A Site for Shore Eyes

Grammar questions have piled up and The Grammar Guy will now attempt to wade through most of them, although I have to post this caveat: Some of these questions are stupid, and so are some of the answers. Without further adieu, let’s dive in.

Q: I put some egg foo young on my plate at a Chinese buffet, and it was almost cold. Would that be “egg foo old?”

A: This is a common question, but there is no single answer. Depending on the internal temperature of the concoction it could be either egg foo middle age or egg foo old. Please limit your questions to English grammar.

Q: Every time I point out to people that they’re grammar is incorrect they tell me there right. I tell them it’s right their in the English book, but they don’t believe me. Help!

A: You definitely need help. I suspect the problem lies with your telling them there stupid. Best not to say anything.

Q: Where did you study English?

A: In America.

Q: Can an antecedent and an anaphor be separated?

A: Yes, in the wild they can be, especially if they have no relative pronouns.

Q: Does anything come before an antecedent?

A: If it didn’t, it wouldn’t be an antecedent.

Q: I know we have nouns, proper nouns, and pronouns. Are there other types of nouns?

A: Those would be improper nouns and connouns.

Q: Could you give an example of an improper noun? How about a connoun?

A: Flugelhorn would be an improper noun, because it suggests that flugels are real. Connouns are the opposite of pronouns, so “ti” would qualify as a connoun as well as a note on the musical scale. Another connoun would be “eh,” which is used when someone didn’t hear the pronoun. For example, “He went to get coffee.” “Eh?” “No, he.”

Q: So how do you pronounce “quahog?”

A: I pronounce it “clam.” Others call it “KO-hog,” KWO-hog,” or “KWA-hog.”

Q: If it’s so difficult to pronounce, why would a restaurant in Stone Harbor, NJ, use that name?

A: Most other seafood names were already taken, so it came down to “Qahog’s,” “Seaweed’s,” or “Skate’s.”

Q: Is the restaurant owned by a clam, as the name implies?

A: It could be. I hear that clams make great chowder.

Q: Guy Fieri featured Quahog’s on Triple D. How did he pronounce it?

A: Who cares?

Q: I’m getting tired of people asking about clams and restaurants. Are there any serious grammar questions in your in box?

A: Yes. For example, someone wrote in and asked if it would be proper to use a conch egg case as a necklace, or sort of a poor man’s lei?

Q: What was your answer?

A: I suggested he sell them on the boardwalk. Just about anything can be the rage for at least one summer.

With that, The Grammar Guy is leaving for Clam’s Restaurant.

The English language is confusing enough without all the spelling inconsistencies. One problem is that many English words were derived from other languages, such as French and German, but that’s not the entire problem.

Like, what’s the deal with “of?” Shouldn’t it be “uv?” And, “who,” “Whoa!” How about, “hu” and “woe,” respectively?

Can I take a bow (or is it bough?) for noticing that “tow” sounds like one of those things on your foot. I suggest “bal,” and “toe,” and why do we switch back-and-forth with bow, cow, flow, glow, how, low, mow, now, plow, row, sow, tow, vow, and wow? I aval to look into this.

What’s that “h” doing in “why?” I understand it in “shy,” but not in “why, and it doesn’t make much sense in “which,” either. It’s not needed in “witch,” so why not “wich?

And what about that “guy?” He should be a “gie,” but I’ll also defer to “gy.”

How does one pronounce the double “o” sound? It depends on the mood, and I guess that’s a pretty good description. “Brood” should be spelled like “crude,” But how do you spell, “good,” phonetically?

Do we need so many words that sound like “to?” There’s “two,” (figure that out), “too,” and “to,” but they should really all be spelled, “tu.” And why isn’t “two” pronounced “twoe?” You know, as in “twig.” What is that “k” doing leading off a word, but not making any noise? I don’t noe.

A number of words have several meanings, so why do we have “read,” “reed,” and “read,” the latter sounding like a color? It’s impossible to tell how to pronounce “read” until you have analyzed the sentence to see if it’s present tense or past tense. Let’s make them “read” and “red,” to avoid confusion. If you say make the present tense, “reed,” I won’t see red about something so trivial. It’s unlikely to be mistaken for something growing in a marsh.

Do we really need two ways of spelling “gray?” Some people prefer “grey,” and some say that’s mainly the British way of spelling it. I see both, but “grey” is very popular, but only “gray” sounds the way (not whey) it should. I mean, do we have a choice with “day,” or “fray,” or “say,” to name just a few? Nope, there’s no “dey,” or “frey,” or “sey.” But what’s with “cay,” which is pronounced, “key?” Yes, I suppose we could call them the “Florida Cays.”

While we’re at it, do we really need two sounds for “c” and “g?” We already have a “k” and a “j,” so why not go with them? And why use both a “c” and a “k”, as in “clock?” Actually, could we not just eliminate “c” from the alphabet and use “s” and “k?” Actually, no, because we need the “ch” sound, I suppose, and “kh” just doesn’t kut it.

Well, I think that’s enough for now, and speaking of “enough” brings us to “bough,” “cough,” “though,” and “rough.” No, I didn’t forget the other ones, it’s just that they were a bit redundant. So we have, “bal,” “kawf,” “thoe,” and “ruff,” which sounds a bit like “bal-wal.”

Yu get the idea. Many people don’t.

Back in the fifties, we usually needed very little in games or equipment to have fun. Usually, someone would buy a star ball or pimple ball for ten cents. I liked the star balls due to their firmer feel. By now I suppose you’re asking yourself, “What’s the cube root of a sweet potato?” No, seriously, many of you are probably wondering what is a star ball and what is a pimple ball? Of course, the question should probably be what were star balls and pimple balls, because now they’re as scarce as good TV sitcoms.

Let’s start with the star ball, which I preferred, but most kids apparently didn’t. It, like the pimple ball, was a white rubber, hollow, ball made of two hemispheres fused together. The markings were more distinct than those on a pimple ball, and it was a bit more shiny. It also hurt the hand more when you hit it with your fist. I’m not going to mention pinkie balls, even though I just did, because they were for sissies, back when sissies didn’t rule the world.

