This Sunday, my daughter and her boyfriend, came home from New York and picked me up to take me to Ocean City for Easter.
It was a picture perfect Spring day, cool and breezy but not chill, lots of warm inviting sunshine.
We took my favorite route which is Black Horse Pike to 559 (2nd light after the hubcap pyramid - my favorite landmark) and the long quiet road through Mays Landing and along the Winding River. We stopped briefly at Lake Lenape to admire the blue lake under the blue sky just lightly ruffled by the frisky breeze, then stopped for lunch at the Somers Point Diner. I had a breakfast burrito and my daughter and her boyfriend had Greek salads. All of us were pleased with our lunches.
We weren't sure what would be open on the boardwalk where we usually have lunch at the Ocean Cafe. Traditionally, Ocean City is manly closed until after Memorial Day in May, but most Ocean City traditions have been replaced for better or for worse, generally it is best just to move along with the times and not whine about the "good old days."
We had all our favorite Easter treats - macaroons from Shrivers, fudge, Kohr's custard cones, and walked a mile or so on the boardwalk. As always, I forgot my hat and had to buy one, usually we have to buy jackets and sweatshirts with Ocean City anchors emblazoned on them, but this time we did remember to wear warm jackets.
What draws me to Ocean City every Easter is family history. My grandmother moved to Ocean City in the lat 1930's to take care of her mother who had suffered a catastrophic stroke. The lived in a small second floor apartment at 6th and Asbury, in a building owned by my grandmother's sister. It was across the street from a tiny old forestation where, as children, my brother and I could watch the red engine come roaring out when there was a fire in town.
Ocean City was a quiet, sleepy, little town in those days, thanks to the Blue laws which limited alcoholic use, and its history as a resort for people seeking health and religious uplift. Also near 6th and Asbury was the Tabernacle where some chautauqua type religious gatherings took place.
The people in Ocean City in those days were religious, family people, modest, and respectful, in small humble bungalows. People dressed to walk the "boards" and enjoyed the innocent entertainment of movie theaters like the Village and the Strand (now gone) and the many miniature golf courses (still there). Also, of course, the fun ride arcades which were mainly rides for children, and the most daring ride was the Ferris Wheel. My grandmother sold tickets to the Merry-go-round in summer and worked at Stainton's Dept. store in the winder. She walked from her apartments to the boardwalk and the department store for her work.
We visited often and I can remember so clearly the pain of walking home after a family day on the beach, with sand in our bathing suits chafing our little chubby legs, hauling our beach chairs, buckets and shovels and our picnic lunches back to Grandmom's house. My father always stayed on the boardwalk. He never put on a suit or came down on the beach.
One year, when my brother and I were grown, my brother hd just come home from vietnam and I had been divorced from my husband, and we went together to the boardwalk, and kicked around in a sandy lot where the old Merry-Go-Round, had burned down in a boardwalk fire. I kicked up a brass ring, the prize we coveted but were always too small to reach as the Merry-go-round, revolved and we leaned out as far as we could to grab it from the Clown.
Places that hold some many generations of memory are intrinsically sad. My grandmother's apartment is gone, the house was demolished a few years back, and indeed, the whole town has changed so much it is almost unrecognizable. People walk around on the boardwalk in bikinis and bare feet, the town is overflowing with showy look-alike summer rental houses, epic adventure movie music blares out from the arcades. My grandmother is gone, her mother is long gone, my parents are gone and so are the parents of my cousins who would also go to my grandmother's house for Sunday dinners in the summer.
But the ocean remains its rhythmic, powerful, liquid evocation of time itself. Instead of my old grandmother in the back seat of our station wagon and my young parents in the front, it is my daughter and her boyfriend driving, and I am the old lady in the back seat.
Still, just like the ocean is old and endless new, Spring and Easter is old and endlessly new and as the ear is reborn, so are we, though we may be old and stiff and slow, our hearts are quick.
Easter is the best time to visit Ocean City, before it gets too hot, too crowded and too much traffic on the roads although if you take the Black Horse Pike to 559, it is almost always a peaceful ride and you canst stop at the Sugar Hill Restaurant for a delicious lunch and a lovely view, and maybe pick up something interesting at the Lake Lenape Antique Store opposite the now closed and boarded up paper mill on Lake Lenape.
Happy Trails, and Happy Memories!
Jo Ann
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