GSP Exit 82 to Route 37 East

If you are from New Jersey, you have to be loud and proud of it. If for no other reason, than to defend the motherland against those who for years have made fun of the Garden State. Then came “Jersey Shore” the TV show that made all of us who knew the greatness of the place have to defend it once again. It would actually pain me at times to hear Ronnie, Pauly D and The Situation talk about Seaside Heights like they actually knew what it was all about. When I lived in NJ we had a term for people like that… douchebags. The term still fits. We had terms for the girls in the TV show, too, but in my older age, decorum prevents me from explaning that here.

Sadly, in the face of Hurricane Sandy, there was nothing that could defend the shore from what staggered us all. I live in AZ, but still took a very hard gut punch as I watched the news throughout the week.
I went to bed on Monday night knowing the eye of the storm was headed towards NJ. I woke up on Tuesday morning to see the conflagration of homes in Breezy Point, home to one of my Phi Sig brothers. I’m happy to say he was not injured, but saw his FB page this morning and whats left of his belongings were piled high on the street like they were ready for a garage sale. They were not… it’s what he has left from his damaged home that he cannot go back to. Sandy was not kind to anyone.

Every time I heard the name of a town, I knew someone who lived there; Bob and Ginny in Brigantine, Schmitty and Lynda in Lavalette, Frank and Barbara in Point Pleasant.

Of course my thoughts went immediately to Dumont.. my hometown about 60 miles north of the shore. I was relieved to hear that there was no devastation. Power was out, trees down, localized street flooding, but everyone was OK, and Dumont was going to be OK. I also thought of my childhood friend, now the Chief of Police, and what obstacles he had in front of him as the town takes the time to get back to normal.

Oddly, I was in Dumont last year on these very dates… October 26-31, and was greeted by 6 inches of what they had called "thunder snow" that blanketed Northern New Jersey. The power was out for days so I got a taste of what that was like without power and phone and all the things that go along with the lack of those utilities. 

I remember, as a very young child riding the rides at the Jersey shore. As a 5 or 6 year-old, my favorites were the little automobiles you could sit in and go round and round in circles only, because you were attached to something. As I moved the steering wheel left and right like my Dad did when he would drive the big Catalina, I probably dreamt, no hoped, that the car would break free and I could drive it wherever I wanted to. It’s no exxaageration to say in the 55 years since, millions of other little boys had the same great dream. Well, I saw a picture this week of newscaster Brian Wilson standing on the beach in Mantaloking next to one of the same little cars that two days before was still attached to the pier in Seaside Heights. Who knows… maybe the car, a replica of a 57 Chevy, had just had enough, maybe that was finally their night, and they saw their opportunity to break free and take that ride that all little boys like me had dreamed about. The car sat on the beach, six miles form Seaside, and mostly intact… The safety bar was lifted as if someone had just pushed it out of the way to exit the car. As a musician I couldn’t help but think of Bruce Springsteen, the NJ native (and Boss), who wrote Thunder Road. Maybe this is what he meant and if those little cars could talk, after decades maybe this is exactly what they were thinking:.

“There were ghosts in the eyes of all the boys you sent away.
They haunt this dusty beach road in the skeleton frames of burned out Chevrolets….”

At this point it may be cliché, but my best memories of growing were up were at the Jersey shore. I was fortunate enough to have an Aunt who would rent a beachfront bungalow every summer for two weeks. It was in Ocean Beach (Unit III, 21 Seaview Dr.) You would walk out the front and you were on the beach… another 100 yards and you were in the Atlantic. Storms over the years changed the beach, but until last Tuesday, 21 Seaview Drive had weathered its spot yards from the Atlantic for more than 50 years. On Wednesday, it was partially off its foundation, roof askew and totally uninhabitable. I can remember sitting on the porch watching the beach come alive every morning. At the time it was fun and I had no idea of how lucky I was to live the shore life.

The first time I ever got to second base (and I'm not talking Little League) was sitting behind one of the lifeguard boats on a perfect shore evening with a cute little girl from River Edge.  I've long forgotten her name, but not the memory.  The next day her boyfriend came looking for me on the beach, but he turned out to be a weasely kind of guy so nothing ever came of it.  I ran into her at the Orangeburg Pub years later, and we had a great conversation and laughed about our adventure.
In the afternoons at the shore we were in the water, or it was time at the batting cages at Flo’s, or mini golf at Barnacle Bills, or crabbing on the bay side, or skee ball at a little place behind some garage doors... I think it was called Playland.  If it was a particularly hot day, we'd head down to A&W just down the street for a root beer float in a frosty mug that sometimes stuck to your lip because it was so cold.

In the evenings, it was the bright lights, and smells of the Boardwalk at Seaside Heights/Park. Anyone who knows me will tell you even to this day, any trip I make to NJ during the summer season I try to go to Seaside for at least an overnight. The great people at the Windjammer Motel refer to me as Mr. Arizona when I call. I’ve been worth at least a night or two each year to them for at least the last 30 years. I hope they have weathered the storm as they are only a block from the beach.
Three things I always do without fail is walk the full length of the boards, eat a sausage and peppers sandwich from the place that used to be smack in the middle the boardwalk, and have a slice or two or three of Maruca’s Tomato pie. I don’t know how Maruca’s made out, but I do know the sausage sandwich place was obliterated in the storm. There was nothing to protect it and today it's like it never existed.

I developed a love for live music standing outside (I was never old enough to go in) the Chatterbox on the boardwalk listening to bands with electric guitars, drums and the incredible sound of the Hammond B3 organ. If there was nothing I liked there, I’d wander over to stand outside the Beachcomber or the Fun House to see what teenage rock and roll band was playing on top.
The boardwalk to me was the Berkeley Sweet Shop, Taylor Pork Roll, mini golf, FunTown Pier, Carousel Arcade, Sonny and Rickeys, Lucky Leos, and my personal favorite, Emma Bittel’s small stand towards the south end of the bordwalk where you could win a box of candy for a nickel and where almost every spin of the wheel would win you at least 4 “bers.”
I won some of my favorite and most influential albums playing the wheels at the shore; The Doors, Marvin Gaye and Tammy Terrel, Four Tops, Temptations and Vanilla Fudge. There was a double album of oldies put together by WOR-FM in NY that I literally wore through over the next two or three years. I say oldies, but at the time the album was full of recent hits; Lovin' Spoonful, Turtles, Johnny Mathis, Drifters, etc.

You didn’t go to the beach in NJ, you went “down the shore.” And whether you traveled north or south to get there, you were still going down the shore. The small towns had names that only worked down there: Mataloking, and Manasquan, Sea Girt, Ortley Beach, Lavalette, Harvey Cedars, Loveladies, and Point Pleasant.

You’ve hear it hundreds of times in the last few days; the damage done by Hurricane Sandy destroyed buildings and boardwalks that all will say will be rebuilt bigger and better than ever. I’m not sure what that means, but we’ll have to wait and see.

What it didn’t destroy are memories of time with my family, the live music I listened to and the smells of food stands, and the general carnival like atmosphere. The Tilt O’Whirl may be sitting somewhere in the ocean now, but I will never ever picture it anywhere other than on FunTown Pier… next to the Swiss Bob (“do you want to go faster?”).

I’ve always said, “you can take the boy out of New Jersey, but you can never take New Jersey out of the boy.” Until this week, maybe I really never thought about what I was saying. Now I’ll never forget what it means.

To all my friends in New Jersey, NY, CT and PA, hang in there. Things will be good again.