(Whit, you forgot the Watchungs)Well, as Popeye would say:
Goshk, but dat's embarraskin'! 
Yeah, actually®, I grew up with the Watchung Mountains, they bordered the Plainfields just across "Death's Highway," good ol' Route 22. I always kid these flatlanders down here in South Jersey who think they know how to drive that "
I learned to drive in the Watchung Mountains (some deadly curves there) and Route 22, so go and cry about your inch of snow on somebody else's shoulder" (people get an inch or two down here they panic 'cause they're used to relatively mild winters since the Jersey Cape extends out into the water, they call out of work and everything!
).
I used to go camping and hiking with the Boyscouts at Camp Watchung in the Watchung Reservation, used to frequent the nature trails at Surprise Lake and the Trailside Museum (found one of my most prized fossils, an
Equus tooth from the Pleistocene, there), and had a girlfriend who went to Watchung High (and we loved it when Watchung High teams showed up on the schedule, 'cause Plainfield killed 'em in every sport). Not to mention many sojourns to Washington Rock where Gen. Washington reputedly watched the Revolutionary War "Battle of Plainfield" from a perch overlooking the valley (I think you Brits licked us on my hometown turf, mates
).
So how could I forget the Watchung Mountains? Dunno, Helen. I guess they were so close, and so much a part of my life (and so close to suburbia), that I just didn't think of them as
mountians anymore...we'd just call 'em
the Watchungs.
Real mountains were always
somewhere else...at least the hour's drive to the Kittatinnys in Sussex County, the Poconos, the Catskills,
the Adirondacks (add to list), the Blue Ridge,
the Alleghenies (add to list)...those were
mountains, not those hills in your own backyard. Now ain't that a lot of rationalizing words just to get to saying this...
I forgot, okay!?
So sue me!
and don't go to the "S"-moment, I ain't buyin' that, yet!
