. To me, playful requires a person, a personality, behind the writing. I've known people who long to be funny but just aren't. As an example, a dear friend loved the Carnegie Hall joke. You know. How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice. But when she told it, her punchline was: it's really hard. You have to practice a lot.

I am of the opinion that funny people are born not made. Environment can help them hone their skills. Practicing their skills with other funny people can enhance those skills. Understanding guidelines can improve them.

Improve? Yes, but when I think of the funny people I know, I don't believe anyone told them the rules. Excuse me, guidelines. They may never have heard of the rules. I think they are somehow embedded in their DNA. 

And that is why I do not believe that AI can produce any groundbreaking humor. It's all derivative. Maybe someday that will change. Dave Barry, David Sedaris, and Andy Borowitz have all made me laugh out loud. During my experiment the bot did not. I don't think I smiled.

I'll leave it at that. I don't like to say too much - the bot is listening and I don't want to offend it. Besides, I could be wrong.

© Jane Kelly 2026

Temporarily Old

I wrote this the day before I reported for knee replacement surgery. 

Why surgery? I am not a world class athlete. I have not landed too many triple salchows. I have not skied too many moguls. What did I do?

I tend to think that driving hundreds of thousands of miles might have contributed. I found out knees are the most frequently needed joint replacements among truck drivers. Pushing all those pedals. Evidence in my case? I only drove about 100,000 miles in a stick shift car. Ten times that on an automatic. My left knee is fine. For now. 

But the truth? What did I do? I aged. 

My hope is that with my right knee fixed, I will return to being normal. Actually, my hope is that my body will be thirty-five again, but I'll settle for what it was like seven years ago. You see, I've been temporarily old before.

I feel as if Covid catapulted me, and a lot of my friends, into old age. My customary somewhat active lifestyle was replaced with something more limited largely because the world had changed. Not specifically Amazon but the Amazon effect. I never actually had to move. No need to run errands. That I liked. Zoom. I could see friends without driving. That I didn't like. But shortly after the Covid restrictions were lifted, I discovered it no longer mattered what I liked.

During Covid, I would comment that there were people all over the country developing cancer because they were not going for routine checkups. Turns out I was one of those people.

Chemo made me old. Very old. I lay in bed all day staring at fifteen seasons of "Silent Witness" on the iPad my friend Susan sent that I attached to the gizmo (old word alert) that my friend Carolyn sent to suspend my iPad from the hospital bed that my friend Carole allowed me to keep in her living room for months. (Great friends.) 

I couldn't tolerate the entire chemotherapy course. After surgery I did better on chemo-lite, but no one would have described me as youthful. And then it was over. Well, after months of shaking off the last of the side effects that would actually go away. Despite some permanent damage, I felt great. Younger than I had in years. I had been temporarily old and learned being old was no fun. I wasn't eager to go back.

Subsequent events made me old again. First up was some wonder drug. The only wonder it produced in me was amazement at how a single drug could have such varied and extreme side effects in so many people. My symptom was a frozen neck that kept me old and unable to drive for close to a year.

Then, despite a series of infections related to antibiotic prescriptions for extreme dental work (chemo and my teeth were not a good match), I managed to feel not ancient again. I wouldn't say young but I fought off the old. Then I tripped myself. Broke my right wrist and got a compression fracture in my back. The wrist could be fixed surgically. I can write my name again. COMPLETELY OUT OF PLACE BLATANT SELF PROMOTIONAl INSERT: so come to a book event and I'll be happy to sign a copy. END INSERT. 

Then before the back pain stopped, the knee. 

I accept that I will have to work hard at keeping the old out, doing things I don't particularly want to do. But I tell myself I've done it before. I can do it again. And will probably have to do it again. And again. And again. 

The project begins tomorrow. They tell me just about as soon as you wake up from the anesthesia. I'm ready. 

© Jane Kelly 2026

At the Movies with the Parents

Lying about in ortho rehab, I find a lot of random thoughts running through my head. This is one of them. 

As I grow older and older and older, I realize that in many ways my upbringing was not standard. The realization hit me recently when I could only recall seeing one Disney movie. Not that I actually remember the movie. My memory is a badly distorted recollection of being terrified by a crocodile at the Philadelphia Zoo. I say distorted because I suspect they did not keep a croc in an unfenced two-foot deep cement hole three-feet in diameter that allowed visitors to walk right up to the edge. Safety standards were looser when I was a kid, but even back then zoo officials would have provided more protection for the animal if not the customers. At any rate, I recall trying to climb up my mother with images of Captain Hook crowding my brain. So, I must have seen "Peter Pan." And maybe "Lady and the Tramp." Or do I only remember the classic spaghetti scene that is part of popular culture?

My parents must have taken me to other kid movies but none of them made an impression. The only reason I think we really went is family lore that when asked if I wanted to see some film I replied, "Okay, but not if I have to watch 'Bear Country' again." Bear Country was a documentary short about, spoiler alert, bears in the country. 

What strikes me as unusual is the list of movies I did see with my parents in the theater, not accidentally on the early or late show. 

Love in the Afternoon 1957 

I think we saw this at Radio City Music Hall. The story involved an affair (implied - it was the fifties) between Gary Cooper and Audrey Hepburn. I have no idea what I thought was going on as a seven-year-old. I remember the ending clearly. Well I know there was a train. I don't think I ever saw the movie as an adult.

