FIRST PERSON
Whistle While You Walk
At 89, resident Ernie Wagner is walking
every street in Wayne for the 11th time
E
very morning, Ernie Wagner of Wayne, wakes up and
hits the ground walking. He’s lived with his family in the
same house on Packanack Lake for 59 years. He never
gets tired of the view, and he never gets tired of walking
around the Lake. What started in 1990, as a way to get a
little exercise while walking and talking with a friend on
Sundays, has turned into his passion. Driven to strategize, Ernie, 89,
is walking ALL the streets of Wayne for the 11th time. ■
– As told to Carol Bott Jarger
My rule for myself is I have to walk a
mile every day. If it’s not a mile, it
doesn’t count as a walk. As of today,
I’ve never missed a walk any day in 126 consecutive
weeks. Once, I went seven years without missing.”
I carry a walking stick in case I’m ever
bothered by dogs. I’m easy on shoes. I
always buy the same ones, Rockport Prowalker in
black. When I was hiking, I wore hiking boots. Now I
use them to shovel snow. I tried pedometers, but
they don’t work. And they really don’t work on
trails because you’re always adjusting your steps.
I always keep
a town street
map in my pocket, and
mark off the streets as I
go. I have a notebook
where I keep track of all
the walking I do. The total
is constantly changing, but
as of today, I’ve walked
23,258.6 miles. I have a
picture in my head of all
the streets I’ve walked.
20 WAYNE MAGAZINE FALL 2016
I don’t hike anymore, but I did do 409 hikes which
amounts to only about 2,000 of my miles. I’m a street
walker. I walk around other cities, and meet lots of people who’ve
walked Packanack. I’m not an intellectual. I was never an athlete.
There’s no talent involved in walking. My real talent is whistling.
I’m walking Pequannock for the third time. I walk Pequannock
and Pompton Plains because it’s nice and flat. I walked
Franklin Lakes twice with all those windy roads. I had to get special
permission to walk the exclusive Smoke Rise to finish Kinnelon.
ANNE-MARIE CARUSO
Including Wayne,
I’ve walked 50
towns, doing about 98 percent
of the streets [in those towns].
Wayne, if you don’t know, has
about 950 streets. Forty seven
of [the 50] towns are in New
Jersey. The other three are in
Scotland, Switzerland, and
France where our family lives.
On hot days or
in bad weather,
I walk around my basement 66 times, staying 3
feet from the wall, to get
in the mile. In Willowbrook
Mall, when I walk up to
each exit and not go into
any stores, that’s 1 mile. If
I walk around ShopRite in
Lincoln Park six times and
out to the parking lot,
that’s a mile. It’s .3 miles
each time I walk the length
of Kohl’s in Wayne. Going
around Stop & Shop in
Pompton Plains 6 times is
.9 miles.