The first thing I say to Woodbridge, New Jersey mayor John McCormac is that he deserves congratulations for not getting arrested.

Last week, of course, mayors from cities such as Hoboken, Secaucus and Ridgefield were in cuffs as part of yet-another Jersey corruption scandal.

McCormac -- whose father came to the U.S. from Roscommon when he was 21 -- was as outraged as anyone else as he read the sordid details.

In the past, I would have looked at the Jersey arrests as an amused outsider. 

But as of last week, my wife, four children and myself officially became residents of the Garden State. The land of Springsteen, "The Sopranos" and, well, incarcerated mayors.

Was this an omen? Like anything else, it depends on how you look at things. 

Consider this -- a shiny new Irish pub and restaurant, the Shannon Rose, also just opened up a few minutes down the road from my new home. Maybe that’s an omen, too.

“There’s a strong Irish presence in Woodbridge,” Mayor McCormac told me, adding that Italians and Poles are also prominent. 

Down the block from my new home, the Irish Tricolor flies outside at Flynn and Sons funeral home, next to stately Our Lady of Peace Catholic Church.

The Irish American Association of Woodbridge, which organizes the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade down Main Street, has over 300 members.

Why did Mayor McCormac’s father leave Ireland in 1948?

“There were two boys, four girls and one farm,” quips McCormac, whose maternal grandparents came to the U.S. from Cork.

I can only hope things work out as well for me as they have for the McCormacs. But it was tough getting here.

For those of you thinking of buying a new home, consider yourselves warned. 

This is a life-altering change, one to which you dedicate hundreds of thousands of dollars, not to mention the future of your children.

Yet, you often feel like you have nothing to say about the process, that it is run by the lawyers, bankers, mortgage brokers and real estate agents. And all of them can blame someone else if something goes wrong.

And, man, do a lot of things go wrong. We should have known back in May, when we found what can only be called a dream home in the quiet town of Fords, one of 10 neighborhoods which make up Woodbridge Township.

It was a 100-year old beauty with a large yard and, finally, enough space for four kids.

Of course, we had to unload our cramped Staten Island home first. It was placed on the market at a ludicrously high price. (Aren’t inflated real estate prices what got us into this economic mess in the first place?) We nabbed a buyer once we set a more realistic price.

So, we made an offer on the Fords home. There was a counter-offer, a few very nervous days, but ultimately our best offer was accepted.

The fun had just begun. A closing date was set. But as it approached, it was clear that date was pure fantasy.

Vital documents disappeared, or failed to appear, because no one knew they were vital. The closing date came and went. 

Days turned into weeks. Would the whole deal collapse? 

After all, the people whose home we were buying could not buy their new home unless our sale went through. And our sale could not go through until our buyers officially secured their financing, which was taking longer then anyone thought. 

It was a chain of depressing, comical but ultimately failed events.

The low point came when my youngest daughter had to go to the hospital for a high fever, part of a near-biblical plague -- pink eye, fevers, strep throat and more -- which struck my whole family in mid-July, surely induced, in part, by the home-buying stress.

But, finally, on July 17, we moved. The movers broke some things, lost some other things, but the home is, indeed, beautiful. And it is ours.

Now that it’s over, it’s important to remember that while this was a pain, it’s nothing compared to what past generations went through. 

I moved ten minutes over the Outerbridge Crossing, not thousands of miles in a coffin ship across the treacherous Atlantic.

The Irish in America talk a lot about tradition, but the only real constant here is change. The important thing is to make the best of that change. 

As for my family, we have no choice. Because we ain’t ever moving again!

 

(Contact “Sidewalks” at [email protected])