Split Decision: Best memories of the Jersey Shore?
Best beach days are hard to decipher although speaking generally, any day at the beach should offer a special memories.
Days with the kids at Ocean City (NJ), Asbury Park or Atlantic City will always linger. There’s a photo around somewhere of my daughter and I walking along the Ocean City boardwalk. She’s in sandals, denim shorts and her left hand tugs at my elbow. She had a tremendous coif of curly hair that was shoulder length.
Nothing seems better than a beach day with children. And why is it that food tastes better on the boardwalk? Pizza? French fries? Hamburgers? All better when made inside some ocean front restaurant. Come on Memorial Day and all those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer.
Best beach memories involve an African American female named Dr. Jones. Imagine, it’s the late 1950s and early 1960s and our family is befriended by a black woman who happens to be a doctor! Unbelievable. So, our world expanded knowing that the unimaginable existed as possible.
The Parkers? Well, 12 of us lived in a two-bedroom farmhouse on Moore Ave., adjacent to tomato fields and peach orchards while Dr. Jones, her daughter, Jamels and a live-in maid resided in a quaint residence on the property of Ancora State Hospital.
Five miles of distance lay between our homes but we lived worlds apart until kismet occurred and Dr. Jones befriended our family. Her daughter and my brother, Willie, were in the same class at Winslow Elementary.
Dr. Jones owned a second home in Cape May. Her invitation for a weekend stay caused incredible excitement as life had never offered such serendipity. We didn’t know what to expect. And could not have imagined it either. I remember my two sisters, Aletha and Willie Mae, brother, Willie and myself arriving at that large house in Cape May. And a bed for only myself?
Meals were prepared for us. My mind recalls breakfast with eggs and Pepperidge Farm thin white toast. And, real butter. We spent late mornings and afternoons on the beach. Jamels would throw small dance parties on Saturday nights. Way out of this young boy’s league but the actions of “older kids” served as a learning experience.
When everyone had gone home, we would cook hamburgers on this small electric grill. We used our bread rolls as sponges for all the gravy and grease. Sounds horrible now but back then? Yummy.
We made a handful of trips to Cape May and those instances served as residue for dreams. A black, female doctor opened up a world of possibilities. No way they were going to keep us down on the farm after the Cape May beach experiences.
Our eyes had been opened and minds awakened. We went from farmer kids to star-crossed dreamers in Cape May.