The Jersey Shore, Revisited
My mother, foreground, with her sister Barbara behind at the Jersey Shore. My sister Bonnie is in the foreground with foot raised; first cousin Stephanie is above her.
An old friend from high school has graciously offered me her townhouse at the Jersey Shore for a few days. Though we barely know each other as adults, I am struck by how deeply generous and kind she is to do this. Normally I would shun such an incursion into someone else's private space. But the pandemic has worn us out with the tedium of our days and our four walls. Plus the heat this summer has further diminished our parameters-- it's too hot even to go for a walk in the park, and stores, movies, libraries, restaurants... all are off limits.
As I wrestle with whether or not such a trip would be safe, given this rampant virus, lack of a coordinated national health strategy, and several discarded attempts to figure out an escape from New York, I am flooded with memories of my grandparents' apartment in Atlantic City where my family spent parts of our summers, which I'm betting is six to ten blocks from my friend's townhouse. The idea of being back in this place so awash in rosy childhood memories-- it's like when you're thinking of something beautiful or comforting or delicious, and daily life interrupts your thoughts, and at the next moment of repose you scroll back in your mind to find that happy place-- I'm pulled back to memories of Atlantic City when I was a child.
My grandparents, Dorothy and Maurice, had a small railroad flat on the third floor of an extremely modest building. Was it a tenement? I don't know. I was little and I was loved, and so the world to me was benevolent and safe. 108 Roosevelt Place was flanked by two other modest apartment buildings with narrow alleyways in between. This was around 1960, long before Atlantic City succumbed to the lure of gambling as a false and destructive means to urban renewal. Atlantic City then was elegant with grand hotels like the Traymore, the Ritz Carlton and the President, which was just a few blocks from my grandparents.
I was the youngest of three girls. My parents were part of the first wave of World War II veterans that built suburbia. We lived in a tiny modest Cape Cod house outside of Philadelphia, one of only two Jewish families in the neighborhood. There were two places we went on vacation-- one, a rented cabin without plumbing or electricity in the Poconos on Bear Wallow Road, and the other, my grandparents' apartment at the beach in Atlantic City.
The drive to the shore for me was always endless. First, it took my mother forever to get ready. Then, it was a dice toss whether to take the Black Horse Pike or the White Horse Pike. Both were jammed with traffic-- Philadelphia families escaping for a weekend at the beach--, long before the Atlantic City Expressway was built. When our boat-sized Ford station wagon finally turned onto Roosevelt Place, my grandmother was always leaning out the window of her living room in her apron. She was a soft and gentle woman with rimless eyeglasses and nondescript hair. She was not fat, but her legs were solid and stocky, swollen from years of housework and lugging her shopping cart across the scary drawbridge in Atlantic City to the Acme supermarket. She had a lovely smile and a quiet giggle when she laughed. I loved her with the utter devotion of a four-year old. I wasn't aware of it then, but Nana did all the things a grandmother is supposed to do-- she bought me the presents my parents considered too expensive and tried to talk me out of, made food my mother would never cook, called me "mamalah," she indulged us and made only simple rules that were easy to follow, she gave us independence and trusted us.
My grandparents, Maurice and Dorothy, in their front room
Carrying as much of our stuff as we could while my father parked the car, we raced up the three flights of stairs in that funky old building, which had a distinctive smell that I can't describe but would instantly recognize-- a combination of must, stale sea air, sweeping compound, moisture swollen wood? My grandmother would open the door and we were enveloped in the smells from her tiny kitchen-- the baked macaroni and cheese she always made for us, and the revolting vegetables she steamed into oblivion in the pressure cooker, chewable for grandparents with dentures. "Where's Poppop!?" "He's up on the flat." We dashed up another flight of stairs to the roof where my grandfather was sunning himself and reading the paper. He was on a lounge chair in shorts, socks and slippers, no shirt, brown and tanned, thick, dark hair slicked back, a green visor on his head and one of those nose protectors clipped to his glasses. He beamed at us, patted us, and went back to his paper.
There was a built in broom closet in the kitchen. It had two doors. The bottom part, designated for the garbage, opened at about hip height for an adult, chin height for me. And the top part, stacked above, was taller. That's where the buckets and shovels that we played with at the beach were kept. Lunch bolted down, bathing suits on, buckets, shovels and towel on my arm, my parents laden down with beach chairs, blankets, volley ball, beach umbrella, fruit to snack on, and three girls, we're about to leave my grandmother to do the dishes. I have an extremely vivid memory at this moment of tying my shoelaces for the first time by myself. I am supremely proud of this, but as the youngest of three, this achievement has been celebrated before and all I get is half a hug and a smile.
