Ocean City Trip

When I was 13 years old, my father's cousin Alberta Young, she's the lady in the black and white picture (Uncle Harry about whom I've written before is with her) invited me, yes me, and a friend of mine, Linda Speer, who happened to be Alberta's next door neighbor in North Philly, to spend a week in Ocean City, NJ, in late June -- it was a graduation gift -- in 1957. Do you know how excited I was? How jealous my sister was? How jealous my friends were? A week in Ocean City, NJ was like a week in heaven for me. And, for Alberta to provide an all-expense paid trip, including meals, was, well, I can't tell you what that meant to me.

Alberta was a "tired, worn-out, old secretary" (her description) who didn't marry until she was in her early 50s, and didn't have any children. So, as her father and mother had adopted my father after his mother died in the influenza epidemic in 1918, she sort of adopted us children. She was always doing things for us, and giving us things. But, I always thought she gave my sister nicer gifts than she gave me. For example, when I was 15 or so, she gave me towels for my hope(less) chest, and she gave my sister a beautiful pearl ring. Since I love jewelry, you can imagine how "happy" I was to receive towels instead of the ring. But that really has nothing to do with Ocean City. I was happy to have those towels after my hope(less) chest turned into a real hope chest.

These pictures are pictures of the music pier and our "house" which were on the same street. The house in which we stayed is pictured here -- not the actual house, but one that was a "typical" house like the one we occupied . We had ONE ROOM -- a large window-filled room -- and were given permission to use the kitchen for renters which was on the bottom floor, under the main porch.

My trip with Alberta was the first time I ever heard of eating fruit (not in cereal) for breakfast. Alberta's favorite breakfast was cantaloupe and watermelon -- that's it, with coffee. It was also the first time I was permitted to have coffee with lots of milk in it by the cup. Alberta didn't know that my mom and dad were saving the coffee experience for me until I was 16.

Linda and I hung out on the beach most of the daytime and we both got quite a nice tan. Those were the days, also, when I would run into the waves when the water temperature was a balmy 68 degrees (folks that's cold water) and would stay in the ocean for hours, just floating beyond the breakers or playing with a boogie board and riding the waves into the beach. It was a wonderful week. Now, I have to admit, unless the water temperature of the ocean is in the high 70s, I won't go near it. It's nice to look at, but I won't step in it.

It was a week when I was introduced to fine restaurants -- not the soda bar at Woolworths. Every evening we went to the different restaurant off the boardwalk. The boardwalk restaurants would qualify as equivalent to Woolworths. Anyway, these restaurants, in those days, served everything family style. The only thing that wasn't served family style was the meat dish. That is what you ordered. You ordered some kind of meat or fish, then all the veggies, rolls, and desserts were served in large bowls and you could take as much or little of the them as you wanted -- in my case it was a lot of everything -- Alberta had to do no coaching at all for me to eat my vegetables.

Basically we ate two meals -- breakfast and dinner -- which we usually ate around 4:30 in order to beat the crowds.

Then in the evening, every evening, we went to the boardwalk and walked the boards. And every evening we stopped and got some Johnson's popcorn -- the best popcorn in the whole world. And we also always got Italian water ice -- I liked lemon and/or vanilla.

This is a picture of the Flanders Hotel -- the biggest, most expensive hotel in Ocean City (at that time) and it had the largest recirculating salt water pool (at that time) in the country. We went to that hotel for a day just to use the pool. I learned to dive from the side of the pool that day, and just loved having swimming races with Linda. We split the winning on that -- we were equally matched, I suppose you'd say.

What a week. It was a week I shall always remember very fondly. I did, however, lose track of Linda after I graduated from high school, when Alberta married and moved from North Philly. I also got my first pimples after that week -- of course it was all that butter and other schleck I ate on the boardwalk at night. But the best part? When I got home, people noticed my tan!