Pimple balls, just like star balls, were sold in stores from a display box about maybe ten inches by ten inches. Or maybe it was nine by nine. The dimensions aren’t important, but displaying them in this manner made it a simple task to test for bounceability by squeezing each one. Not all star/pimple balls were created equal, or, if they were, they didn’t always end up equal. Yes, they apparently sometimes lost air.

I think Artie started the trend of going into a store and asking the clerk if he had pimple balls. This never seemed to register with them, because they always said yes. I don’t know what was wrong with kids of our era, because one of them would always ask a certain teacher if she had pulled any boners lately. She would usually say, “Yes, I pulled one just the other day,” and then tell us about some awkward thing she had said. She never caught on, and neither did I, and I wondered why it was so funny to some of the kids in the class. I’m not sure when I finally figured it out, but it was after it no longer mattered. I knew something was up, though, because certain kids always snickered.

Anyway, one game we played with pimple balls was hand ball, but not the type with a court and gloves. This was crude baseball played in the street. The pitcher threw the ball underhand, on one bounce. We used a number of items as bases: a broken part of the curb, a door handle of a parked car, or maybe a tree. Home plate and second base required either a loose object or some chalk or crayon to draw the base on the street surface.

During the summer of ’57 I sneaked down the street when I was supposed to be helping my brother, Larry, babysit our brother, Wayne. I got into a game of handball and found myself caught between second base and first base, which happened to be a broken piece of curb. A priest tagged me a bit hard and sent me sprawling toward the curb, which opened a gash on my chin. Actually, now that I recall, I was tagged not by a priest, but by Robert Barclay, who became a priest, but not immediately. Sorry. This ended the game, at least for me, and I went home. When my mother came home from work she saw me sitting on a kitchen chair holding a damp cloth to my chin. She was visibly upset, not because I sneaked away, but because of my injury. Well, maybe the sneaking, but it was overshadowed by the other crisis. She wanted to take me to the doctor, but I insisted I was okay. Yes, a ten-year-old, almost eleven, was certainly qualified to assess the need for a doctor.

A couple of days passed and we went to our relatives’ house in another city. My grandfather finally talked me into going to see the doctor and he assured me I would need no stitches, even though most adults described the wound as looking like a small mouth. The doctor looked at my wound and said, “That’s a hell of a cut! That should have been sewed up long ago.” I figured if the doctor thought it was bad I may as well let him go ahead with the needle and thread, not that I had much choice. My grandfather didn’t give in as easily as my mother. I got seven stitches, and was later rewarded with a vanilla malt.

Getting back to the subject matter, we also sometimes played stick ball, using a broom stick, or part of one, I guess. Eventually the seam of the ball split, producing two half balls, which, for quite awhile, we considered worthless. The Philly kids didn’t think so, as long as we had a broomstick. They played a game called “half ball” in the city. I never really got the gist of half ball, but many variations existed. The idea was for a pitcher to throw the ball (sort of like a very small and much faster Frisbee) and the batter would attempt to hit it to designated areas or predetermined distances, to score a single, double, triple, etc. The pitcher would try to catch it for an out, or the batter could strike out.

Another reason we shore denizens had problems with half ball was that the Philly kids practiced pitching, and could make the ball curve and drop and flutter, making it hard to hit. We never mastered the pitching nuances.

I don’t think we intentionally made half balls; they just happened. Anyway, some internet dude is attempting to sell pimple balls for $5.99 a pop and I guess he’s trying to have them manufactured in China, using specifications he knows little about.! Not only that, he has custom half ball bats listed for about $60.00! Just get a broomstick. I also saw an old, used, pimple ball advertised on ebay for $200.00! I could have bought 2000 of them for that much money!

Pimple/star balls weren’t great for playing wire ball, because they were a bit too small and too light, but they worked. A sponge rubber ball was more suited to this task.

If a good, solid wall happened to be available, as was the case at our grammar school, we played three flies, six grounders. The person who was up would throw the ball against the wall and other kids would try to either catch it the air or field it on the ground. Whoever caught either three flies or six grounders first would be the next person throwing the ball. This also worked better with a solid, sponge rubber ball, but any small bouncing ball would do.

By now you’re probably asking yourself, “Where can I find a good pizza steak, now that the Four G’s closed a few decades ago?” I dunno, but you could try Cappelletti’s in Cape May. They ain’t the Four G’s, but they’re very good. They don’t sell pimple balls or star balls, though.

Some of the so-called toys we had back in the 50s were taken off the market rather quickly, while others are still around.

Super Elastic Bubble Plastic

Wham-O, the company that popularized the Hula Hoop, also gave us “Super Elastic Bubble Plastic.” It came in a small tube and included a small straw. The idea was to squeeze out a small blob of the stuff, stick the straw in it, and blow up a balloon that smelled suspiciously like model airplane glue. Yes, the stuff that some kids sniffed.

I guess you could sort of play with the bubble, at least for awhile, until it either got broken or lost its air. A mayfly had a longer lifespan. It eventually disappeared from the market.

Slinky

Another really great, fun, toy was the Slinky! It would walk down stairs, sort of, I guess, and it was supposed to walk down ramps, if any were available. I could almost always get it to walk down two stairs, sometimes three, but it wasn’t unusual for it to completely exhaust itself after only one stair. This thing was really just some flat steel in a stacked coil; sort a a compressed spring. You could also hold each end in your hands and move your hands up and down. The slinky would open up and collapse, while making a noise like a flat steel coil opening and collapsing, for want of better terminology. It’s easy to see how a kid could derive hours of fun from such a device. I think it came with a warranty guaranteeing that it would get a kink in it that couldn’t be straightened out, before the end of the first day of ownership. Okay, I made that up, but most kids would decide to pretend it was an accordian, or maybe just a concertina, and stretch it back and forth. When the center became too heavy it collapsed and put a kink in the steel. I see they still make these things, and have sold over 300 million of them. Another company now makes a plastic version, but I don’t think it would be anywhere near as much fun.

