“Looking For The Jersey State Trooper”
(90,000 words)
by Nick Ingoglia
Synopsis:
At midnight, in August of 1962, five 12-year-old boys and Lulu, a precocious 10 year old, lie on a garage roof in Bayonne NJ searching the heavens for signs of extraterrestrial life. The following school year, while the boys are consumed by exploding passions for sports, reckless adventures and girls, Lulu and a nerdy high school friend build a rocket ship. The following summer, they launch the rocket ship to ‘invite extraterrestrials to Bayonne” with catastrophic, hilarious and life-changing consequences.
Looking for the Jersey State Trooper follows the lives of these characters over the next 25 years as they struggle with issues of growth and identity, discover love, confront racial tension and violence, and try to find meaningful goals in their adult lives. Through nine interwoven stories, these young people are quietly guided by an older generation, whose courageous lives provide inspiration and hope to the younger generation. These compelling stories of personal development and generational influence are heartbreaking, hilarious but in the end, exhilarating.
Read More:
How do adolescents translate the passion and exuberance of youth into their adult lives? How do they decide which of their parents’ values to follow and which are archaic and need to be abandoned? And how can wise, caring members of an older generation help these children navigate the dangers of their journey to adulthood? Looking for the Jersey State Trooper follows the lives of six adolescents who played street games together in the early sixties in Bayonne, as they struggle with issues of growth and identity. Told mainly through dialogue, the characters discover love and confront racial tension and violence, as they try to find passion in their adult lives. As they grow from pre-teens into adults, their overlapping biographies are compelling, heartbreaking and often hilarious.
Chapter Summaries:
i. Reunion (November 1987)
A woman in her eighties has offered to care for her one-year-old granddaughter, Julia, while her son, Frankie, and his friends celebrate the 25th anniversary of a “space shot” attempted by Lulu (the kid sister of one of Frankie’s friends). Elisa’s internal dialogue raises a mystery concerning the significance of Julia’s name and suggests that the subsequent lives of the carefree children who played street games in front of her window so many years earlier have been anything but carefree.
ii. Street Games (August 1961)
Frankie, Louis (cousin to Frankie), Walter, Alphonso, Jimmie, and Jimmie’s kid sister, Lulu, play in front of Frankie’s house on a hot August night. The lives of these 11- and 12- year-olds as they progress to adulthood is the subject of the remaining chapters.
iii. The Pinochle Players (August 1961)
When a storm cancels their outside games, Frankie leaves his friends to sit and watch his father and Italian immigrant physician friends play their regular Tuesday night card game. While waiting for the fourth member of the group, Sal, an obstetrician who has been delayed by a lengthy delivery, they chat about medical issues of the day, engage in good-natured banter about their ethnic heritage, and tease Frankie’s mother, Elisa, about her Belgian roots. The event that delays Sal becomes clear by the end of the chapter, and its horror haunts Frankie for decades. The medical ethical issue underlying the event is raised here and again later in the book.
iv. Candyman (1964)
Three years later, Walter, nicknamed Candyman for a lighthearted incident that occurred several years earlier, is struggling with a terrible secret. This seemingly jovial, happy young boy is haunted by voices that won’t let him rest and scream for his destruction.
v. Gaetano’s Song (Spring 1966)
Louis loves basketball and hates high school. This combination leads him and his friends to cut school and go to the Waverly courts in Manhattan. There, he, Jimmie and Alphonso challenge a group of menacing black guys from Harlem to a game of three-on-three. Louis is facing an unsure future when he discovers that his Uncle, Tom, whom he has viewed as a sad, listless, man who has spent fifty years working in a job he hated, is leading a clandestine life and has a secret passion. Tom’s secret is revealed while Louis becomes friends with “Cat,” one of the black kids from Harlem. When Cat’s grandfather, Reverend Rico, enters the picture, the four form an unlikely symbiotic union from which each learn lessons about fulfillment, passion, and life-goals and Louis takes a giant step toward adulthood.
vi. Papi (Winter 1977)
Frankie is a second year medical student when he meets his childhood friend, Alphonso, for a drink at The NoName Bar on the lower west side of Manhattan. There they spot a “hot” black girl who Alphonso realizes is Cat’s sister. Frankie begins talking with Mia and after some relationship “speed bumps” (that include family, racial and sexual issues) they become lovers. Conflict arises around their racial and social differences, leading them to question whether they will allow their union to proceed. Concurrently, Frankie faces a career decision dilemma; whether to pursue a life in clinical medicine or follow the example of one of his mentors to become a research scientist. Through Frankie’s struggle, the reader gets an inside look at the exciting challenges of medical research but also the sometimes ugly side of academic life.
vii. Looking for the Jersey State Trooper (Summer 1980)
Alphonso narrates (into a tape recorder) an incredible event he witnessed involving the remarkable Lulu. He can’t believe it himself, but he knows what he saw. In telling his story, Alphonso recounts his life with (and without) Lulu, from her infamous space-shot attempt, to their subsequent meetings over more than a decade, to their night of exuberant rock n’ roll excesses when they are stalked by the Jersey State Trooper.
viii. Ernest was a Dancer (November 1987)
It’s the night of the reunion, and Elisa is babysitting for Julia while Julia’s parents commemorate the “space shot” with the rest of the gang from Bayonne. Elisa tells baby Julia how she and her people came to this country and how her uncle Ernest and his Belgian immigrant family’s hope fell on the first child born in this country, baby Julia. Tragedy struck when Ernest and his family were trying to develop a business in Florida. Elisa tells this story to the baby as if she is trying to transfer the strength, fortitude and hope from her life to her one-year-old granddaughter. As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what she is doing.
ix. Reunion (November 1987)
This chapter is narrated by Mia (the reader learns that she and Frankie have married, resolving an issue left open in chapter vi, and that she is the mother to baby Julia). They have returned home following the reunion to find Elisa and Julia asleep. Mia recounts the gathering earlier in the evening and reflects on the choices she and Frankie made to stay together, and in their choices of career paths. Some of the earlier storylines of Louis, Cat, Alphonso, and, Jimmie are revisited to bring the reader up to date on their lives. In the final pages of the novel, Mia, who is awake while Frankie, Julia, and Elisa sleep soundly in the next room, contemplates the next generation and what the future holds for baby Julia.