What can money buy? A home? Friends? Fame? Maybe. Does that also mean your happiness can also be bought with a few stacks of bills as well? That too is only a maybe. Before I dive into what exactly it means when you have some green between your fingers, let me disclose my own background. I was born and lived in the lower-middle class of Newark, New Jersey for many years, later in life my mother wanted better for us and we were fortunate enough to move to the more affluent upper-middle class of Chestnut Ridge, New York. These are also the two places that I decided to observe for this report now that I have an outside view since leaving both areas. Not only will I be attempting to answer my own question of money buying happiness, but I will also review my observations through the lenses of sociological structures, social imagination, socialism, and several others.

     Newark is the largest city in the state of New Jersey, a simple feat, if you think about a twenty-minute drive through the state, can take you through at least four different towns. However, you would think with this would come prosperity and, like anywhere, there is some but there is much more poverty than most people would like to believe. My family lived in that poverty, for many years it was a revolving door of family members on my mother’s side coming to live in the two-family home that they had fully occupied for themselves. Each time I think about it there, I was happy but that could have just been because I was lucky. We were — are —- a family that supports each other and that support is what kept the warmth in that house as it slowly fell apart around us. This was my own bit of non-material culture that I love more and more as the years go on.

     Looking at this street now, the one I grew on, the place I fell, the place I got in trouble and went to every time I looked for warmth I feel a coldness that my own sense of ethnocentrism almost wouldn’t let through. Not just at the newly vacated house that I once called home but the whole street, now void of young children and familiar laughter, and I don’t believe that it was the COVID-19 that provides this feeling. It stems from a place of change, as Downtown Newark becomes more and more gentrified you can feel the Southward becoming desperate and giving in. The dilapidated house surrounded by its equally battered neighbors is ready to cave in. Walking to the corner store is comfortable for me, it’s a route I know and one that knows me just as well. There’s a drug addict stumbling along across the street and a chain smoker outside of the door. Someone new stands behind the counter, I don’t know him but the shelves are stocked the same and everything still feels as though it is covered in a bit of dust.

     To someone on the outside, these things would be unnerving, they would be on edge with their wall up, it's years of creating thick skin to take everything you see on the streets of Newark in stride. If you see something, don’t say anything and if someone says anything to you say nothing. Mind your business and your manners but down be walked all over. You’re not a doormat but you’re not bulletproof either. You live like this long enough and you see the world for what it is, you find friends and foes then you walk home and find family. Weequahic Park (pronounced ‘week-way’ by locals) is litter-filled as people not lucky enough to even have a dilapidated home hunker down for another night forced to watch the stars. Newark is desperately beautiful as I look at the city that raised me, and continues to raise me whether I am there or not. 

     Moving to Chestnut Ridge was easy and hard at the same time. I had been in love with nature since I found old National Geographic stuffed between the bed and nightstand in my great-grandmother’s room. Living here came with open-air and wildlife discovery you wouldn’t get in a city like Newark. This, however, did come with a slight culture shock, people suddenly didn’t live on top of one another, there were lawns and five-bedroom houses for a family of four. It was clean, and people walked the streets and went jogging with their defense down, smiling at strangers. The sun shone a little brighter on the rich and I guess I was suddenly one of the people I didn’t even understand properly. There were no corner stores and no assembly of people waiting at the bus stops. You could wear blue, red, yellow, and green without fear of being looked at as the enemy to one person or another. You could breathe, without fear or hesitation and without looking over your shoulder. 

     Going back to this place the first thing I did when I got out of the car was take a deep breath, the lookup at the tall tree that stood outside the house I once called my home. A Jewish family owned it now, but with the maintenance, they decide to do they still had not moved in. The grass was still patchy after years of replacing dead spots with the wrong seeds. The sky-scraper tree next to my house still holds a reef that had been there longer than anyone would care to admit. The shed tucked into the side of the two-story home is open as a worker comes from the backyard and deposits an opened bag of mulch before locking it tight. He waves at me with a polite smile, I wave back, this was a social norm for this town. You smile at everyone because not only do manners matter but so does politeness, it’s something that’s rewarded in a way. I fall in love with the open air again before my brother drives us from the cul-de-sac and to the small shops not even a five-minute drive away. These shops are cleaner but friendlier than the ones in Newark and the town itself houses much more diversity. I went to middle school in this town with people of all races, in Newark you were usually either black or Hispanic. 

     I feel safe here too, not the kind of safe from familiarity but more in the sense that crimes wouldn’t be committed here because that just wasn’t how things were done. Here they were white-collar and seemed legal until you looked below the surface. The Jewish community still stole from public schools to fund their private ones. I was happy here but I was also happy to be gone. 

     While both Newark and Chestnut Ridge house their good and their bad something as simple as their very social structure couldn’t be more different. In Newark, much of the power and respect you have comes from "connects," usually created by an older family member, the more connections you earn in a respectable way, the more “power” or influence one may have. In the case of my own family, my grandfather was a respected businessman known to make a friend wherever he went and my grandmother was a beloved English teacher and guidance counselor. These connections not made by my mother or myself have proven to be some of the strongest and most lasting.

     In Chestnut Ridge, social structure is much more fluid. Many of the people living there had no or few familial — and therefore generational — ties. This leads to not having much of a social structure because the playing field was rather level for all people. Money and power weren’t flaunted because in a small town like this everyone knew everyone. We knew each other’s houses and what kind of cars they drove but that didn’t create friendships because while there was no exact structure there was certainly a status of one held after being in the area for a certain amount of time. While there was some importance of connects they were not necessary, merely so your neighbor would watch your house during vacation.

     While observing and making conclusions about each of these social structures I turned to my own social imagination. I thought of every interaction and instance I could when something like connections came in handy. There were far more instances of this in Newark than Chestnut Ridge. While these societal patterns had a lot of influence over the individuals and groups and Newark the same could not be said for those in Chestnut Ridge. In the eyes of these rich mostly white people they had already won and there was no reason to make more connections when you saw yourself as a key connection. It goes without saying that the socialism of each of these places has a lot to do with the way in which these social structures were formed because, like it or not, money talks.

     In writing this and observing the places that made me who I am today I learned a lot about myself. Reflection is not something most people do often but it certainly helps to recenter you as a person. It helps you see where you are going or want to go by knowing where you came from. Like, everyone, I have goals in life, goals that also have an abundance of financial security involved but when I look at my life like this I see that I answered my own question along the way. Money cannot buy happiness or, at least, not my happiness. Some of my fondest memories are from a house that no one would look twice at while they walked down the streets of Newark. Happiness for me was and still is, being surrounded by my family and the people that I love, be it in a mansion, an apartment, or a worn-down two-family home. While this report wasn’t supposed to become as emotional as it has I can truly say it is one of the most eye-opening things I have ever written — and one of my majors is English writing — and will be something I will probably read in the future when I reach my goals and something like money might become overwhelming. This was also something I found myself not knowing I needed during this COVID-19 quarantine but it cleared my mind in a way I didn’t think possible. I believe observing one’s beginnings is one of those things everyone should do at least once in their life.