The walk to the beach, though only two bocks, is another endless journey for me. We walk up the ramp to the boardwalk and on our right is a motel called Junior's. I am mad for this motel because to me it seems the height of streamlined contemporary sophistication, and they have a swimming pool overlooking the boardwalk with a roped off kiddies' section. I look at the children in that pool with deep envy. At one point, possibly because I've asked so many times, my mother tells me to go ahead and swim in this pool. And so, by myself, a five year old, I walk into a gated motel pool where my family is not staying, and gingerly enter the pool. I don't know why she instructed me to do this, but I go, have a little swim, and no one questions me.
It's six steps down to the beach from the boardwalk, and the sand is hot. My father finds a spot and begins to jimmy in the beach umbrella. I dump my stuff and with my sister Bonnie, who's more of a colt than a child, and still willing to sort of have something to do with me (but only some of the time), we run down to the water's edge to put our feet in. It is thrilling. I love the Jersey shore because the slope of the beach down to the water is gradual and nearly flat. The shallow part of the ocean seems to extend quite a ways, which as a little person, gives me plenty of room to wade out without being toppled by a wave.
My mother with me and my sisters. At right, my parents
Another palpably vivid memory: I am really small, maybe two or three years old, and I'm standing in the ocean shallows holding my mother's hand. A wave knocks me over and I'm underwater having lost my mother's grip. I don't think I'm dying-- I'm too little to get that concept, but I still intensely remember the water rushing past my head and a feeling of otherworldly stasis. This possibly lasts three seconds before my mother grabs my arm and yanks me from the tidal rush. I'm crying and scared, I have water up my nose, I have to go back to the beach blanket to recover and eat a peach.
My grandfather almost never came to the beach, and my grandmother, hardly ever. But I remember one time when she did, with her sister, my Aunt Grace. Aunt Grace must have been a working girl because she lived in a high-rise apartment building in Center City Philadelphia which to me seemed extremely modern. There's an old faded photo of the two of them, sitting next to each other on those wobbly, webbed folding beach chairs, smiling merrily, Grace's hair wrapped elaborately in a chiffon scarf. My Aunt Grace had a high, whiny voice and a thick Philadelphia accent. She "never married," and was the most tactless person you'll ever meet. She would ask a seemingly harmless question, but always manage to turn it into an insult. "Owhhh, what did you do to your hair, dear?" I'm sure she had choice commentary on the way my parents were raising their children, but I didn't notice. Aunt Grace always had (and generously dispensed) hard candy, thereby cementing my loyalty to her.
Our beach activities, in addition to as much time as possible in the water, included sand castle and moat building; surreptitiously looking out for Malcolm, the bow-legged, long haired, scandalously handsome beach chair guy from whom you could rent chairs and umbrellas; hoping my parents would stop the ice cream vendor with the freezer box over his shoulder without our having to ask; and playing beach volley ball without a net, but a court drawn in the sand by my father. My father could easily win the game against the four of us. I liked to go over to his side of the court, hoping that maybe he'd have pity on me as the youngest and let me get the ball at least once or twice.
L to R, Bonnie, me, Michele
After a few hours at the beach, we were sunburnt and salted. [A note about sunscreen in 1960: There was no such thing as Alba Organics, Cerave or Aveeno. There was Coppertone, which was full of chemicals and meant to make you fry. Which it did. Now in my mid-60's, I am paying the price, but I digress.] We trundle back to the apartment and walk through the narrow alley to the back of the building where there is an outdoor shower and we can wash the sand off our feet so as not to track it into the apartment. There is still however, loads of sand in our swim suits and so the ritual of bathing begins. There is just one bathroom in this apartment, and a tub-- no shower, so we've got to double up. My two older sisters take a bath with my mother. Because I am the youngest, and allegedly won't notice that I'm in the tub with a naked adult man, I take a bath with my father. This seems perfectly natural to me, and indeed I have no idea that I'm with a naked man.
For dinner, my grandmother has indulged us and bought steaks. Which we cook in this ancient portable electric broiler, which has a base to put the steaks on, and a lid inside of which is an electric coil. Steaks sizzling, grease spattering, cord fraying, it's probably a terrible fire hazard, but what bothers my grandfather is that we like our steaks rare. This, to him, is what will kill us, not a raging electrical fire. "You're feeding them raw meat!" he says angrily. Again, I'm too young to get this, but it's a glimpse into what my mother has endured in negotiating her relationship with her parents over the years.
Grandfather Maurice, on a rare visit to the beach, with his first grandchild, Michele
As I said, Atlantic City in those days, was elegant, and everyone dressed up to walk on the boardwalk in the evenings. My mother, who was a great beauty, wore fashionable dresses, heels and a towering up-do. My sister Bonnie and I had matching dresses. These dresses were adorable-- white with splotchy, colorful flowers and a large keyhole opening in the back. Problem was, they had a tulle underskirt attached at the waist to make them puffy. Or perhaps, to make them instruments of torture for little girls with sensitive sunburnt skin. These dresses were so itchy and we were so miserable in them, squirming our way along the boardwalk. In patent leather Maryjanes no less, invariably which we'd either outgrown, or were too tight to begin with.
