The rural areas of central New Jersey are dotted with small towns and villages that have in their own way contributed greatly to early American history. Perhaps the most important from this historic point of view and yet least known and talked about is the small town of Doltzville. Once a thriving Colonial town, Doltzville reached its zenith during the Revolutionary War when, throughout those dark trying days, as the fate of the young republic weighed in the balance, Doltzville's brave and defiant villagers, right under the very nose of the cruel oppressor, labored day and night producing the desperately needed warm winter uniforms for the Hessian army. With the conclusion of hostilities, the demand for Hessian uniforms of course diminished, and Doltzville - its main industry gone - faded into obscurity.
It was the chance discovery of the lost original New Jersey archives that once again focused attention on this gallant town. On July 12, 1961 Sir Thomas McMultche, Professor of Sociology at Secaucus University, while heading an expedition into the wilds of central New Jersey (ostensibly to study what effect, if any, the numerous stills that flourish in the area have on the local economy) discovered what is considered to be the find of the decade, "the original New Jersey archives." It is from the invaluable information contained in the archives that Doctor McMultche and his able staff including Doctor Havelock Zuchini of "The East Bayonne Academy of Anthropological Research and Related Sciences Athletic Club," have pieced together the heretofore inexplicable puzzle surrounding the discovery and early history of this all-important town of Doltzville.
Contrary to popular belief the town was not always called Doltzville. In the beginning the area was know as Chicago, named for Alphonse J. Chicago, an itinerant bootlegger and insurance agent. He originally purchased the property from a band of unscrupulous Indians who conned the old reprobate into thinking that the surrounding swamps were the southwestern reaches of Lake Michigan.
It was some time later that the man for whom the town is presently named, the revered Major Harvey J. Doltzville, happened on the scene. Major Doltzville was an eminent explorer and statesman of his day who discovered the area while on one of his more extensive explorations of the central New Jersey area. The famed trailblazer was seeking a shorter route from Asbury Park to Princeton and accidentally stumbled on to what was to be the town of Doltzville. This lucky accident was brought about through the concerted efforts of the pack of bloodhounds that were hot on the old boy's trail. Wanted by the authorities in Asbury Park for, among other things, rolling drunks under the boardwalk, the proud explorer had taken it on the lam. It was his original intention to make it across the state and seek refuge at Princeton, New Jersey, known in those god- forsaken days as Robber's Roost. He was never to reach his destination. Major Doltzville, after traveling approximately one third of the way towards his goal, was suddenly smitten with the majestic splendor of the heavily wooded countryside. Whether it was the woods that caught his eye, or the breathtaking beauty of the network of deep swamps that surrounded the area, no one knows for sure. However, we do know that it was at this crucial moment while standing there, silhouetted against the western sky, gazing out across the swamps at the woods beyond, listening thoughtfully all the while to the familiar baying of the hounds wafting nostalgically across the soft summer air - the noted adventurer made his historic decision to forego the lure of Princeton and settled at the site of what is presently Doltzville.
It is ironic that it was in these same swamps, laughingly referred to by present day villagers as "Chicago's Folly" that Major Doltzville gave his canine pursuers the slip. There is some divergence of opinion as to the interpretation of the archives with regard to how exactly Harvey accomplished this daring feat. Sir Thomas McMultche is satisfied that it was simply a matter of the canine flatfeet losing Harvey's scent in the swamps, whereas Professor Havelock Zuchini leans towards the more involved theory that the four legged sleuths were actually thrown off the trail by the scent of one of the resident skunks that crossed Harvey's path. Doctor Zuchini has presented evidence proving there was a definite link between Major Harvey J. Doltzville's unique fragrance and that of the distinctive aroma of any typical skunk. In following the skunk's trail Zuchini contended the dumb friends committed a pardonable faux pas, thus enabling Harvey to escape the clutches of the law.
It is said that this latter theory as presented by Doctor Zuchini so enraged Sir Thomas that the eminent sociologist fell upon his hapless colleague and pummeled him about the face and head with the pointed end of his umbrella thereby threatening the entire project. Fortunately the two men were pulled apart before too much damage was done and they shook hands and resumed their former friendship which wasn't anything to write home about in the first place.