Electric Football

Who hasn’t enjoyed hours of fun with Electric Football? Well, probably anyone who has ever tried to play it. I rank it as one of the most frustrating and ridiculous games ever made, and that includes Colorforms, which I’ll discuss later. Anyway, this football game had 22 players with either rubber spikes or plastic sheets under the bases. When everything was set, one person turned on the switch and the playing field vibrated, making a fairly loud noise. Then the players milled about smartly, for want of a better term. The player on defense usually lined up his men first, I think, and then the other player lined up his offense. No, that doesn’t sound right, because then the guy on offense would just have to put the ball carrier outside all of the defensive players to score a touchdown. So I guess the offense lined up first and the defense dude lined up his players in a formation he thought would stop the offense. If you’re thinking that this game didn’t make a whole lot of sense, you probably have more than half a brain. If you think it mimicked real football games, helped the economy, and created millions of jobs, then vote for Obama again, because you’ll believe anything.

Yes, this was very realistic. A “tackle” occurred when one of the opposing players bumped into the ball carrier. When this happened, the switch was turned off and the players would be lined up again. Of course, the vibrations also caused “fumbles,” meaning the “football,” which was wedged into one of the back’s arms, fell out. The first player that touched it also recovered the fumble. Yes, there were little goal posts at each end, and the kicker was usually a metal spring-loaded contraption. So realistic!

Colorforms

Colorforms were for those kids who always colored outside the lines in coloring books. Colorforms had character outlines on black plastic, and shapes to place on the board. Call it press and peel, I suppose. I never had a Colorform set, but knew kids who did. I never understood the purpose of them, but I was a pretty good colorer, or so I thought. At least I stayed within the lines, so I had no real use for Colorforms.

Jacks

Jacks was another game about as useful as hopscotch or mumbly peg. A jacks set came with a little, red rubber ball, way before The Cyrkle sang about such a thing, and a bunch of “jacks.” These things had four little arms with rounded ends and two arms with more pointed ends. The idea, they tell me, was to bounce the ball and see how many jacks you could pick up with one hand, usually in a scooping motion. I thought it was more fun to just spin the jacks, so that was the extent of my jacks exposure.

Cootie

Yes, we had the Cootie game. It consisted of a cootie body, six legs, one tongue, two eyes, two antennae, and one head. You rolled a die to build a cootie. A roll of 1 gained a body, a roll of 2 won the head, 3 the antenna, etc, etc. Mostly we just put them together to see how many color combinations we could come up with.

The VFW had the Royal Order of the Cooties, whatever that is, and when they held their state convention in Wildwood, it was not unusual to see one of these cooties from the game occupying a full square of the sidewalk, with a VFW member guarding it. Pedestrians were required to walk around that particular square.

Mr. Potato Head

Mr. Potato Head, or how to market nothing as something. Mr. Potato Head, as we all know, came with various items that could be stuck into a potato or other veggie, although it came with a Styrofoam head. It had plastic eyes, lips, noses, etc, each with one of more spikes that penetrated the head and kept them in place, for the most part. I say for the most part because Styrofoam heads have a way of wearing out after being poked too many times.

So, what fun could a child have with this enormously popular toy? I never figured that out, although I tried. One or more family members had a Mr. Potato Head at one time or another, mostly during childhood. Well, you could make different faces, and you could make different faces, and you could also make different faces. What fun! Unfortunately, the PC police (they have nothing to do with computers) recently took away Mr. Potato Head’s pipe. The pleasure police don’t even want Mr. Potato Head to be able to relax by the fire while smoking his pipe. I understand that a number of people in Idaho are considering legal action, fearing that potato sales may be affected. Probably not, because almost no one ever actually used a potato for Mr. Potato Head. I’m thinking of marketing a larger version called, “Mr. Pumpkin Head,” which could also be used on watermelons during the summer months. No, I don’t think we’ll be offering Mr. Honeydew Head anytime soon, so don’t ask.

That’s all the toys for now, which doesn’t mean we won’t cover others in the future. I mean, can we really forget Lincoln Logs, Tiddlywinks, Bagatelle, and many others? Probably.

The wonderful administration presently in office finally rescinded its idea to make it illegal for children to work on farms. It was a bad idea from the start. Even before I cleaned fish and mowed “lawns,” I asked if I could go with my mom to pick strawberries. I think I was about ten years old. It was hard work, stooping down all along a row of plants, and I wasn’t that good at finding all the strawberries. Nonetheless, I got paid ten cents a quart, but I never anticipated how much work would be required to fill up a quart container. The farmer wanted them piled to the top in a nice pyramid.

That “job” ended rather quickly, because strawberries have a short growing season. I still felt proud that I earned money by doing something, rather than asking for it. The proposed bill that was rescinded would have made the farmer, I suppose, a criminal for letting me pick strawberries. How absurd! But we have a rather absurd administration, do we not?

In writing about Wildwood Crest as it was during the 50s and 60s I left out a number of important establishments of the era, in case anybody cares, which I doubt. One of these was Arnao’s, a mini supermarket in the same building as, and adjacent to Pantalone’s Pharmacy.

At the beginning of summer they stocked the entire store, and cornered a market that no longer exists, for the most part. Many of the fathers of the summer families worked in the city during the week and showed up on weekends. A number of them were doctors and lawyers, and others worked in construction, but most of them had one thing in common: maybe the family had two houses, but they had only one car. Mom needed a place within walking distance to buy groceries. This was almost without exception, but not totally. The family across the street finally added a red station wagon, which the mother drove. It sported an Earl Scheib coat, the $29.95 special. I think, in this case, it really was painted by amateurs, an inside joke only about three of us would understand. For anyone who cares, Earl Scheib ceased operations nationwide on July 16, 2010, and all locations are now owned by independent operators. Earl died in 1992.

Anyway, most of the mothers hoofed it, and, whenever possible would send one of their offspring for less than a full haul. I went in Arnao’s a few times with my friend, Rocco, who went there at the behest of his mother. He often picked up some black cherries, whether requested or not, or maybe that’s just what I think. I can’t deal with reality all the time, you know. Most of the Italian mothers shopped at Arnao’s. They patronized other stores, but Arnao’s was usually the store of choice. In the case of our street, it was also the closest. Taylor’s was another block away.

