This is one of my all-time
favorites. What it entails was of the
time. I wrote it about five years ago...
Okay, here is the deal. I haven’t written anything in a couple
of weeks. I am going under the knife on Monday for gallbladder surgery. If I
don’t post now I won’t be posting for another long period. Thus, I will post a
rough draft of a story I started a couple of years ago. Enjoy.
The island community of Ocean City New Jersey has a sign that proclaims itself
“America’s Family Resort” The sign is clearly visible as you roll across the
34th Street bridge, across what was once salt marsh and brackish water. The
crisp white and blue sign harkens back to the time when the legacy of the
Methodists ministers remained strong. These were the men who in 1879 laid out
the city as a retreat for the rejuvenation of the Christian soul and body. When
I was a boy spending my summers catching rays and body surfing, Ocean City was
closed for business on Sundays. The rides, the shops, everything but
restaurants and newspaper stands were locked up tight on the Sabbath. Then as
now, no liquor was sold on the island.
In the summers of the early 1970s the concept of family in America was feeling
stress. The behaviors manifested by the younger members of our nation’s nuclear
families were clearly not those that would have been endorsed by those 19th
century Methodists. The disintegration of the traditional multi-generation clan
style of family, the social rebellion of the 1960s and the pervasive influence
of television had created a group of 14 to 20 year olds that were out of
control. This was a generation traveling the fringe. I was one of the Boomers
and we were pushing the boundaries and entering into the borderlands that lay
beyond the social mores of the time. Summer and suntan lotion just made it
worse.
My family’s home was about 60 miles away from Ocean City. It was a farm town
that in the summer was hot and dusty. There was nothing for a kid to do there
except to work at the packing houses. Summer there was unloading and sorting
produce and getting into trouble with the cash earned at those tough
backbreaking jobs. In 1970 beer was cheap and pot was available. My father
decided that after the summer of 1970 we should flee our hometown and go to the
beach.
Two specific things
led to this. First was the gun incident. Second was the fact that my Mom found
my pipe (commonly referred to in the then current lexicon as my bowl) in the
bottom of my dresser. She didn’t know what pot smelled like or she would have
been sure I was going to hell. But she did know there was not a right reason on
God’s green earth that a 14-year-old should have a pipe with a wire screen in
it stashed in the bottom of his dresser under his t-shirts. Imagination in
hiding places was obviously not my strong suit. The gun story was a bit more
complicated I will set that out in a different post.
As a result of the incursion of violence and drugs into our family life my
father decided we should spend entire summers at the beach. I didn’t know how I
would handle that, I knew nobody at the beach. My relatives spent all their
summer down there, but I had not hung out with them for any time since they
moved away from our home town when I was six. Up to then we had been thick as
thieves. A great deal can change in a
decade.
My mother was a teacher. In the late 1950s she was in her forties. In what must
have been a great surprise to her, she got pregnant for a fourth time in 1955.
In April 1956, I came along. Her sisters were in tune with this and five
cousins on my mother’s side were all born within roughly six months of each
other. Add a few months and that number rises to six. Mom took a couple of
years off to make sure my initial rearing went okay. She then went back to
teaching and I was dropped off at my aunt’s house with my cousin, Billy. Well
no sooner did I get there then Jimmy was born, and then Dottie Mae. We played
together. We ran about. We did all the things kids did and we were almost an
inseparable living organism. Then they moved away. My Uncle bought his own
funeral home about 45 miles away. But in the crowded east coast megalopolis
they might as well have moved to the moon, they were gone. Twelve years later
we would reawaken that friendship.
[Okay so this is an old draft of a story that I never finished. I should be
honest and fill in the three paragraphs that would explain how when I got to
the beach I fell in with my cousins and we were tied on so many levels it was
hard to believe we had seen each other every day of our lives. I would also
have to explain how we all worked at the same card store/gift shop/newspaper
stand together and it was sort of like the Taxi sitcom, all nuts, all the time.
Also, I would have to work in how I developed a somewhat as they say now
complicated relationship with a woman named Nan. Just go with it. My cousins
and I were tight and their names were Bill and Jim. My complicated kind of love
interest was Nan and she was far too hot for the likes of me. The final thing I
would have to add is that we spent every single freakin’ day on the beach
working on our tans. The rest of the story picks up when my cousins, Nan and I
went to the beach. Oh, my cousins lived half a block away from me and none of
us lived more than 1 1/2 blocks from the water.]
