Long before Donna Karan and Calvin Klein infiltrated Secaucus with designer fashions at discounted prices, the blue-collar suburban community was known for its pig farms.
"It used to be the hog capital of the East," explained Joe McKay, who was born on a Secaucus pig farm in 1946. "Anywhere you went in the world, if you mentioned Secaucus, people would hold their nose."
Up until the late 1950s, there were more than 30 pig farms sandwiched between the Hackensack River and Penhorn Creek. The McKay family’s farm, a two-acre plot of land just off of Secaucus Road – more commonly referred to as "The Backroad" – was home to over 6,000 pigs.
"The Backroad was an unusual place," McKay said. "There were the pig farms and saloons. It was like something out of the old Wild West."
From whiskey-hazed wage-workers to Henry Krajewski (the notorious pig farmer who ran for president), Secaucus circa 1950, like the old Wild West, was overflowing with vibrant characters.
Ten years ago, McKay decided to capitalize on his colorful past. He attended a songwriters’ workshop and began to write folk songs using his childhood as a leitmotif. Earlier this year, after countless nights spent honing his homespun ditties at amateur venues and open mic nights, McKay released his debut CD, Backroad Joe.
Joe McKay began his music career playing polkas on the accordion.
"Like most of the pig farmers, my family was Polish," McKay said. "I had an uncle who was an accordion player. That was part of my early inspiration."
When McKay was a teenager, his older brother introduced him to the kind of music he would later write and perform.
"When I was 13 or 14 my brother came home from college with a Kingston Trio album," he said. "And that turned me on to folk music. I picked up the banjo and the guitar and played in several bands. And then I was drafted into the service and went to Vietnam. When I got out of the service I got married and had a family. So that ended my music career for a good 20 years."
McKay, who has four children and five grandchildren, supported his family with several varied careers. He worked as a bus driver, a chimney sweep, and a vacuum cleaner salesman. Today, McKay lives in North Haledon, N.J. and owns a garbage hauling company called Dumpster Man with his son.
"Garbage has been in my family forever," said McKay, whose father not only raised pigs, but also worked in the waste industry. "I’ve got a saying, ‘You can get out of Backroad, but you can’t get the Backroad out of you.’"
Despite his self-professed destiny, however, McKay could not dismiss his true passion. In the early ’90s, when he learned that John Stewart, one of the original members of the Kingston Trio, was sponsoring a songwriters’ workshop at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, N.Y., he immediately reserved a spot.
"Stewart writes songs about the downtrodden that are very grass roots," McKay said. "When I started talking to him about where I grew up and where I came from, he said, ‘It sounds like you have a lot of songs.’ I had never thought about it like that."
With the help of Stewart, McKay excavated his past and came up with a series of songs that pay homage to his childhood. After accumulating a small repertoire, he began to perform his music live at open mic nights like the Turning Point in Piermont, N.Y.
"I was amazed," he said. "People were really responding to it. I would see someone in a public bathroom six months later, and they would say, ‘I remember you, you’re the one who sang about the pig farms.’"
McKay’s music renders a portrait of Secaucus some of the town’s newer denizens may not even know existed.
"I remember when people used to boil grease to make their own soap," he said "I got a good feel of what the Depression was like."
McKay captures the Depression-era mood in "Chicken, Shorty and Cockeyed Joe," a song about three homeless men who cleaned the stables on his father’s farm.
"I distinctly remember them," McKay said. "We called them ‘swiner priests.’ They used to clean up the manure. According to my mom, they came from Eastern Europe. They would get jobs as merchants, jump ship when they got to New York, and wind up homeless on the Bowery. The pig farmers would go into the City and round them up to work on the farms. We only knew them by their nicknames – everybody on the Backroad had a nickname – but as I grew up started thinking that these people must have had a real name, and a family."
The third track, which begins, "Backroad Joe didn’t know where to go, he didn’t know what path in life he should seek. He was born on a pig farm down on Secaucus Road, near the banks of the Penhorn Creek," is similarly nostalgic.
"The Backroad used to be pretty famous," he said. "That’s the sad thing about Secaucus. There were so many treasures. Now it’s all been paved over and developed."
And while it’s been more than 40 years since pig farms furnished the Secaucus landscape, McKay still finds himself mourning for the poetic, if slightly fetid, days of his youth.
"It’s still hard for me to adjust to the changes," he said. "I was in touch with the end of an era. It was a very fortunate childhood to have had."
The Turning Point (468 Piermont Ave., Piermont, N.Y.) is hosting a release party for Joe McKay’s debut CD, Backroad Joe, on Sunday, Nov. 25 at 7 p.m. Tickets are $10. For more information call (845) 359-0819.