Taylor’s was an experience in itself, and I went there many times with my mom. When she wanted pork chops, either Jack or Gene would haul a big side of pork out of the freezer and use a knife and cleaver to cut them to the desired thickness. Yes, they had a butcher block and cleaver, rather than a band saw. If you wanted ground beef, you told him what type of beef to grind and they ran it through a grinder. I doubt that pink slime had even been invented.

Some other interesting things about shopping there were the fly paper hanging in a number of places, and the old ceiling fans, long before ceiling fans became in vogue for homes. These old, ugly, greasy things were hardly suitable for homes.

The shelves ran all the way up the wall, near the ceiling, and if you wanted something from up there, one of the owners would get a grabber on a long pole and get the item for you. Usually, he’d pull it out from the shelf and let it drop. I never saw him miss a catch. No, they didn’t put glass jars up there. It must have taken a while to stock the shelves, though.

Trapp’s, a few blocks south, was another neat store, and we usually went there by ourselves, as our mothers had little interest in the place. Mr. Trapp, like Ditter Haynes, parted his hair in the middle, and I still don’t know what that was all about, nor do I know why I bothered mentioning it. During the summer, the Phillies game often blared from the radio behind the counter. Yes, they played baseball games during the day back then. If you asked him, Mr. Trapp would fill you in on the game. No other place nearby carried shoestring licorice, both red and black. He sold it by the foot. However, our usual main purpose for going there was to get an RC, in a light green 16-ounce bottle, nice and cold.

We usually sat outside on the newspaper stand and discussed important issues of the day, such as when the tide would be right for swimming, or what other fun things we could do. The RC team generally consisted of any combination of me, Rocco, Johnny D, my brother, Larry, or anyone we could talk into coming if none of the others were interested or didn’t have the required dime. Well, not anyone, but almost.

Another store sat opposite Trapp’s across New Jersey Avenue, and while it was okay, it wasn’t all that user friendly, as they say these days. It was okay for picking up an RC to take home, which cost twelve cents, including the two-cent deposit on the bottle.

A sixteen-ounce soda was a big deal back then, when a quart bottle seemed to last a lifetime in the fridge, yet we’d guzzle down a half quart in ten or fifteen minutes. About the only other sixteen-OZer available in some places was Triple Cola, which we classified as barely drinkable. Coke, at least during part of the 50s was sold in 6-1/2-ounce bottles, and Pepsi bottles were 7-ounces. Eventually, they both came in 10-ounce bottles, and, in the 60s, they also came in 12-ounce cans. Of course, they both came in one-quart sizes, which was really more popular for ginger ale.

Presently, they sell more soda by foisting three-liter bottles on us. What is this liter thing, anyway? Some people never take the hint that we don’t want the metric system. I want miles, not kilometers, and yards, not meters, and I want ounces and quarts, not liters. Yes, I was an engineer, and I always used the American system. Several attempts have been made to “convert” us to the metric system, and all it has done has been to add confusion to everything. When I buy wrenches I have to look for both American and metric, because I never know what any particular manufacturer is using.

Sometimes you try a wrench or socket on a nut and figure it’s metric, but the next one, a different size, isn’t. That’s because some sizes are almost the same. For example, 5/16 is slightly less than 8 mm, and, of course, 5/8 is slightly less than 16 mm. Both American and metric wrenches usually work.

First of all, everybody uses cc’s and milliliters interchangeably, and that’s usually okay, for all practical purposes, but they’re not equal, although that was the intent. And they can’t even decide on whether to use centigrade or Celsius, which really are the same thing. I don’t want to wipe my brow and claim it’s a real scorcher because it’s 30 degrees outside. Yes, that’s 86 degrees F. I’m not the one who’s crazy here. Several times they’ve tried to force us to go metric, and the proponents cheer and tell us how wonderful life will be when everything is based on ten. Most of us want to keep what we know and have. Most track and field events have converted from yards to meters, and the 100-meter dash is almost 10 yards longer than the 100-yard dash.

I neither want nor need the little kmh thing inside the mph numbers on my speedometer. The odometer tracks miles, not kilometers. Keep the kilometers in other countries. If you think it’s a good idea, remember that England drives on the wrong side of the road, as do a number of other countries, including Japan.

Well, I don’t know how I got here or where to go from here, so I’ll just stop for now.

It’s a good thing I’m not a kid anymore because the fish cleaning business dried up in the Crest. Back in the day, a number of party boats docked along the bay front between Sweet Brier and Aster Roads. No more. Now the only boats are whale/dolphin watching boats. I don’t know how often they see whales, but in this area, a boat isn’t required to watch dolphins. We called them porpoises, and I don’t know the difference and don’t really care.

Anyway, I used to make money cleaning fish at the party boat docks, and no, a party boat isn’t a boat where parties are held. It’s a boat that takes fishing parties out to fish, as opposed to a charter boat. As I’ve said before, I hacked up the first fishes I attempted to clean and got paid for not cleaning the rest of them, but with a better knife I got the hang of it. I suppose it was a good thing that some fisher persons (they were fishermen back then) hated cleaning fish so much that they would entrust that job to me, a person who only thought he knew what he was doing.

For example, one time a customer watched me like a hawk (he was the hawk) and, God forbid, I almost mistook the roe for ordinary internal organs! He instructed me to save the roe. Well, I didn’t even know what roe looked like until he told me, and I still don’t. I thought it looked like a bunch of tapioca, or something. Apparently, that’s after you cut open whatever it is the fish carries them in.

Ling, or ling cod, were one of the easiest and worst to clean. The fine scales came off easily and the guts came out in a package if you stuck the knife through, above the lateral fins, and cut toward the tail. All that was left was to cut off the head. The problem is that sometimes the entrails emitted a horrific odor that other fish seemed to not have.

