After I just told you we never took expensive vacations when I was young, we come now to the exception that proves the rule. When I was about 9 years old my mother, grandmother, and I took the overnight sleeper train from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia to visit some friends of my grandmother’s. I am pretty sure she paid for the entire trip. I got to sleep on a train! We stayed at some fancy WIlliam Penn hotel downtown and rode in taxis to the friends’ house. The friends in turn took us in their car on a day trip to the Jersey shore, specifically the Boardwalk in Atlantic City and thus I made my memorable first trip outside of my home state. I also had my first glimpse of the Atlantic Ocean and began what has turned out to be a lifelong love affair with the sea.
It was November and it was cold. I remember specifically that it was November because it was the weekend of the Army/Navy football game and the Navy team was staying at our fancy hotel. I have clear memories of that ruckus since Navy won. That game is traditionally the end of the regular football season, usually late November and often played in Philadelphia I now know and thus I am able to date the time of this trip. But this trip, like many of my subsequent trips to NJ was about the shore, not the midshipmen. I was mesmerized by the waves rolling in and crashing on the beach. I loved the smell of the ocean and I knew I would always always return to the sea.
I was destined to return to NJ many times through the years. But none of that started until after my friends and I obtained driver’s licenses and could pile in a car and drive 7 hours across the Pennsylvania Turnpike to Ocean City, NJ. Somehow my mother convinced herself that Ocean City and Cape May NJ were “safe” destinations for young women to go for a summer trip to the beach. Sharon, Mary Grace and maybe one or two others convinced their mothers of the same thing. I think that may be because both places were historically significant.
Ocean City NJ was in fact one of the Methodist “resort” communities that sprang up on both the east and west coasts around the end of the 19th century. Those communities existed in Northport, Maine and Pacific Grove, California as well and probably other places I have never been. As of the late 1800s, land on Peck’s Island (now Ocean City) was purchased by a group of people to become a Christian-based resort. Ocean City is considered a dry town, meaning that public drinking is forbidden on the island. It is banned on the beaches. This is believed to be a carry-over from the religious families who populated the area in the late 19th century. Therefore, tourists who wish to purchase and publicly drink alcohol have to drive across a bridge to an adjoining town. Now do you understand why my mother allowed me to vacation with friends there? Spring break it was definitely not, but we McMurray girls managed to have a good time nevertheless.
My other experience with the Jersey Shore involved frying a very different fish. In the summer of 1967, following my freshman year in college, I worked as a summer camp counselor in the Catskills. I became friendly with 3 women from Jersey City NJ and one weekend we all four managed to get time off (a rare event for camp counselors). We drove down the Hudson and crossed the George Washington Bridge (singing at the top of our lungs) for my maiden voyage into THE City. We stayed at one their houses in Jersey City and spent the rest of the weekend visiting the “true” Jersey Shore. I consider one of the high points of my Jersey shore experience being my trip to the carousel at Asbury Park and trying for the brass ring while spinning around on a horse going up and down. I decided to try to find out what happened to that carousel – turns out it was removed in 1988. You can read the history here.
Belmar Beach is one of the lesser known Boardwalk Beaches but popular with the natives in the 1960’s. You can google that beach and find out all about it !
Asbury Park’s Palace carousel listed on eBay for $250K – nj.com
“It’s a piece a history. You can’t make history, you either have it or you don’t,” said Brass Ring Carousel Company owner Dan Horenberger who is selling the merry-go-round on behalf of the owners.
Anyway, Ocean City and Asbury Park are a study in contrasts and both gave me memorable experiences in NJ, as did the many trips to Ridgewood NJ and surrounding suburbs where it seemed a great many of my West Virginia college friends lived. New Jersey suburbs, outside the City, were convenient places to meet for college trips and perhaps the most memorable was in 1969 when a group of us met in Ridgewood to venture into the City and see the play Hair on Broadway, live and naked. I had come a long way from the Boardwalk in Ocean City and my days throwing quarters into the baskets on the Garden State Parkway. Now I breeze through with my EZ Pass and pay the electronic bill at the end of the month. I haven’t returned to visit New Jersey recently although I have visited the Vince Lombardi Rest Area on the New Jersey turnpike on my drives south. Not a nice place, but still it makes sense to end with a Simon and Garfunkel note because it describes it so well.
Counting the cars
On the New Jersey Turnpike
They’ve all come
To look for America
Memories - A Second Chance at Happiness 