Where To Find Pho In Morris County

WHEN I WAS NEW in Hopatcong and had a craving for pho, I used to drive forty miles to the only Vietnamese restaurant I knew this side of the Hudson: Pho Thanh Hoai in Jersey City.  But not anymore. As I became familiar with northwest Jersey and learned about its digs, I eventually discovered a bunch of Vietnamese restaurants right up my alley. Too bad the nearest one is vegetarian, but the next closest and best thing, TOPO, which stands for "the old post office," (what the building it occupies used to be) has a huge menu that is Pan Asian. And it is not even in Morris county. TOPO is in neighboring Warren county, in a little town called Hackettstown which is home to Centenary College and is the western terminus of the Montclair-Boonton and Morristown rail lines from Manhattan. This town has sure piqued my interest, and I am sure to explore it further in the days to come.

Loving Hut (Vegetarian)

538 State Route 10,

Ledgewood, NJ 07852

(862) 251-4611

TOPO (The Old Post Office)

218 Main Street

Hackettstown, NJ 07840

(908) 850-5888

Saigon Pho

744 U.S. 46

Parsippany, NJ 07054

(973) 794-4632

Pho Thanh Huong

73 New Road

Parsippany, NJ 07054

(973) 521-9900

Lemongrass

1729 Route 10 East
Morris Plains, NJ 07950
(973) 998-6303

Viet Ai
189 Ridgedale Avenue
Florham Park, NJ 07932
(973) 410-9400

Middle School

FRANK SANSIVIERI Intermediate School 73, Maspeth.

In Memoriam

TODAY MARKS THE 10TH death anniversary of friend and neurologist Tom McNorton, founder of Hawaii Center for Sleep Medicine and former Ateneo biology classmate. He and his brother Mike were my mother's special guests in Pinamalayan in the mid-70s, eating native chicken butchered by late cousin Ernesto (Is that cat?), snorkeling rocky Pili's reef with bloody soles, telling cousin Bong to turn his jeep's engine off and economize on gas as we drove downhill to a fishpond in Matulatula, giving up on climbing the "stairway to heaven" at the base of a hill in Pola, puking on that cramped jeepney ride through winding roads going to Puerto Galera. Last time I saw him was in the early 90s at a dinner of chicken papaya prepared by his wife Rose in their house in Kailua. He bade me take $300 to help me get established in Honolulu, but it didn't work out and I haven't paid him back. Godspeed, Mick!

Tom (holding a Polaroid photo) with brothers Chris and Mike in Fraser, Michigan

Mililani, Hawaii

Elementary School Graduate

SARA'S SIXTH GRADE graduation ceremonies at PS 153. Congrats, Babe! Now off to Middle School!

Sixth Grade

SARA'S SIXTH GRADE class picture.

Letter From Hunter High

EARLY BURST OF FATHERLY PRIDE. Sara has been invited to sit for the entrance exam to Hunter College High School, "ranked as the top public high school in the United States by The Wall Street Journal and other sources for several years running." Now we embark on an academic mission that is both exciting and scary.

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A Summer Song

I WON A HUNDRED BUCKS for this poem, then entitled ¨Thermometer¨, when I was studying poetry writing under Albert Goldbarth at Wichita State University in the eighties. I think I spent all of it later that night buying drinks for everyone at Kirby's. Thank you, Kit Hathaway! I wrote its first draft, an exercise in synesthesia, in UP years earlier, and I thought this poem would post nicely this time of year when trees are in full glory and 100-degree weather is just around the country road.


A Thermometer On My Wall Bears A Flower 

A thermometer on my wall bears a flower;
the weight of the sun has tipped its scale,
by a mason’s fault where a tall old clock
shakes the room at the stroke of twelve.

The mercury flew inside the shafted glass
and wrote the fevered wind across its neck,
lit up its puzzled bulb, drank the morning
and attuned its ventricles to the sound of grass.

Down the hall of day, the silver instrument
marks the rage of hours; the silent riddle
runs in the numbered fuse, the artery of griefs,
and tells the singing weather to the belly of a goldfish.

A thermometer on my wall bears a flower,
and the horned toad sinks, and cicadas guess
the simple clue of love the mercury keeps
when summer bursts through the scabs of trees.


From Mikrokosmos, Spring 1989 (also published in Braille by The Braille Institute of America)

Big Bamboo

TO GIVE A TROPICAL feel to my Hopatcong backyard, I bought a cold hardy bamboo, Phyllostachys atrovaginata, to plant on the hill outside my kitchen. Not only can it withstand temperatures 15 degrees below zero; it also grows up to 35 feet, has the fragrant smell of incense, and produces sweet shoots in the spring. I wonder how many years I have to wait before I hear lawiswis kawayan and eat guinataang labong.

Summer Jobs In The Country

AFTER FINALLY SELLING the old summer house in the Adirondacks, I am ready to tackle the job of improving the Jersey house on Lake Hopatcong Heights. (I still live the rest of the year in Maspeth, Queens.) First on the list: change the house and water heater energy source from oil to electric. I would have preferred gas, but this part of town does not have natural gas lines due to the hilly and rocky nature of the terrain. I may rehire my Peruvian handyman from Flushing, NY to help me do the job (he did a decent job redoing the kitchen and the bathroom.) A bigger job that I don't want to think about yet is the roof and the entire second floor, which may need to be demolished altogether. (I want to convert the house into a ranch style home.) Other jobs include landscaping, rewiring the electrical lines and that fireplace for the winter. Big projects indeed, considering all the time lost that could have been spent fishing, lounging on the lake beach, or even writing. But I have a tall TV and FM antenna that catches broadcasts from the big city, including the Beach Boys!

The Deck

The Bay Window

The Front

The Kitchen

Gear Up For The Season!

THIS JUST OUT: The 2013 New Jersey Freshwater Fishing Digest. Get your fishing licenses, boats, tackles and baits at these Lake Hopatcong spots:

Lake's End Marina, 91 Mount Arlington Boulevard, Landing, NJ, 07850, phone: (973) 398-5707
  

Dick Dows Fishing and Boat Rental, 145 Nolans Point Road, Lake Hopatcong, NJ 07849, phone: (973) 663-3826  

Bait and Boat (no licenses sold), 13 State Route 183, Stanhope, NJ 07874, phone (973) 347-5797