As for Major Doltzville's early days in what was then Chicago, the archives are rather vague. However, he is given credit for originating the first floating crap game ever conducted on the North American continent. Doctor Zuchini explained with a twinkle in his eye that the reason it was called a floating crap game is because the participants played the game while on rowboats or rafts drifting about the swamps to avoid detection. Following this rotten joke another coolness erupted between the two professors, once again threatening to disrupt the entire project. The two men were finally prevailed upon by the rest of the group to put all thoughts of fun and frolics aside for the moment and get down to the serious business for which they thought they were going to be paid.
The threads of Major Doltzville's life are picked up once again following his marriage to Brigitte O'Toole, daughter of Big Sven O'Toole, the town crier. Marital difficulties plagued the doomed couple from the start. Brigitte had unfortunately inherited her father's professional attributes and made life miserable for Harvey. At regular intervals during the day and night it was her custom to, in an open and forthright manner, announce the time, and then candidly confide to Harvey that all was well, emphasizing this remark by poking him smartly in the ribs with the point of her elbow. All, however, was not well. A seething resentment at not being able to obtain a decent night's sleep plus an ache in his rib cage began to burgeon within him and Major Doltzville took to drinking to drown his sorrows. Tragedy struck early one morning when Major Doltzville upon returning home after a night out with the boys, was confronted with Brigitte on the front steps of their home brandishing a fierce looking frying pan. Failing to recognize his wife in the dim light he is reported to have said "Could I please have a dime for a cup of coffee Mister." Brigitte, tapping her foot ominously, asked, "where have you been all evening, you worm?" Legend has it that at this point Major Doltzville's mood underwent a sudden change from genial conviviality to outraged belligerence and he snarled, "Hold thine wicked tongue, oh wretched woman, or I shall be forced to paste thee a juicy one right in the old labanza." This strange utterance labanza, and for that matter, his entire attitude, has baffled historians inasmuch as Brigitte outweighed her husband by at least sixty pounds. The only logical explanation is, that being slightly crocked, Major Doltzville was not responsible for his actions.
As to the subsequent inquest searching into Major Doltzville's untimely demise the archives most fortunately contain the verbatim testimony presented by an eyewitness to Major Harvey J. Doltzville's last agonizing moments. The witness, a local printer named B. Franklin (it is not known what the initial B. stands for) and his wife Lulubelle shared the duplex apartment with the Doltzvilles and enjoyed excellent vantage points from which they were able to view the momentous proceedings. Franklin testified that he was on the roof of their house at the time, flying his kite, when suddenly the still summer air was shattered by the unmistakable metallic clank of a heavy metal object coming into violent contact with the upper portion of a man's skull. Upon chancing to gaze downward he observed Brigitte Doltzville just concluding her follow-through after striking Harvey a terrific blow upon the cranium. Harvey then, according to Franklin, staggered back and accidentally fell into an adjacent swamp and drowned. Mr. Franklin's wife Lulubelle angrily disputed her husband's story. She became obviously vexed when, after leaving the witness stand, her husband went over to console the bereaved widow. There was an impromptu fracas during which Mrs. Franklin stabbed her husband in the face with a quill that she had been using to write a letter. The archives do not reveal to whom the letter was intended nor its contents. While certainly those who were present deplored the stabbing, nevertheless they all agreed that Mr. Franklin, in his effort to console the bereaved widow, went too far when he gathered the late Major's wife in his arms and passionately smothered her upturned face and throat with burning kisses.
When court was finally brought to order Mrs. Franklin presented her own version of how Major Doltzville was bumped off. Her husband meanwhile sat recuperating in back of the court house with Mrs. Doltzville cuddled in his lap running her hands across his baldspot. It was Mrs. Franklin's contention that, after creaming Major Doltzville with the frying pan, Brigitte then dragged his inert body to the swamp, threw him in, and held his head under water for almost half an hour singing all the while, "You Ain't Nothing But a Hound Dog," a popular ditty of the day. Lulibelle Franklin's testimony has of course been discounted by most historians as it is common knowledge that there was bad feeling between the two women.
Lulubelle had prior to the inquest openly accused her husband of carrying on a clandestine romance with Brigitte Doltzville, a charge which was vehemently denied by both of the accused when they were surprised while necking under the front porch. Their rather lame explanation that they were looking for mushrooms was, needless to say, greeted with skepticism by virtually everyone, inasmuch as it was well known that the mushrooms growing under the Doltzville front porch were of an inferior variety. Brigitte Doltzville was finally cleared of all complicity in the death of her husband when her attorney proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the frying pan with which she had savagely assaulted her husband did not in fact belong to her and the authorities had no alternative but to rule that Major Harvey J. Doltzville's death was the result of an accidental suicide.
