🌊 Where the American Dream is Not Dead

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By Max Frost

Linden, New Jersey

If you have ever flown into Newark Liberty International Airport, driven on the New Jersey Turnpike, taken a boat to see the Statue of Liberty, or traveled on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, you’ve seen the industrial expanse of Linden, New Jersey. 

You can’t miss it: Oil tanks, refineries, pipelines – an industrial, oil-based wasteland stretching as far as the eye can see. 

On countless trips in and out of New York City, I’d passed through this area. It always captivated me, this hideous, gray, miles-long testament to how much energy the USA consumed. So a few weeks ago, I rented a car and drove into the sprawl to figure out what was actually happening there.

And what I found was incredible. Between the refineries, pipelines, and wastewater treatment plants was a thriving community; a place where people were proud to be American; where opportunity was abundant; and where more and more people arrive each day, barely speaking the language but pursuing an American dream they have no doubt remains very much intact. 

In today’s We The 66, I share the story of what I found in the oil suburbs. 

If you live on the East Coast and have ever taken a plane, the jet fuel likely came from this part of Jersey. If you’ve filled up at a gas station, the gas probably came from here. If you’ve bought a propane tank, it may have been prepared here, too. 

And there’s a solid chance that the person who enabled that action – whether now, 20, or 50 years ago – was not born in America. This part of New Jersey has been an immigrant mecca for over a century. Situated a few miles south of Newark and 10-20 miles southwest of New York City, the town of Linden has at various points attracted German, Italian, Irish, Polish, and various Hispanic immigrants, among many others. People came here because of the proximity to arrival points in the US and the abundance of jobs that required hard work, not English.

Bayway Diner is a seven-stool counter-serve in Linden and the first restaurant ever featured on Guy Fieri’s “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.” It sits directly across from Bayway Refinery, the largest oil refinery on the East Coast. 

“This is a blue-collar area,” owner Jonny Prince told me. “Middle-class people working here, grabbing a sandwich, going and grabbing a coffee, going to work, you know, grabbing a burger, grabbing a hot dog or whatever. And that's what it's always been. New Jersey's been middle class.”

Inside, an Ecuadorian immigrant from a sanitation facility was waiting for his lunch. He had come to the US in the 1980s as a teenager. 

“My first trip to the United States was to play soccer,” he said. “Economically, my family wasn't that good…And I decided to stay to help my family. I’m pretty grateful because this country gives me a lot of opportunities.”

He’s been working non-stop ever since.

“I come here to work,” he said. “I wake up at 3 o’clock in the morning. I don’t know what time I’ll go home, maybe 4 PM.”

What did he think about Trump and the new deportation push?

“That's a really hard question to answer because, you know, I was in the same spot,” he said. “[But] you know when I came over here to play, I stayed and I worked in the restaurant, I went to school in the morning. I don't get no help from the government. This [Biden] government that we used to have, they give everything easy you know – house, food, and everything. Everything easy. And when they are forced to work, they don't want to do it. They come over here to change, and they don't want to change. If you go to my house, you got to follow my rules.”

The Bayway Refinery’s tankers are visible from space: Dozens of giant circular white containers that hold gasoline or other products until it’s piped out to a truck, ship, or other vessel. If you look carefully at satellite images of the oil farms, you’ll notice neighborhoods inside of them. 

In these neighborhoods, we met an Indian cab driver, a black Columbia University dining hall employee, white refinery workers. It was a multi-ethnic, blue-collar melting pot. 

One refinery retiree said his family had been living between the tanks since the 1930s and his wife’s family since the 1960s. They grew up on the same block where they now live as husband and wife. 

“It was Polish, it's Spanish, it's Irish, it's Slovak. The only Slovak church that's left in New Jersey is around the corner here. Everybody looks out for each other. Snow days, everybody's shoveling each other out. I know almost everybody's name that I talk with. My wife knows all the dogs’ names.”

This area’s demographics have been constantly shifting. In Linden, which contains the refinery, Poles are the largest ethnic group. The massive Polish Pulaski Meat Products market is the most prominent business on the downtown strip; studies have found that 16% of residents five years and older speak Polish at home. The figure has declined in recent years, in part because of the arrival of Hispanic immigrants. Today, within a block of Pulaski’s market are Mexican, Peruvian, and Dominican establishments.  

In one Linden neighborhood, a man in his 60s (pictured below) identified himself as a Puerto Rican who retired from the American military. He had relocated here with his wife because MS-13, the Central American gang, had become too powerful in his Bronx neighborhood and where he used to work in Long Island. 

He recounted one gang member who began “disturbing” him when he “found out” this man was Hispanic.

“One time I had a very rough conversation with [him],” he recalled. “I told him – there's two different things here happening. You are creating a negative aspect for yourself and your country. And me, I'm a natural born citizen. You see me coming in the uniform. I belong to something productive and serious.

“So the guy got, he got stupid, and I told him, ‘I don't have time for you because I got to get to my job.’”

He gestured to the area around us: “This is a great area.”

Pointing at one house after another, he said, “These people here, they are from Ecuador. He's from Colombia. They're Americans. The other ones are Dominican and then Poland.” 

He kept pointing: “They're from Jamaica and Puerto Rican over there.”

This neighborhood – like the one between the oil tanks – wasn’t luxurious or rich. Yet it embodied the American dream: A home, a community, solid work, a safe neighborhood. For most people, it was all they could ask for – in Linden, they had a shot at the American dream. 

Editor’s Note

Thanks for reading. As always, we’d love to hear your reactions. And if you’ve got other interesting or underreported areas you think Roca should cover, let us know here!

Find our latest stories below in case you missed them:

Thanks. We’ll be back tomorrow.
—Max and Max