One tradition that has always been the custom in many countries, especially Asian countries, is retaining the head to enhance the flavor, I guess. This is also gaining popularity in the U. S, especially in the trendier establishments. I’ve eaten fish this way and can’t say whether or not it adds any flavor, but I never bothered eating the head and don’t know if you’re supposed to. Anthony Bourdain probably would, whether you’re supposed to or not. I’ve also seen him eat the eyeballs. This is something I would not recommend unless you haven’t eaten for a few weeks and need the protein. Yeah, the fancier places leave the heads on shrimp and rename them prawn, which is a synonym for expensive.

But I digress. We charged 5 cents a fish back then if the patron wanted all the fins cut off. We hardly ever fileted anything except flounder, and for some reason, we charged a dime each for those. Pretty strange when you figure it’s really no harder to filet than it is to clean. When you filet a flounder you don’t have to mess with the guts – they just stay with the skeleton. Fileting fish other than flatfish is a bit harder because you have to remove the rib cage.

So I made a dollar or more, sometimes a few, cleaning fish; big money for a kid in grade school. I spent a lot of time at the docks that year, often fishing while waiting for the boats to come in. Each dock had a cleaning table with a hole for the discarded parts (yes, they went in the water), and we were expected to clean up when we were done. We used a bucket on a rope. I suppose my mom was glad I was making some money, because my clothes usually stunk and were a haven for loose fish scales.

Most fish markets filet fish these days unless you tell them otherwise. With flounder, they usually remove the skin, which I never did and still don’t, when I clean them myself. Sometimes I’m lucky enough to find a fish market with uncleaned flounder and they will usually clean it the way I request. “Scale it and leave the skin,” I tell them. Yes, I think the skin adds a little more flavor, and it’s also easier to see which side of the fish gave up the filet. Flounder are thicker on top than on bottom, and the top is green, whereas the bottom is white. Things are always looking up for flounder.

So what does any of this have to do with anything? Nothing, except that the Crest is now almost dead, at least in some respects. How did we get to this topic? Cars used to park all up and down Park Blvd near the boat docks, and more people were out and about. The buses added an extra route along Park Blvd but that went the way of the Hula Hoop craze a long time ago. Not that the gradual demise of the rooming houses had anything to do with any of it. We often had tenants who came for the fishing.

Captain Dee’s still exists down at Rambler Road, where Park Blvd and New Jersey Avenues converge, but now the boat rental place also rents jet skis. At Farragut and New Jersey, Duffy’s on the Lake is a remodeled version of Fitzharris Restaurant, and the latter looked more like a seashore-syle eatery. They say it’s been Duffy’s since 1964, and I suppose that’s correct.

One of the biggest changes in the Crest is the area between Wisteria and Aster Roads. This area used to be home to Pantalone’s Drug Store, Latimer’s Bakery, Batt’s Variety Store, Taylor’s Market, Haynes’ Market, Anderson’s Variety Store, Nick Savino’s Barber Shop, Charlie Miller’s Barber Shop, and Seacrest Bakery. As kids we spent a lot of our time in those stores, more in Batt’s than any of the others. All of these establishments were open year-round, excepting Latimer’s.

Now, Pantalone’s is a bicycle shop; Taylor’s is some Italian deli, I suppose; half of Batt’s is a hoagie shop, the other half beach supplies, or maybe it’s a surfboard shop; I’m not sure what Hayne’s and Latimer’s are; Anderson’s is a real estate office, etc, etc. The Seacrest Bakery disappeared completely, as did its wonderful glazed donuts and cheese pies, and the lot is now vacant.

On the other side of New Jersey Avenue, at Sweetbrier Road, the Crest Oyster House brought in crowds and put out lip-smacking aromas for many years. Patrons used to line up down the sidewalk each night during the summer, but again, many of them came from nearby rooming houses, although I suppose many also lodged at motels. Considering the size of the building, it’s likely the place only had a few tables inside. For whatever reason, the place became a bait and tackle shop. Tony Luke’s started renovating the building, but instead tore it down and built a completely new establishment.

Welcome to modern times! Hardly any of the businesses stay for the winter these days. Tony Luke’s opens with limited hours, Thursday through Sunday, and who knows whether that will be the case next year? Of course the real estate places are open year-round.

Snuffy’s on the corner of Aster and New Jersey sits ready for business but it never seems to be open. When it opened in the fifties it seemed the perfect hang out for kids, with the school right down the street between New Jersey and Park Blvd. Even high school kids used to hang out there, although they eventually found other places.

The changing demographics no longer support businesses in that area. I know kids must be somewhere, because the elementary school is now farther down in the Crest, almost in Lower Township. I see very few kids these days, and suspect they’re probably inside playing video games. Where do they do their kid shopping? Do they really all go to the shopping centers off shore?

I don’t miss Anderson’s all that much – it just wasn’t as friendly to kids as some of the other places. Pantalone’s was okay for fountain sodas and candy, but not ice cream. Latimer’s was okay, but I preferred Seacrest, hands down. Of course I miss Batt’s store, but then again, I haven’t been a kid for a long time now.

We pretty much went in Taylor’s with either our mother or grandmother, except when we were working out a deal to cut the weeds in the lot next door. I remember when the store had a delivery boy, and the bicycle had a smaller wheel in the front to accommodate a huge basket. These bikes were called “low gravity bikes by some manufacturers, and Raleigh made a model called the Low Gravity. Those were the days when small grocery stores (no one called them convenience stores) had screen doors that usually sported an advertisement for a bread company, such as Bond Bread. The produce was generally kept outside and caged in at night.

Hayne’s was where our mothers usually sent us for lunch meat, or cold cuts, as some like to call the stuff. Ditter Haynes knew us and we usually asked for a quarter pound, sliced thin. He knew what our mother meant by thin. Often it was boiled ham or pressed ham. Liverwurst, of course, was never sliced thin. Lunch meat in those days was never placed in limp, plastic bags, because they didn’t exist. It was wrapped in sort of a peach-colored paper that came off a big roll. The meat was sliced onto a thin, colorless paper which was also wrapped with the meat (or cheese).

I developed an intense dislike for Swiss cheese, which my mother usually called, “Switzer” cheese. Unlike most contemporary Swiss cheeses, this stuff had large holes, probably a quarter to a half inch, and had the consistency of plastic, although our choices in plastic were very limited back then. Most things were made primarily of metal and wood.