In order to commemorate the occasion of Major Doltzville getting knocked off, the grieving villagers erected a wooden sign at the site of the drowning which read, "This Is Where That Jerk Major H. J. Doltzville was Drowned By His Wife's Hand." The ravages of time and the elements obliterated most of the sign leaving only the words, "This is Doltzville." New arrivals upon settling in town and taking cognizance of the sign assumed that Doltzville was the name of the town. They began calling the area Doltzville much to the chagrin of Alphonse J. Chicago, the original founder, who left town in a huff vowing to found a bigger and better town somewhere in the Midwest. Whether Old Man Chicago was successful in his quest, there is no record. However, we do know that he was foiled in his attempt to have South Bend named after him inasmuch as it had already been named ten years before, after a traveling salesman named Harry J. South Bend. There are rumors that Old Windy, as he was affectionately known to his intimates, did found a toddling town near Gary, Indiana and this may be so.
The brutal slaying of Major Harvey J. Doltzville is still celebrated every year by a grateful Doltzville community that reverently refers to the day as, "the day that old Harv got his." There is of course the usual pomp and circumstance, whatever that means, that is associated with every Doltzville celebration. The highlight of this anniversary is the annual "drowning of the town drunk" pageant, conducted at the very spot where Major Doltzville met his watery grave. The procedure calls for the town's leading drunk to be beaned ceremoniously with a heavy frying pan usually wielded by the wife of the town's leading citizen. The drunk is then thrown into the swamp and, while the smiling villagers hold his head under water, the Doltzville choral group renders the traditional song. "You Ain't Nothin But a Hound Dog." If, as is so often the case, the town drunk and the wife of the leading citizen are in reality man and wife as was the original team, then there is double cause for celebration.
While all Doltzville celebrations have had their moments the one that is best remembered and looked upon with pride is the first centennial celebration commemorating the one hundred year anniversary of the town's discovery. It was on that historic occasion that Doltzville was singularly honored by having as its special guest the then Governor of New Jersey, the Honorable Richard J. Barnneyarde along with his charming wife Bubbles.
The day, curiously enough, started out just as any other Founder's Day celebration, the usual speeches, pageants, and banners waving in the breeze; certainly no indication of the momentous events that were to follow. The Doltzville world famous one hundred piece all spinet marching band played their usual stirring rendition of John Philip Galleblatter's immortal composition, "When The Grapes Fall From Their Vines in Vineland, New Jersey, I'll Be Coming Back To You With Bells On Baby." It wasn't until the traditional parade through the Doltzville swamps that the first foreboding that this day was to be like no other day in Doltzville history began to burgeon in the minds, such as they were, of the local townsfolk. In this parade through the swamps the usual procedure called for the boys and girls of the local grammar school (Doltzville's esteemed founder Major Harvey J. Doltzville had been attending the third grade at the time of his brutal assassination) to march past the Doltzville municipal pig pens and to emerge at the site of the drowning, there being officially greeted with the traditional volley of rotten eggs and vegetables hurled at them by the waiting villagers.
This march through the swamps exemplified Major Doltzville's heroic escape from the clutches of the law. The rotten eggs and vegetables of course symbolize the timely skunk that a merciful Providence placed in the area to confuse his canine pursuers. However on this black day the children did not march past the municipal pig pens but were instead guided by Homer Crankeshafte, the town's practical joker, into Finian's quicksand, a local landmark. By affecting to stay behind to tie his shoelace, Homer tricked the little dumbbells into marching on without him promising to catch up with them later on. His later claim that he had his fingers crossed at the time naturally absolved him to an extent of his joke's grisly aftermath. The trusting children marched into Finian's quicksand and disappeared off of the face of the earth, their last pitiful gurgling screams of terror sending chills down the spines of the horrified onlookers.