So there we were ready to head to the beach. I was happy that Nan had deigned it
acceptable to spend some time with me on the strand of sand. Billy had Aunt
Sugar’s big orange blanket. Well, we used it as a blanket. What it had been in
its earlier incarnation was the bedspread for a full-sized bed. It was an
orange of the kind that it could have been used as an emergency signal. The
edges had a fringe that was a series of white strings that were about two and a
half inches long. It was unmistakably Aunt Sugar’s because there would be nobody
else who would have something like this. Jimmy was going to join us at the
water.
Having been up until 3 a.m. the night before we did not get an early start,
noon maybe 1p.m. we headed out. Towels, check, jug of water, check, beach
umbrella, check, beach tags, check. Off we went.
The day was perfect
and the beach was crowded. Once you worked your way through the suntanned
bodies down to where the water was retreating you had a space. This late in the
day it was the only place to find space to lay out your towel. As you lay on
your stomach your torso was separated from the beach itself by the coarse
orange material the bedspread now beach blanket. I was set on reading Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure. Other people around me
on the strand were reading the tome of the season, perhaps it was Looking for Mr. Goodbar that year, or Jaws. Each of those books had a year
where they were everywhere. Propped up on your elbows holding the book in one
hand you would develop a little bit of perspiration. This body generated
moisture would arise after about half an hour and would glisten and be
uncomfortable. It was like nature’s own timer telling you to go swim, body
surf, frolic and then return to reapply the sensually scented Bain de Solei
tanning lotion and to lie on the other side of your body.
Any idyll on a beach towel with a young beauty is something when you are 16. It
is forever. It is filled with the promise of nothing and everything. On a beach
towel on a warm day you can nap. You can talk about the world, politics, sex,
dope, whatever. You can take a slug of ice water from a thermos. You can watch
the sun-tanned girls go walking by. You can see a two-year-old run to the water
and run back again. Or you can try and figure out what to do about your
doofus-assed cousin who seems intent on getting everyone sent to prison.
As Billy, Nan and I lay there experiencing warm eternity on a summer afternoon,
Jimmy finally found his way to the beach. Jimmy had no filter. It wasn’t clear what had happened or when it
had happened. When we used to spend time together in the little ranch house as
kids Jimmy was smart, and he was apt to follow the normative behaviors expected
of us all. But in the years since I had spent time with him he had dramatically
changed. It was subtle and hard to discern at first but as time went on it
became very clear. Jimmy had challenges seeing the lines of normal behavior and
color within them. It some ways he was like Neal Cassidy, the hipster
beat.
Jimmy no sooner had sat down on the towel than it became apparent he was in full
non-conformance mode. As my cousin sat on the towel cross legged he proceeded
to pull from out of his swim trunks an ounce of marijuana, you basic bulging glad
sandwich bag of green leafy vegetation. None of the three of us noticed at
first as we were engaged in number of divided attention activities,
conversation, people watching and being generally lost in sunny day bliss.
Jimmy however was on a mission. Joint by joint he winnowed down the pot he had
in the bag. One joint, two joints, five joints, ten joints; slowly but surely
the little outcropping of Mt. Cannabis was arising from orange island of my
aunt’s blanket.
Glancing down the beach I noticed that the beach wardens were doing their
rounds. Ocean City like most of the other lily white towns had instituted beach
tag fees in the year before this incident. The fees were ostensibly designed to
provide funds for beach clean-up and maintenance. The real purpose was a bit
more sinister. In essence the real purpose of beach fees was to keep the riff
raff out. And let’s be specific hear, riff raff meant people of color, whatever
color it might be other than white. The tags were effective to this end. The
tags also provided a basis to have deputized folks walking down the beach
keeping an eye out for the evil John Barleycorn. As I noted this was “America’s
Family Resort,” and allowing the use of alcohol on the beach just wouldn’t be
right. If the demon rum was a problem, how would you think the quasi police tag
patrol would take to a bunch of stoner teenagers openly flaunting the drug laws
of our country? Remember Spiro Agnew was still the Vice President. Remember
also that it had only been a year or so earlier that Casey Jones and White Rabbit
had been banned from the airwaves by the FCC.
Noticing the impending arrival of terry cloth short wearing justice, I in
hurried consultation with Nan and Billy made the executive decision to wad up
my aunt’s beach towel with the joints inside and go. In my mind the safer
course seemed to be, given the number of eyes around that might mention my
cousin’s behavior to the beach patrol, getting the dope off the beach. Nan and
I decided/ended up being the blanket bearers. The plan hastily formulated was
that we would take the blanket back to my parent’s beach apartment and hide the
pot back behind the apartment building, possibly in the outdoor shower.