So, I don’t know where this thing is going, but before it gets away, let me note that one store that seems to be enormously successful almost anywhere except the Crest is Wawa. After Trapp’s Market was sold and redone as Walt’s Market, it was eventually sold to Wawa, which burned up, or was it down? A Wawa also replaced the custard stand at Rosemary Road, but that closed also. Finally, a Wawa further down in the Crest closed and is now called South Station. I’m not sure how they pay the light bill.

I’d like to say the Crest will rise again, but I think it’s destined to just maintain its new character, with very little going on during the off season. It’s still a great place to live, however.

Okay, boys and girls, the liberals are frothing at the mouth. Steve Zwick, a GLOWARM, or global warming alarmist, says skeptics of man-made global warming should be tracked down and their houses burned to the ground! This loony fascist should be locked away!

In his mind, famines are coming and the seas are rising to wipe out islands and other shore areas. Okay, lesson number one for today is that Arctic sea ice is thickening, meaning it’s pretty cold up there. Polar bear populations are increasing, and Himalayan glaciers are getting larger, despite the shrill cries of these myth makers.

Of course we all know that no matter how much sea ice melts the sea level will remain the same. Why? Because it’s floating. Skeptics should put a few ice cubes in a glass, fill to the very top with water and see what happens after the ice cubes melt. Hint: The water won’t overflow.

Professor (and I use the term loosely) Kari Norgaard says climate skeptics should be likened to racists and treated for having a mental disorder. She sent a letter to Obama saying that he should ignore the will of the people and suspend democracy in order to enforce draconian ecological mandates! I think he doesn’t need any suggestions in that direction, as it seems to be his intent at some time in the future. So far he has done just about whatever he wants, with no real opposition from anyone.

Are the seas rising? Well, it’s been proven that, in years of a large La Nina, tide levels on the East Coast are somewhat higher. Run for the hills! Tide levels are increasing by about the thickness of a penny each year! Okay, your homework is to get a roll of pennies (50 to a roll) and see how much the seas are likely to rise in 50 years. Right, somewhere around 4 to 6 inches. Real climate experts say that the seas may rise as much as a foot in a 100 years, and they see that as a worst case scenario. Does this jerk really think that will make islands disappear?

Speaking of which, Wildwood Crest just gave a bunch of beach sand to North Wildwood for beach replenishment. The beaches in Wildwood and Wildwood Crest have grown considerably over the past half century. Now, remember the old quote that says that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result? That’s what they do in North Wildwood and anywhere else a municipality buys into a beach replenishment scam.

Here’s the deal. No matter how much sand you truck or pump to a beach to “replenish” it, after a while the ocean reclaims it. That’s why it disappeared in the first place. Duh! North Wildwood, unlike the two municipalities to the south, has no protective jetty to trap sand. The sand at the extreme north end of North Wildwood washes away and ends up as part of the beach in Wildwood and Wildwood Crest.

A few years ago some snake oil salesman tried to sell some magic elixir that would make the sand slippery, keeping it where it was. They allowed him to treat a portion of the beach as a demonstration, but the results were unremarkable. Too bad the municipal officials weren’t global warming alarmists – they’ll believe just about anything.

Consider this: A UK government-backed global alarmist group made an infomercial showing children who refused to lower their carbon emissions slaughtered! They removed the video and offered an apology after a massive backlash from sane people.

Yes, and “Gaia hypothesis” creator, James Lovelock stated that “democracy must be put on hold” to combat global warming and that “a few people with authority” should be allowed to run the planet because people were too stupid to be allowed to steer their own destinies.

Back in 2006, Al Gore and Bill Moyers gave interviews to an environmental magazine, stating that climate skeptics who are part of the “denial industry” be arrested and made to face Nuremberg-style war crimes trials. Gore has already made billions from the warming scam. I hope God will save us from these demented creatures!

Yes, global warming has been debunked by more than 31,000 scientists and by CERN, the group that was responsible for the Halcyon Super Collider. Now a number of scientists, engineers, and astronauts have sent a letter to NASA and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies telling them to cease and desist in their promotion of global warming and climate change.

Obviously I’m one of the skeptics and if they try to burn down my house they’ll wish they hadn’t. However, I’m not worried about the tides getting any higher. I expect to design and corner the market on giant sponges that will soak up a lot of that excess water.

The other day I saw that a so-called documentary on the possibility of another little ice age was on the tube. I tuned in late in the program and they showed a bunch of ice and said that a bigger threat might be on the horizon. They said, as a result of global warming, we may face another ice age! I am not making this up! Do these global warming alarmists have no shame? Now that the global warming theory has been debunked by experts, the GLOWARMS say that the Earth getting hot will make it colder! Then they say that conservatives refuse to accept science! They’re right, as long as what they say is what they think passes for science. . .

I attended school during the 50s and 60s and, as I’ve said before, society, and our country, have changed considerably since then. For one thing, we didn’t have to be concerned with man-made global warming because there was none. Oh, that’s right, there still hasn’t been any. Oh well. . .

Hefner started the ball rolling back in the 50s by convincing people that the Founders intended that the First Amendment should include the freedom to publish pornography. Most sane people knew that the intent was to not repress political expression in public, but I’m thinking most people are no longer sane. If they were, a Marxist such as Obama never would have been elected to the presidency.

In the 50s, and for much of the 60s, a child born out of wedlock was called a bastard and was an embarrassment to both parents and their families. Now, families celebrate bastards and throw showers for them, while hoping the parents decide to marry. Many people these days consider marriage a waste of time, but history shows otherwise. Still, a little bastard is 1,000 times better than an aborted baby!

Without analyzing the nuances of the various statistics, suffice it to say that out-of-wedlock births have skyrocketed since 1970, and the out-of-wedlock birth rate for blacks is above 70 percent. In many cases, for births of all races, the child will never know who is his father, and often the mother doesn’t know. Many siblings have different fathers. Raise your hand if you think none of this has affected poverty, morals, crime rates, education, and other social factors.