When Homer emerged alone from the swamps he of course was deluged with the traditional barrage of rotten eggs and vegetables. However it was apparent that the hearts of the villagers just weren't in it. Homer was publicly berated by the annoyed villagers who took him to task for spoiling the parade with what they referred to as his silly practical joke. Some of the villagers even went so far as to ask him when he was going to grow up. Homer, naturally expecting cheers of delight at what he felt was his merry joke, was disappointed at the reaction of the crowd. He thumbed his nose at them and openly accused the villagers of being completely devoid of a sense of humor. This was more than the villagers could take and they rose up and began chanting, "sticks and stones may break our bones, but names will never harm us." Homer, thus humiliated in front of his fellow townsfolk, bent his head down low and slunk out of town taking, because of his bent head, the wrong road and wound up in Finian's quicksand. Some of the jeering townsfolk witnessing Homer's last agonizing moments shouted, "poetic justice." Others, equally as articulate, screamed "just retribution" at the sinking Crankeshafte and the remaining villagers seized these malcontents and threw them also into Finian's quicksand.
The time had now come for the thrilling annual torchlight procession to the Mayor's mansion. It was the usual custom for the villagers to serenade the mayor and his wife while they simultaneously blew up the Mayor's mansion. However, the grief stricken parents of the late grammar school children, grieving because their children had obtained high paying jobs for the summer as freaks in a traveling circus and now, of course, deprived of this income, decided to take matters into their own hands. They felt that merely blowing up the Mayor's mansion was not enough, so they proceeded to blow up the Mayor and his wife. They then advanced upon the city square where yet another ritual was in process. This was the annual shooting officials out of cannons ceremony and already the recalcitrant city councilmen were being loaded into the numerous cannons that graced the city square while the smiling honored guests, including Governor Barnneyarde and his wife Bubbles, looked on. The city councilmen were duly shot out of their respective cannons in the general direction of the Muldoon River some five miles away, and in normal times, this would have signaled the conclusion of another Founder's Day celebration.
However, these were not normal times and the militant mob swirling through the city square was thirsting for still more blood. The jubilant villagers then seized the no longer smiling honored guests, ripped off their clothes, and chased them through the streets of Doltzville, helping them on their way by prodding them with shrewdly aimed three pronged pitchforks. They then threw the now screaming Governor Barnneyarde and Police Chief Flannegan into a huge vat of boiling tar and afterwards hanged the Governor's charming wife Bubbles from the highest tree in town. When the decent element in town protested against this dastardly action the villagers hanged him to a tree that, while perhaps not as high as Mrs. Barnneyarde's tree, was nevertheless high enough.
The State Militia was rushed into town in an effort to restore law and order. However the exuberant villagers were not intimidated and they herded the unfortunate militiamen into the municipal pig pens, locked the doors and set fire to the buildings. It is said that the ensuing pathetic screams of agony emanating from the pigs and the militiamen could be heard as far away as New Brunswick. The now tiring villagers concluded the day's festivities in a blaze of glory by storming the neighboring town of Trenton and razing it to the ground. It was the consensus of opinion of all those fortunate enough to have lived through the day's revelry that the centennial celebration was the most exciting and entertaining of all time and that future Doltzville Founder's Day celebration will be hard pressed to surpass it.
While present day Doltzvilleites are not making any predictions, nevertheless the eager villagers are working with such zeal on their secret preparations for the next centennial celebration that both the city governments of New York and Philadelphia are working with unceasing efforts in a desperate attempt to formulate a gigantic master plan that will enable them to, with a minimum of panic, evacuate the millions of their inhabitants prior to Doltzville's upcoming tercentenary.
In memory of the revered Governor Barnneyarde, whose stuffed- albeit charred- body hangs immortalized over the fireplace in the Town Hall, right next to the swordfish presented to the community by Teddy Roosevelt, the citizens of Doltzville have graciously invited to be the honored guest at the next centennial the present Governor of the State of New Jersey. The Governor, visibly affected by this touching tribute, regretfully declined indicating that on the date of the centennial he is planning to be vacationing with his family at the South Pole. In a magnanimous gesture the Governor suggested as an alternate honored guest his political rival for the gubernatorial office. His political rival however has also declined, explaining that if it were on any other date he would have been only too happy to accept, but his itinerary calls for him to be on that date touring the salt mines in Siberia, Russia. Official spokesmen for the United States government- who prefer of course to remain anonymous- have suggested as possible honored guests to the upcoming Doltzville tercentenary a list including among others the names of Fidel Castro and Sadam Hussein. However, no one has yet responded.
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