the rix mix

Until I was ten, my family always stayed with relatives in Somers Point the first week of August (read Angels At the Jersey Shore). Everyday, sometimes twice, we'd drive to Ocean City over this drawbridge & across the Great Egg Harbor marsh islands. I loved that ride, especially when the bridge was up & we'd get out of the car to look at the boat passing through. The other railroad bridge is long gone.

But this road remained something of a mystery until I got my driver's license. With four kids, Dad wasn't stopping to satisfy my curiosity. So when I was 18, I drove my Beetle all the way down just to explore it, pull over in places where I'd always seen crabbers parked. I also visited the nearby Beesley's Point Bridge, which I'd viewed many times from afar, the highway to points south unknown, Wildwood & Cape May. The Jersey shore had an immense effect on me despite that fact that I never spent more than two weeks a year there until my grandmother retired to Atlantic City. I couldn't see what I really wanted to see or stay as long as I wanted to stay. Every year I looked longingly at The Chatterbox in Ocean City as we passed by; a legendary teen hangout that was in my prepubescent mind the Ultimate Malt Shoppe out of Ozzie & Harriet or Archie Comics. If it had that effect on me, it must have driven my older sister crazy.

Somers Point was at the time a quiet place with lots of bungalows, edged by woods & cornfields. Except for a stretch of noisy waterfront bars & clubs - Ocean City itself is a "dry" town. I favored a marsh a few blocks from my Aunt's house, where I collected punks & one year picked up such a bad case of poison ivy over my usual sunburn that a local doctor said the best way to alleviate my horrible suffering was to let me stay an extra week & go swimming in salt water every day during late afternoon, so my family went home without me. Ok by me.

Labels: growing up, jersey shore, Ocean City NJ, postcard