the rix mix

In 1990 I found The Grey Manor Motel listed in the free Wildwood directory I got in the mail. It was a block from the beach at 26th & Surf, just north of where the main section of the Wildwood boardwalk began. I could hear the rides on Mariner's Pier & see the tops of the taller ones. Grey Manor was owned by a nice woman named Fay who lived on the premises & waved whenever she saw guests headed toward the boardwalk. Motels without pools are less expensive. It was a good-looking, clean little motel. So I went there for two nights with a woman I was seeing that summer, but she was so upset about something else going on in her life that we had a terrible time. That was the end of us. She apologized for that weekend when I ran into her a few years later.

I did return to the Gray Manor a couple of years later with a new friend. The trip down the Parkway was so enjoyable that we didn't even mind getting stuck in a massive traffic jam just below Ocean City. It was a warm day & after a few minutes of going nowhere people got out of their cars & began tossing frisbees & beach balls around with strangers. Fay had a couple who wanted to stay extra nights in the stuffy little room we'd reserved, so she installed us in a better one on the top floor with a wide deck in front of our door. One night we sat out there with a pizza & watched fireworks. It was very pleasant. My new companion was a genuine boardwalk girl whose family owned a half-shack in Lavallette near the Seaside Heights border, so she was delighted to be in Wildwood. I hadn't had that kind of girlfriend since I was 18. We wandered around with ease, except when she thought I was looking too intently at a woman getting a real tattoo in a boardwalk parlor. We ate up the three days & went back the following year for the whole midweek special, also great although we were in the little room. We visited the zoo, went on the ferry, poked around trinket shops (I''d had an ear pierced & found a small Horseshoe Crab earring in one of larger shell shops). We took the sort of long evening strolls so appreciated by seasoned boardwalk afficionados, where you look at everything but don't feel compelled to buy anything. You eat supper before you go there, play your favorite games in your favorite arcades, listen to music through open doors of clubs, laugh at silly people, treat yourself to an ice cream cone, & then go look at the ocean before you head back to your digs for the night. A dying hurricane was passing several hundred miles offshore & for two days the entire wide flat beach was covered with a layer of water only inches deep at high tide, with wavelets rippling across that expanse, & the sky over Wildwood was gray much of the time, no swimming. But the sun was shining ten miles west over the mainland. Strange weather.That final stay at the Grey Manor resulted in a major - & for me, shocking - conclusion: That I needed to find a place to stay away from the boardwalk.

I had soaked up enough boardwalk atmosphere & been exactly where I had wanted to be. I'd also had enough of being within earshot of the screaming people riding The Condor. The pier was many blocks away but you could see the ride from the balcony of the motel. Street traffic didn't let up until 3 am & then there were happy drunks singing their way back from the bars. The Grey Manor itself had some noisy clientele. It wasn't all due to my becoming middle-aged. It wasn't like I was trying to get to sleep before midnight. There were, after all, other aspects of the shore I had always loved. Only one mile north of The Grey Manor was a beautiful lighthouse, a much narrower beach you could cross without a camel, seawalls, Hereford Inlet entering the ocean, & wide sandbars at low tide. There was fresh coffee & decent pizza in that direction. The pace up there was considerably more relaxed. Maybe, if I listened closely, I could actually hear the ocean at night.

Labels: boardwalks, jersey shore, motel hotel, postcard, Wildwoods NJ