Nevertheless, the boardwalk was enchanting. Women had strange round plugs on the bottom of their spike heels to keep those heels from getting stuck in the spaces between the boardwalk slats. African American men pushed white people in wheeled wicker, cushioned chairs up and down the boardwalk. I was too young to understand the racism, but the call of "Watch the chair please, watch the chair," was a refrain underlying the evening stroll. There were glass storefronts where men in tall chef's toques made fudge and saltwater taffy. There were jewelry stores where we liked to point out rings with the biggest, gaudiest stones. There was Mr. Peanut! There were women in mink stoles. There was the smell of cotton candy and caramel corn. Sometimes we walked as far as the Convention Center, where there was dim awareness that this was where the Miss America pageant took place, or to Million Dollar Pier, where there were bright lights, rides, and games with huge stuffed animals as prizes. For a little kid with a nutrition conscious mother and not a lot of toys, this was Sin City.
Eventually we would turn off the Boardwalk onto Atlantic Avenue and visit our favorite delicatessen, Shep Kelly's where we all crammed into a booth and ate ice cream, served in those thick stemmed dessert glasses with long spoons. When we returned to my grandparents' apartment, they were already asleep in their twin beds. My parents slept on the sofa bed in the "front room," or living room. My two sisters and I slept on army cots set up in the hallway and in what my grandmother called the "breakfast room" of this tiny railroad flat. My grandfather always rose early and somehow found his way around us to go ride his bike on the boardwalk. We'd be awake by the time he returned, eating toast in the breakfast room.
There was the time my grandmother decided it was urgent that a portrait of myself and my two sisters be taken by a professional photographer. This ignited a furor in the household. It must've been 100 degrees outside and all we wanted was to get to the beach. Instead, our mother had to dress all three of us in our boardwalk dresses, try to do something with our unruly hair and march us to the photographer's studio a few blocks away. It was of course broiling hot in there with no air conditioning and bright lights all around. I remember the photographer perching Michele and Bonnie on a tall trunk, which, as the smallest, I had to stand beside. This made me very angry-- that they got to sit and I had to stand for this endless photo session. You can see from the resulting masterpiece how miserable we were since no one was smiling, except for Bonnie, whose tomboyish good nature was irrepressible.
Once, my parents went on a vacation by themselves. I'm not sure where my oldest sister Michele was, but Bonnie and I were sent to my grandmother, where she stayed during the week, my grandfather coming "down the shore" from Philadelphia for the weekends. We had the time of our lives. We played Crazy Eights and Casino for hours. We had a contest to see who could eat the most slices of marble rye-- fresh deli bread with swirls of pumpernickel (I think we each ate eight slices). We listened to the teenaged boy across the alley playing endless reps of "Wipeout" on his electric guitar, and found it hilarious when his French mother yelled at him, "Alain, Shut Up!" We were free to roam the boardwalk and go to the beach on our own. We bought ice cream cones at the President Hotel and waited for the inevitable adult we knew would come along and ask if they could have a bite, sending us into peals of laughter. We took ourselves to the beach hospital if we stubbed a toe or cut a foot on a shell, bracing ourselves for that sting of iodine before getting bandaged up. We would find the restaurants that had windows directly on the Boardwalk, stand there and stare at people eating, point at their food and rub our stomachs to see if we could get a reaction. The only rule was to come home for lunch and dinner. My grandmother called us "skinny gnendls" and never yelled at us.
When I was a teenager, my grandmother was suffering from progressively worsening Parkinson's. She spent her last years in a nursing home and my grandfather was quite devoted to her. I would visit her occasionally when I was in Center City Philadelphia for a flute lesson. I would sit with her, not sure what to say. A nurse came in and scolded me to "talk to your grandmother!" But all that love and dedication overwhelmed the adolescent me and choked me of words. I didn't know what my role should be, or how to process the sadness of seeing her diminished and suffering, though I do remember writing a poem about the desolation of the nursing home.
It's a primal grief, that our ancestors pass while we go on living without them, without their wisdom and love to guide us. How I wish she could see the three of us, and her other two grandchildren, my first cousins, as grownups, as full-on adults with houses and careers and partners and kids of our own. How she would love my husband, my daughter and the grown up me, I'm sure of it. If we make it back to Atlantic City at the end of the month, I'll go see the empty Roosevelt Place, now devoid of any buildings as Atlantic City sputters along as a gambler's haven, further beset by a pandemic. That decay was captured perfectly in the movie "Atlantic City" decades ago. But my mind will trick me, and I'll be able to see it as it was, through that lens of a safe and loving childhood.
My grandparents in their younger days on the boardwalk, and below, at their wedding