For those of you that have never had a beach apartment in the 1970s in New
Jersey, they invariably had an outdoor shower of some kind. These can range
from a cold-water affair with a watering can type of nozzle or they can be
quite elaborate. The one behind my parent’s apartment was in between. It was
basically a small shed with a bench and some storage, with the hottest water you
could ever want and a shower head that gave off needle fine spray. I used to
luxuriate after a day on the beach taking a 20-minute-long shower until my skin
was lobster like red. The simple pleasures they are what count most in life,
aren’t they?
Walking quickly Nan and I covered the distance between the beach and the house,
it was a relief to turn into the side path that led to the back of the house.
Not having been busted by the police, the beach patrol or any other authority
we simply needed to get to the shower shed, stash the joints for Jimmy to pick
up later and we would be in the clear. Walking quickly Nan and I would simply
need to avoid any prolonged contact with my mother as we passed the screen door
to the kitchen/dining room. These apartments were stacked four in a building
and were long and thin. The living room was in front, followed by a bedroom,
then the bath, then the kitchen then a second bedroom. The living room had a pull-out
couch and the place could accommodate up to six or seven people if they were
appropriately stacked. The outdoor shower was appended behind the second
bedroom
As we passed the kitchen, our luck tanked. Trying not to stop I heard my aunt,
my beloved aunt’s voice, call out. The aunt talking to me was Billy and Jimmy
mom and I had her dayglow orange beach blanket wadded up in my hands. “Jay
bird, where are you going and what are you doing with my towel?” Trying to be
nonchalant I said hi and tried to pass by without engaging in conversation. My
aunt called again and I could hear her chair shifting as if she might get up
and open the door blocking our passage. “Jaybird, give me my towel.” “Aunt
Sugar” I managed to choke out, “Billy and Jimmy are going for a long walk on
the beach and they asked me to bring this up to the house. It is full of sand,
let me shake it out in the back by the shower.” Silence and it seemed luckily
no discernable movement by my aunt followed. This was a false reading of the
reality of the situation and the moment’s respite did not last long.
I don’t remember what she said next but it became clear she was going to come
after the towel if it wasn’t in her possession in the next fifteen seconds.
There was no time to take it into the shower shed. Lacking a better plan, I
just shook the towel vigorously toward the house. Nan was slacked jawed. The
joints went flying. Tapping against the back of the house the reefer sticks
bounced gently toward the ground. About 18 joints lay within a foot or two of
the back wall of the shed and the apartment. My plan was that I would now walk
the towel into my aunt and pick up the joints later.
This heart attack on a plate would just not end. As I took my first step toward
the side door I noticed the landlord descending the steps that came down from
the second-floor apartment. These steps ran just above the shower. Mr. Dee, the
landlord seemed to be in a talkative mood. As I remember the situation now it
seemed he wanted to be introduced to the bikini clad Nan. No mystery there.
Nan’s young tanned, firm and vibrant body was about as easy on the eyes as any
nubile beauty could be. Dee, letch or not, would have had a hard time ignoring
such pulchritude. In a stroke of good fortune for us the old man driven by the
small brain never took his eyes off Nan’s chest. Luckily this meant that he did
not notice the 18 joints (or two years of jail and probation if you looked at
it another way) lying about the back of his building. Having feasted his eyes,
and a period of time having passed that was moving into the awkward realm of
socially unacceptable staring, Mr. Dee turned and headed out back to where his
car was parked.
I sprinted to the side door to give my aunt, the Sherlock Holmes of teen bad
behavior her towel. I say that because she had busted me by finding my gallon
of wine hidden among the garbage cans behind her beach house one time. I say
that because she routinely checked the nooks and crannies of her garage and
found my Mary Gin, on loan to my cousins, stashed in the rafters. A Mary Gin removed
seeds and stems from pot to allow crackle free smoking. Handing her the clumped
up but shaken out towel seemed to defuse the situation. Nan in the meantime
gathered up the joints. She hid them out of sight in her now lumpy bathing suit
bra top. With nary another word, we headed out. I don’t remember where we went
but anywhere but there was the destination.
Another near disaster narrowly avoided. Once again it was not my fault, and
once again I was simply trying to avoid things from spiraling out of control at
the hands of someone else. Yup, there in the heart of “America’s Family Resort”
I had dodged another bullet.
