The New Jersey Turnpike isn’t just a single road; it’s a combination of toll highways running throughout the state. It took two years to build the 117-mile-long main part of the road, including rest areas. Each area is named after someone with some identifiable connection with New Jersey.
The names on the rest areas are the names of real people, with one exception: the Molly Pitcher Rest Area in Cranbury (at mile 71). “Molly Pitcher” is a figure from the Revolutionary War. Or maybe several figures. Nobody is quite sure — it might have been the nickname of Mary Hays, who fought in at least one battle. Or it might have been Margaret Corbin, one of the defenders of Fort Washington in 1776. Or possible “Molly Pitcher” was just a generic nickname for any women who brought water (in pitchers, you’d have to guess) to the soldiers.
Whoever named the Molly Pitcher Rest Area must have been a fan of the Mary Hays theory; she’s the candidate with the most obvious tie to New Jersey. Like all the others, it’s basically an indoor food court with a bunch of fast-food outlets. But there’s something unique in Cranbury: it includes an Arthur Treacher’s Fish & Chips restaurant — one of only a handful still open. The chain had nearly a thousand sites at its peak in the 1970s, but has been steadily declining ever since.
One of the reasons might be the name — when the restaurants opened in the 1960s, Arthur Treacher was one of the best-known British actors in the US. Everybody knew him either from Mary Poppins movie (he played Constable Jones), from the Merv Griffin talk show (he was the announcer and sidekick), or from a bunch of movies from the 1920s on, where he almost invariably played “the butler”.
His career as an on-screen butler started when he played “Jeeves” in a couple of P.G. Wodehouse adaptations — they were pretty popular, but Wodehouse didn’t like them, and wouldn’t give permission for any more films. Nevertheless, Treacher continued to (basically) play the same character for decades. He even showed up in a couple episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies — one idea in the show when it began was that the Clampetts’ Hollywood mansion came with a butler. That didn’t seem to deliver enough laughs, and the later episodes omitted the butler character.
Treacher’s connection with the fish and chips restaurant is a bit hazy; he might have been a part owner, or he might have just licensed his name. He also MIGHT have contributed the recipes they used — or it might have just been a marketing idea.
Although Treacher died in 1975 when he was 81, he appeared in the 2018 movie Ready Player One — at least a digital version of him did. His character was The Curator. I’m pretty sure I saw that movie, but I can’t say I remember much, if anything about it. Certainly not The Curator.
Something else that’s hazy is whether digital avatars, fading fast-food operations, and highway rest areas celebrate birthdays — but if they do, today would be the day: Arthur Treacher was born on July 23, 1894.
