A Shore Thing

With this being the first full day of summer, I thought I’d revisit the family vacations of my youth. Many of them were spent on the Jersey Shore as it was and is affectionately known. For countless working-class New York City families in those days gone by, this considerable slice of shoreline was heaven. Initially, my family stayed in small cottages in the town of Manasquan on streets named after fish, like Whiting, Pike, and Trout. In the late-1960s and early-1970s, weekly rentals set the folks back $75 to $100, bargains considering they were a few blocks away from both the Atlantic Ocean and the Manasquan Inlet, a busy boating thoroughfare that provided never-ending entertainment for kids, like me. It was a huge deal walking over to the inlet in the morning, where we would watch the fishing fleet from Point Pleasant—on the opposite shore—head out to sea. They would subsequently return with their catches, sometimes showing them off to land-bound spectators, including spellbound boys and girls. The flocks of seagulls inevitably trailing their crafts were likewise mesmerized.

In that colorful snapshot in time, cottages in a particular part of town were occupied by hard-partying hippies. Ever a source of fascination to little me, there was something so summery about the wafting smell of Mary Jane commingling with the ubiquitous sea breeze. Manasquan, too, had an extensive boardwalk, which was mostly asphalt as I recall. The houses along it were out of my folks’ price range, but I always wished we could stay in one of them. In the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy’s destruction in 2012, those very homes’ front porches now have a bird’s-eye view of tall sand dunes, not the mercurial Atlantic.

At some point in the mid-1970s, there were no rentals available in Manasquan for the weeks of my father’s vacation. We ended up venturing a little south to a place called Lavallette, a cozy vacation spot on a barrier island with the ocean to the east and Barnegat Bay to the west. Granted, the Manasquan Inlet was a big loss, but Lavallette’s boardwalk was a boardwalk from beginning to end. There also was this great bakery in town, Kay’s, which supplied us with breakfast donuts galore. Eating four glazed donuts was a piece of cake in those days. Lavallette also had a takeout pizza restaurant, The Oven, which produced a tasty pie. Not too far away was The Pizza Parlor, where the wait for pies at dinnertime was hours. It served superb thin pizza and was worth the wait. On one occasion we had visitors at our summer rental and The Pizza Parlor supplied the fare, including a pie with anchovies—my father’s idea. As expected—by me at least—the plain pies were consumed with alacrity while one too many anchovy slices languished in a box. And I could have eaten another slice or two, I remember. Upon learning this and that I was not a fan of anchovies, a visitor—a burly Italian patriarch—rather curtly told me, “Just take them off!” No can do! Anchovies leave their mark.

In the waning years of vacations on the Jersey Shore, we landed in the town of Ortley Beach, just south of Lavallette, which was totally decimated by Superstorm Sandy, I learned. The house we rented there a couple of times would get flooded during a summer thunderstorm. Ortley Beach also bordered Seaside Heights with its boardwalk of more than just boards. It was a nice place to visit with its amusements, entertainment, and foods, but I wouldn’t want to live there. The one and only time I ever was on a log flume was on the Seaside Heights boardwalk. A relative of mine once sniffed at her time spent on Cape Cod, calling it “boring” compared to the Jersey Shore with its electrifyingly exciting boardwalks. I thought that odd. But maybe not for a person with an Attention Deficit Disorder. Whatever, I remember fondly my time spent on the Jersey Shore with its boardwalks, where no two were the same.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)