It’s difficult to rate parents with a report card. In the case of me and my siblings, our parents made many bad decisions in life, but one fact always remained: they loved and cared about us very much. That makes up for a lot!

On TV and in the movies, as well as in novels, when a man and woman meet for the first time they generally end up engaging in sex within a short period of time. This is not how normal relationships used to work out. In this day and age it’s undoubtedly a rarity for a woman to be a virgin on her wedding day. It’s also unrealistic for a groom to expect such a thing, being that he’s undoubtedly no virgin himself. The excitement and intrigue of a wedding day has largely vanished. Maybe that’s why young couples spend so much on wedding receptions at elaborate facilities constructed for just that purpose. Pretty much gone are the days of receptions in fire halls and Elks’ lodges. Those places now cater mostly to after-funeral parties, although it’s not clear why people feel like celebrating after attending a funeral.

The media also wants everyone to embrace homosexuality, a depraved, disgusting practice condemned by God in the Bible. The liberal elite think we evolved from pond scum, so they’re not worried about God exacting any vengeance on them. Why take that chance?

They call anyone who opposes homosexuality a homophobe. A phobia about something means the person fears that situation or thing. I doubt that most of us fear homosexuals, but we abhor the practice and consider it a sin. It also has no real purpose other than manufactured pleasure for the participants, but it’s pretty obvious that analysis of the anatomy proves that it was never God’s intention.

The networks are also getting sloppier with language on prime time. They now use the vernacular for the male sex organ to describe someone who’s not necessarily nice. I’m all for returning to the days of enjoyable TV, when even the word “damn,” was never used, and “pregnant” was avoided on some shows. Why, you may ask? Well, children used to watch TV with their parents, and the fewer things that had to be explained to youngsters, the better. Contrary to popular belief, especially by liberals, morals have NOT changed! The only thing that has changed is an incessant barrage of lurid and filthy behavior that they want us to accept to lend credibility to their warped ideas.

Many years ago they banned advertising of cigarettes on TV. Silly me, I thought they were legal products and that banning the ads reeked of the censorship liberals love to hate. On the other hand, we now see ads for sexual enhancement products, birth control, and beer. The beer ads, of course, demonstrate how much better life is with beer. They make it okay to steal, as long as the person is stealing his favorite beer, and they even make drinking beer more important to a man than having sex with his wife. That’s probably true, because after a few beers, it’s quite a struggle to make love with a woman. I’ve seen how beer makes people so wonderful, and it’s not pretty. Actually, it’s quite depressing. The daily beer drinker may become violent, silly, or incoherent, or all three. The alcoholic cares little about the shambles his life has become and lives a life of broken promises and dreams. It will never get better as long as he continues drinking, which usually ends with a terminal illness.

The liberals made fun of Rick Santorum because he thinks birth control is wrong, as does the Catholic Church. He didn’t want to impose his beliefs on others, but was not afraid to state his beliefs. As a result he was pretty much ousted from the presidential race. Birth control is largely responsible for the so-called “free sex” that started in the sixties, although there’s always a price to be paid for having sex freely with multiple partners. One of those prices is an STD, and some of them never go away. Others can kill you. Is it worth it?

Even worse than contraceptives is the acceptance of abortion since Roe vs. Wade in 1973. The count stands at more than 50 million, or about ten times the number killed during the Holocaust, although I am not making light of that WWII tragedy. Many things about abortion bother me, the first being that women take such a cavalier attitude toward denying a baby life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It also greatly troubles me that they call it a woman’s “health issue.” If that were the case no sane doctor would perform an abortion on a woman, because it affects her both physically and psychologically. It’s not about women’s health, or choice, it’s about terminating the life of a developing baby that a woman, through deliberate actions taken by her in all cases except rape, chose to take a chance on. She opts to end its life and rid herself of the awful task of raising a child. Woe that her mother had made the same decision!

Polls say more than 40% of the people approve of the job Obama is doing. Fortunately, many of them are probably not voters, but most of them would have to be brain dead to approve of this guy. Name one positive thing he has done for the country. He has taken a record number of vacations, played a record number of golf rounds, has driven up gasoline prices and prices of just about everything else, and has destroyed the economy of this country. That’s just a small part of the total shopping list. Meantime, the Republicans put up Romney to attempt to defeat him, but like a lot of politicians on the right, he states that he’s a nice guy. Guess what? He’s never been a nice guy and even after more than 3 years he still blames Bush for everything. You can vote for him, but you can’t defend him, because there’s nothing to defend.

While watching the Heritage Golf Tournament, something struck me as interesting. The TV cameras showed shots of egrets and ospreys. I know, you’re saying, so what? Well, the what is, why do some of them stay down there and others go to the trouble of flying up here for the summer? For example, many laughing gulls go south for the winter and return to the marsh here in North Wildwood about April 1 each year. Others don’t bother migrating, but rather remain in southern coastal locales.

One would think that all of them would simply remain in the South, so what’s the deal? Do some of them not like the heat down there, similar to the likes and wants of human snowbirds? I don’t know, but I also find it interesting that the laughing gulls, egrets, and ospreys all show up here at about the same time, but they leave on very different schedules.

The laughing gulls usually leave a day or two after Labor Day, although they left a couple of days before Labor Day last year. The ospreys hang around a bit longer, usually until later in September. Egrets, however, stick around even later, until well into October or even November.

Some gulls, including laughing gulls, stick around to tough out the winter. These birds spend much of their time hanging around parking lots, hoping someone will drop some food. So, we have the snowbirds which fly south for the winter and return in the spring, others that remain in the south for the entire year, and still others that stay up north for the entire year. I’m not sure why some make different choices than others, but I’m not a naturalist, so I don’t care. I only know that it’s true.

I’ve never observed ospreys or egrets staying for the winter.

Tbe species name for the laughing gull is cachinnans, which derives from Latin and means to laugh heartily. Well, they do make a lot of noise, but calling it laughter is a bit of a stretch. If a person made those noises at me I’d probably punch him in the mouth.

