Some folks commented on my last post, which mentioned Springer's ice cream shop in Stone Harbor, NJ. Here's what it looked like on October 12, 2009:
For some reason, my most lasting memory of Springer's involves eating ice cream cones with my parents and my two brothers in the parking lot one balmy evening in around 1954 or '55. I was partial to coffee ice cream then (still am), and my brothers and I were competing to see who could make his cone last the longest. I finished my ice cream through the pointy end of the cone, because it had been reduced to soup, but I won the first and last Page Family Ice Cream Cone Endurance Olympics. After that contest, the event was scratched as too foolish even for us.
Here's another Stone Harbor landmark. I've never been in the place, but its logo appeared on T-shirts all over the world (slight exaggeration here, folks) for a few years in the decade of the 1990s:
After we'd satisfied the urge to make sure the town of Stone Harbor was essentially just the way we left it last year, we drove down to the southern end of Seven Mile Beach, where the old Coast Guard lifesaving station still stands. Back in my boyhood, it stood in solitary splendor among the sand dunes; today, you'd miss it altogether unless you were specifically looking for it, because it's surrounded by residential properties and serves only as a point of historic interest. But we wandered on down to the ocean, pausing for a self-portrait at the beach access ramp.
Cute couple, eh?
Ah, so. Next time we'll pop up somewhere else. Until then, blessings.
Once again this year, our great friends Dennis and Penny Murphy hosted us at the South Jersey shore over the Columbus Day weekend. The weather was near-perfect; and, after a nostalgic visit to sleepy, post-season Sea Isle City...
...we gave the sun permission to set over the last vestige of Summer 2009 by the seaside -- or, in this case, the bayside.
My fondness for the South Jersey shore goes back into the late '40s and early '50s, when our family -- often joined by another family with kids roughly the same age as my brothers and me -- would rent one or more beach houses at Stone Harbor or Avalon. Dad was on vacation and therefore relaxing more and more each day. The proof came when he pulled out his trusty pocket knife and started whittling; or when he'd organize a driftwood search so we could build a beachcomber's shack; or when he'd make us a kite to touch the heavens on a breezy day. This was soon enough after the end of World War II so that there was plenty of interesting flotsam on the beach from torpedoed ships -- and plenty of "tar", as people called the congealed bunker fuel oil that washed up on the beach and got all over us.
In those days, the magnificent sand dunes along Seven Mile Beach were still mostly unregulated and not yet reduced to private gated compounds dominated by coyly hidden seaside palaces for the filthy rich. It was still OK (or at least not ABSOLUTELY forbidden!) to build a driftwood fire in a sheltered sandy hollow, among the sawgrass and low-lying tree shrubs, and roast hot dogs and marshmallows while savoring the joys of youth and freedom and grains of sand in our food. Later, in our teen-age years, a certain amount of innocent but urgent romance flourished in those magical places.
Long sunny days at the beach and in the ocean might be followed by evenings on the modest boardwalks, movies at the small theatres and ice cream at Springer's in Stone Harbor.
Precious memories, every one.
Oops! Time for me to pull myself together and get to the office. The real world awaits, so now I'll wrap the nostalgia carefully back into its cocoon, to pull it out and marvel at it later.
WOW!! Pretty exciting image, eh? Right after I left active Naval duty and settled in Philadelphia, this is what our apartment looked like in 1972. We made quite a cozy place of this third-floor walk-up, before events led us onward into the future. I'm posting this photo only to test a new Epson Perfection V300 photo scanner, which is about as close as I ever intend to come to the digital claptrap which seems to be all the rage nowadays. Monochrome Forever!
Meet Lilliputnikskaya. She came to our house in early summer 2008. Before that, she'd lived under someone's porch and had become quite wise in the ways of the world. We were on a 90-day probationary program when she arrived; but, after an intensive screening and a thorough background check, she allowed us to become members of her household staff. We are well aware that this is strictly employment at will: missed meals and shortages of bedtime snacks are not looked upon kindly. So far, we've stayed on her good side, but eternal vigilance is the price of a happy cat-human relationship.
For some reason, my most lasting memory of Springer's involves eating ice cream cones with my parents and my two brothers in the parking lot one balmy evening in around 1954 or '55. I was partial to coffee ice cream then (still am), and my brothers and I were competing to see who could make his cone last the longest. I finished my ice cream through the pointy end of the cone, because it had been reduced to soup, but I won the first and last Page Family Ice Cream Cone Endurance Olympics. After that contest, the event was scratched as too foolish even for us.
Here's another Stone Harbor landmark. I've never been in the place, but its logo appeared on T-shirts all over the world (slight exaggeration here, folks) for a few years in the decade of the 1990s:
After we'd satisfied the urge to make sure the town of Stone Harbor was essentially just the way we left it last year, we drove down to the southern end of Seven Mile Beach, where the old Coast Guard lifesaving station still stands. Back in my boyhood, it stood in solitary splendor among the sand dunes; today, you'd miss it altogether unless you were specifically looking for it, because it's surrounded by residential properties and serves only as a point of historic interest. But we wandered on down to the ocean, pausing for a self-portrait at the beach access ramp.
Cute couple, eh?
Ah, so. Next time we'll pop up somewhere else. Until then, blessings.
