Traffic on the way down the shore is a bitch. We are backed up and crawling before we even cross the bridge into New Jersey. We inch along. The sun beats down on the car. The whole thing is something out of a punishment doled out in hell. Sit in traffic to paradise for eternity!
Paradise? you ask. In New Jersey? you rightly emphasize.
I know how it sounds. But I stand by my statement. One might not expect to find paradise in New Jersey, but it’s there. It’s little communities of houses and hotels tucked against the coast, separated from the ocean only by a stretch of hot beach (yes, even the mile wide beach at Wildwood which makes you feel like Moses by the time you get to the ocean).
The Jersey Shore is a huge part of the lives of many Philadelphia area people. It sure was and is for my family. When I was a kid, there was nothing better than going down the shore. It was a week at the ocean. Salt air, blinding sun, eating sandy sandwiches on sandy beaches. A cold drink never tasted as good as when you have it just after coming out of salt water and off a hot beach. During the hot day you’d never think you’ll need a sweatshirt, but at night, the ocean breeze comes in and the improbable happens. You walk the boardwalk and play video games and eat Kohrs Brothers soft serve ice cream or funnel cake in the sweatshirt your mother made you pack. When it rains, we improvise and go to the movies or play boardgames. The rain is less annoying near the ocean. Come to think it, so are people.
Some might retch at that description. Some of my students do. But then I sort of get a stomach ache when they describe childhood canoe trips and eating pickled cheese at a campground with 1,000 other people in the rain. It’s gooey with nostalgia and inexplicable.
The shore is the shore. That’s the only way to explain it.
We plunge into the Pine Barrens, surrounded on all sides by lush green trees that supposedly house the Jersey Devil. There are fewer cars. I start seeing signs that let us know we’re getting there. When we pop out of the Pines, the air has thinned and we all become a bit more mellow. We attest this to the shore.
I spend two days at Burke’s house down the shore. We eat barbecue food and go for bike rides down the boardwalk. We go swimming and eat donuts and drink coffee. We sit on the porch of the apartment and people mosey by and wave and say hello. One night we have Coronas and watch baseball. By the time my dad picks me up two days later to go to Ocean City where my mom and sister and her kids are, I have mellowed. My spine is like asparagus.
The same effect has overtaken my mother. Normally she and I are both busy bees, getting things done, restless, always moving. We are always (annoyingly giving orders, organizing, managing things). But when we see each other at the boardwalk a few minutes after my arrival, we simply wave at each other.
“Hey Mom.”
“Hey.”
She spent every summer down here as a kid. When she comes here her inner stoner is awakened. Very slowly.
There’s not a lot that raises my blood pressure over the next two days. We eat and drink water and watch baseball. We walk to the beach. Funnel cake is eaten. I half-joke, half-suggest that we buy a house down here. When I have to leave, I do so with a quiet whimper. On my way out of town, I look for For Sale signs. My sister is nearly in tears when she has to leave a few days later.
On the way back through the Pine Barrens, I (as always) keep my eye out for the mythical Jersey Devil. I never see him. It’s OK. I try to remember who it was who commented on the good that being near large bodies of water does for people. Whoever it was, (s)he had something there.
