Two Camden's

One of the reasons my wife and I traveled to New Jersey this pass weekend was that I wanted my friend Ken to repair my car.  It had a small rust spot that was growing and it needed to be taken care of. My friend Ken works in a shop that restores Mercedes, and not your every day Mercedes, these are the creme dela creme of the make, like the 300SL gull-wing. These cars are now selling from anywhere from 700 to 900 thousand dollars.

Well any way Ken knows his stuff and we traveled to his shop to work on my car. Like I said, his shop works on very expensive vehicles. And where is this shop......Camden New Jersey. I have in my lifetime have been in some pretty bad neighborhood but Camden is the pits. As I was waiting for Ken to repair my ride I must have seen at least 10 drug deals and many many prostitutes walking the streets. The streets are covered with litter and not a cop in sight. Ken has been working in Camden for years and he has said that it is a town that will never recover.

And that brings me to Ken's workplace, it is a old bowling alley converted to a garage.  It's filthy, the ceilings are falling down ,there are cars and parts everywhere with not to much room to work.  And in this enviornment there are cars that are restored to perfection, and  that win awards.  It just amazes me that Ken can do this type of work in this kind of enviornment.

Well Ken repaired the rust spot and you could never tell that it was there, it was perfect.

I live in Rockport Maine and the next town over is Camden. Camden Maine is the polar opposite of Camden New Jersey . It's paradise a where the mountains meet the ocean.  ERvery summer they bring up a bunch of kids from Camden New Jersey for a couple of weeks. I often wonder what these kids think about when they see this beautiful area.  I hope that they come away from those weeks with a new look on their life and where they could go. Let's hope.