Jean Shepherd is an archaeologist of the present, studying artifacts before they become heaps of rubble. He looks at a diner or a traffic circle - just two of his favorite cultural treasures - with the awe and wonder an Egyptologist might show for the Sphinx. With this ability to turn the seemingly mundane into the exotic, is it any wonder that he loves 20th-century America and, particularly, 20th-century New Jersey? Not at all, he says.