Weird NJ

Before I was a teenager who spent weekends visiting Weird NJ ghost roads and abandoned structures with my friends, I was a kid in the passenger seat of my mom's station wagon.

We took Rt. 517 to Rt. 206 to go to antique shops or the Ledgewood Mall because it was the only mall with a Marshall's, which has always been my mom's favorite.

The highlight of this trip was passing an old man who sat in a folding chair outside his rundown house. The chair was inched right up to the place where the asphalt of Rt. 206 became the grass of his front yard.

No matter the season, when you drove by, he'd be there. Just sitting and waving.

You felt like the only one who knew about it, about him, until someone else brings him up and the shared experience instantly bonds you. "*You* know the waving guy? *I* know the waving guy! Why's he there?"

We never found out why he was there. But he always was. Every single time we drove by. And so it was weird when, one day on the way home from Ledgewood, we stopped at the grocery store that was on the way. We never went to any grocery stores other than the one in our town and so it felt foreign and strange. My mom and brother and I were there with my mom's best friend and neighbor Beth Leicht and her daughters. On our way out, Waving Willy, as he is known, was on his way in and he whistled at Beth.

So, he did leave his roadside chair on occassion. Probably more often than we realized. But he was always there when we passed and we never passed without slowing to wave and honk.

The summer before I left for college, I was hauling up Rt. 206 towards the Succasunna movie theater to meet my friends. Rounding the corner before Willy's, I started looking for him, as my brain was trained to do. You could see him long before you passed him. His chair was there, but he wasn't. It was covered in flowers and trinkets. Waving Willy had passed away. The papers ran a feature about him and called him a local legend.

Weird NJ magazine has covered him several times, from their initial discovery of him to his death. I was surprised to see his photo in the magazine when I first encountered it. He was mentioned in a section called The Cult of Wavers. New Jersey, it seems, has had several roadside wavers.

Willy's chair is still there. One of the most recognizable trinkets on it is a big red heart. I was just a kid, so he seemed funny, but became part of my memories. I imagine that for some, having him as a constant probably felt good. I think I'd find it hard to feel alone if I could wave to the same person every day, even if we never shared a word.