A Keen of the Shore

“The human mind is a fearful instrument of adaptation, and in nothing is this more clearly shown than in its mysterious powers of resilience, self-protection, and self-healing. Unless an event completely shatters the order of one's life, the mind, if it has youth and health and time enough, accepts the inevitable and gets itself ready for the next happening like a grimly dutiful American tourist who, on arriving at a new town, looks around him, takes his bearings, and says, "Well, where do I go from here?” 

― Thomas Wolfe, You Can't Go Home Again

It's taken me a few days to have all that Sandy has done to sink in.

As a kid, I used to go to the Belmar beach. Mom and my brothers and I would pitch our blanket, towels and Mom's beach chair on the sand at Ocean and 19th Avenue. Right across from the boardwalk was Sideroff's hot dog stand, with hot dogs that snapped when you bit into them and cold sodas that came in a bottle. Then, back to the beach for a couple more hours (we had to wait an hour after eating before we could hit the waves again-cramps you know.) before heading home. We did this almost every sunny day.

The pride and joy of the Belmar ocean front, the boardwalk that I walked over to play and surf in the ocean and, later, to attend the Elk's Club dances hoping to be cool enough to someday wear leather jackets on hot summer nights, is now strewn over half the town. The Sideroff's shack still stands, a ghost of it's past heyday.

It's all gone after Sandy. 

The boardwalk would be a place to sneak cigarettes. The retired guy, who would sit in a shade chair looking to see that you had your season's badge to go on the beach was kept occupied, while a half dozen of our friends would hop the fence behind him.

Not any more.

The summer I graduated from high school, was the Summer of Love. While I wanted my hair to grow long and straight like those guys I was beginning to admire on album covers, mine was more like Sly Stone or Rob Tyner from the MC 5. In an altered consciousness, we were on the boardwalk in Seaside Park. The amusement center on the boardwalk was a step up from the kid rides in Asbury. It was narrow, loud and the lights were just dazzling enough to put the "Oh, Wow!" into my altered state. The music would blare out on the boardwalk and I heard a very heavy drum solo. It caught my easily distracted mind and I sat and listened to it. Had Cream released a new record, I wondered? It wasn't until I heard it on WNEW-FM that it was Iron Butterfly's In a Gadda Da Vida.

Can't go to Seaside no more.

While the beaches and the boardwalk would be packed with the throngs of North Jersey and NYC summer escapees, it was the local's privilege to have the near empty beach to themselves in the winter. I remember many a time leaning on the fence or sitting on a boardwalk bench on a cold winter day. Those days when there was no horizon as the sky and the sea would blend into a slate gray palette. Without the boardwalk activity and Ocean Ave. free of traffic, you could listen to the sea waves wash up and back on the shore. The wash in and then retreating surf was as steady as a heartbeat and was just as comforting.

Not now.

I didn't always love the Shore. Coming home from the Army, the Shore was a dump. Lot's of people out of work and many store fronts up and down the Shore all boarded up and abandoned. The MLK riots and a down turn in the economy saw to that. My one treat was seeing the Springsteen band at the Student Prince. They could go somewhere, I thought.

I left the Shore for Portland, Oregon. I didn't return for 20 years.

I have a theory. People who come back to the Shore after a lengthy period away, will always remark how much it's grown and try to remember where the old soda fountains that served cherry cokes by stirring in real coke and cherry syrup were.  Anyway, the theory is that, up to this summer,  I could have brought back a Shore resident from the late 19th or early 20th Century and he would have recognized enough structures to know he was at the Shore. I'll be back in February.

It will be unfamiliar to me.

Sandy just didn't wipe out the boardwalk, beaches and buildings of the NJ Shore. She also wiped clean the collective memory of what the Shore was to its residents. The residents will need to be re-programmed as to what the Shore will be.

And now, it's snowing.