Girl on the Red Velvet Swing 1955

No idea where we saw this movie loosely based on a sensational crime of the early 1900s. Harry Thaw (Farley Granger) kills Sanford White (Ray Milland) over Evelyn Nesbit ( Joan Collins). I kind of remember Farley Granger looking nuts but basically what I took away from the movie was the need for an indoor swing in our home. It wasn't red velvet but a nice wooden one hung in our basement for years.

Funny Face 1957

I suspect in today's world this would be a G-rated romance. Not sure since I last saw it in 1957. What I took from this film was a love of shocking pink and a desire to move to Paris. It's probably the reason I started college as a French major. 

Rains of Ranchipur 1955

Sometimes I wonder if I only saw the coming attractions. They alone were enough to scare a five-year-old to death. An earthquake and flooding in India. All I remember is the flooding.

Also important are the movies they saw without me. I really only know of one for sure, a French mystery called "Diabolique" in which Simone Signore and an accomplice murder Simone's husband. My mother really loved that movie. Couldn't stop talking about it. I wonder what my father thought.

I was the baby in the family and my two teen-aged siblings were probably not into babysitting, so I got to do a lot of age inappropriate activities.  Ask me about my cocktail umbrella collection. 

Just a random memory while doing knee exercises. 

© Jane Kelly 2026

Collateral Damage

Saving my stories so I can recall them after my brain can't . . .

May, 1976. Monte Carlo. Tourist hotel.

The hotel was not fancy but it did have a restaurant, one with a maitre d'. A maitre d' who asked me if I wanted to share a table. In the midst of a solo trip across Europe with a Eurail pass, I was in the habit of chatting with strangers so I agreed.

I am not sure what I thought the maitre d's motives were. I probably did not think he had a motive. If I'd thought about it, I probably figured he was playing concierge or matchmatcher. It didn't take me long to figure out his game was fundraising. I was twenty-six and traveling with two outfits, so I can pretty much guess what I was wearing. I don't know what would have made him think I was a rich American, but maybe any American was seen as rich in those days. Even in Monte Carlo.

He led me to a table where I found a guy. Not a heartbreaker but he did have an interesting story. He was from Lebanon which was then in the throes of a civil war. He was living in the hotel and broadcasting back to Lebanon. He was on the Christian side. I enjoyed listening to his story all the while waiting for a request for a donation, which in the days of traveler's checks and no ATMs could not happen even if I wanted it to. It never came to that. A friend of his, newly arrived from Lebanon, joined us.

From then on, I was an eavesdropper on their conversation. I don't remember the entire story, but I do recall the gist of it.  My tablemate said he wanted to return to Lebanon. His visitor said that was impossible. And, this part I do remember very clearly. His visitor said, "If you come back, you'll never get out of the airport. They kill you as soon as you step off the plane."

Now I thought I only had one rule in life (never wearing white after Labor Day - well two if you count before Memorial Day separately), but I realized I did actually have another rule. Never eat dinner with someone marked for death by Arab terrorists, any terrorists actually. Since the situation hadn't come up often growing up in Philadelphia, avoiding dining with terrorists had never been a big problem in my life. I accepted that it could happen inadvertently, but from that day on I made it a rule. I finished my meal, excused myself, and returned to my room happy to be away from the man who was marked for death.

Back in my room, I settled in to read, happy to be away from the controversial duo. And then I heard them in the hallway. And then in the room next door. I spent the next hour or so conjuring images of my becoming collateral damage in the Lebanese Civil War. In the morning, I realized how silly that seemed. Worrying about being blown up just because I had the room next to a terrorist. Really. And then years later, I saw Munich.  I am not always paranoid.

© Jane Kelly 2026

Book Rush 2026 (Updated)

Update: As of March 24, 2026, all these books are available as paperbacks and ebooks via Amazon.

Throughout the first three months of 2026, I published books with alarming regularity. Alarming if I'd been writing these books with matching regularity. That is not the case. Some of these had been in the works for decades. 

Those three books (listed below in order of publication) have little in common besides their author, me.

NIGHTINGALE SONGS

I thought this book was a romance, but it turns out it doesn't adhere to the strict rules for novels categorized as romances. Nonetheless, NIGHTINGALE SONGS is romantic and, first and foremost, a love story. The question: two love stories or only one? The novel has a supernatural element, but I won't categorize it as paranormal. It has humor, but I wouldn't place it on the humor shelves. Maybe it's a Rom-Com. I think of it as NOTTING HILL meets SOMEWHERE IN TIME. In this case, 1944 intrudes on 1985.

A DEATH IN SCILLY

A traditional mystery that adheres to most cozy mystery rules--an amateur sleuth, no on-screen sex or violence, a small cast of characters--A DEATH IN SCILLY is set on an island with a permanent population under one hundred, a truly cozy setting. The reader has a couple of puzzles to solve. The plot is complex but not convoluted. The tone is more often light than dark, but it is a mystery so there is a murder. The setting on St Agnes, the smallest of the Isles of Scilly, during a night when a storm paralyzes the island adds to the suspense. It really is a dark and stormy night.

THE SECRET AUDIENCE

A historical mystery, THE SECRET AUDIENCE is set in the US Homeland during World War II. The heroine, a wise-beyond-her-years fifteen-year-old Philadelphian, is sent to live with extended family she doesn't know in a small town in Alabama where a camp for German POWs has been built. The events of 1944 serve as a backdrop for a murder mystery that unmasks not only the killer, but the societal barriers that divide us as well as the common humanity that unites us all.

All the novels can be read by young adult readers, but young readers might find THE SECRET AUDIENCE of most interest. 

© Jane Kelly 2026