They can hardly be called picky eaters, because their diet includes fish, worms, insects (they really keep the greenhead populace down), snails, crabs, crab eggs, berries, garbage, offal, and whatever else they can confiscate. You don’t have to look up offal, because I already took care of that: it’s the internal organs of a dead animal. I suggest we rename it “awful,” which is pronounced the same.

Whenever possible, they prefer handouts, rather than actually hunting down food on their own. I know they like french fries, pretzels, pizza crusts, funnel cakes, and crab fries from Chickie’s and Pete’s. They eat just about anything, with little regard to actual taste. Their motto is, “If it’s free, I’ll take it!” They show up at any festival held before they leave for the winter.

Most gulls eat pretty much the same thing, with the exception being that the larger herring gulls and great black-backed gulls tend to eat the youngsters and eggs of the laughing gulls, and sometimes eat the mature laughing gulls. This is not a laughing matter, but they laugh about it anyway.

The male laughing gulls try to hook up with females, and they then build a nest. If they have no success cruising the bars or sitting on benches on the boardwalk, they build a nest and hope to attract a female looking for a nice home. Those that live in marshes make a mat from straw and grasses, hoping it will float during flood tides. They fashion a cup from the grass to hold the anticipated eggs. These are single-story homes with only one room, because laughing gulls are known to be rather frugal.

Ha ha, just kidding! They only need one room because they do no cooking and have no need for toilet facilities. In case you haven’t noticed, they do most of their business while flying, and I’m not talking about financial transactions. Nor do they bother building a roof over their homes being that their feathers shed water, I suppose.

I find it puzzling that they somehow seem to know when April 1 rolls around and I wonder what gives them that knowledge? We’re not talking about, oh, they’ll be here sometime around March, or April, or May, we’re talking the swallows of Capistrano. Every year I’ve lived here they showed up within a day or two of April 1, and I can only surmise they want to get settled in so they can complete their tax returns in time. But do they have calenders?

I also mentioned that they took off before Labor Day last year, and the puzzling thing about that is that plenty of boardwalk food was still available.

Virginia Beach, Bald Head Island, North Carolina, and Myrtle Beach, in South Carolina, all have Labor Day Weekend events with plenty of food, including barbecue, so perhaps the gulls find these events too good to pass up. Where there’s barbecue you can bet there are French fries and funnel cakes, both food staples of the laughing gull.

Another interesting fact about laughing gulls is that they love to share food. Ha, ha, I’m kidding again! If one latches onto a discarded pizza crust it spends considerable time fleeing from its best friends, which think it belongs to them. The gull with the food makes many evasive maneuvers, and often tries to run the chasers into the side of a building. They all have a good laugh about that!

Despite the gulls’ penchant for boardwalk food, it’s best to not attempt to feed them. In fact, it’s against the law, but the birds generally ignore most laws. Although they’re not usually aggressive, they will sometimes swoop down and help themselves to whatever you happen to be eating. Not much you can do about that.

Another hard drive bit the dust and I lost some things, but others I had backed up on an external drive. I now own a laptop, which makes typing more of a chore, but when this one goes down it’s easier to toss in the trash than a desktop. Also, I can pretend I’m like the younger generation and take it with me wherever I go.

Spring arrived on time, as did the laughing gulls. Some came in on March 29, a day early, but not early enough to cause alarm with the global warming alarmists. The Coast Guard got the channel marker lights working again, just in time for boating season.

All the usual suspects arrived on time: the laughing gulls, the ospreys, and the egrets. I spotted four blue herons in a group on the marsh, something seen only during mating season. Usually, the herons lead loner lives. Sometimes I don’t blame them.

The boards opened over the weekend, with the new lights on the Ferris wheel working quite well with various colors and changing patterns. So far, no one has plunged to his or her death, on that or any other ride, as far as I know.

As a kid growing up on the island I used to start getting excited around this time of year when things started happening, but now it’s just a change in the weather for me, along with increased traffic. Back then, some of the Philly kids started showing up on weekends, but not every weekend.

They say the striper and tautog fishing is pretty good right now, and I’ve heard of some crabs being caught. Last year I never put a line in the water, partly because too many shoebies were fishing and crabbing at the end of the street.

They’re still building new houses on the island, trying to fill up every available space. Most of them are at least two-unit condos. We used to play baseball and football in vacant lots, some of which were vacant for an entire block, but kids these days seem to be forced to play in official fields. There’s something to be said for vacant land, but landowners these days seem to care only about money, whether they need it or not.

We faced a few perils when playing sports in vacant lots, namely sticker burrs and cacti, both of which grew with abundance. The sticker burrs could be quite painful, but the cactus spines were more insidious, primarily because they were almost invisible. One or a few would latch onto the surface of a baseball or football, only to transfer themselves onto the skin of anyone handling the ball. They induced no immediate pain upon transfer, but made their presence known when one was rubbed the wrong way. Then it became difficult to locate the offending spine and even more difficult to remove it, unless one was equipped with a magnifying glass and tweezers. I spent many an evening attempting to remove a cactus spine or two, and just when I thought I had extracted the thing, it was still there. I now wonder if the owners of those lots planted cacti to keep the kids out. If so, it didn’t work.

We definitely need more homes here, as the island is not sufficiently crowded these days. We host very few family get-togethers because parking is at a premium here. Not that anyone seems to be interested in showing up here anyway.

My brother, Larry, often threatens to visit from their summer home a block and a half away, but it never happens. My younger brother, Wayne, drives about 60 miles or so to get his vehicle serviced here but never bothers stopping in or notifying anyone. My wife is a pretty good cook, and we could always offer a free meal.

We can usually attract a family crowd when I threaten them with a low country boil, which they seem to like a lot. It’s also called Frogmore Stew, although it has nothing to do with frogs. I like to cook up some blue claws, as well as the standard ingredients of shrimp, potatoes, corn, and andoulle sausage.

I thought we had found a pretty good eatery in Alfe’s, an Italian joint, and while the food is good, on our last visit the waiter asked if we wanted refills on our iced tea and we said yes. The check listed four iced teas for $7.00, so we won’t be going back. They’ve been around a long time, so they’ll survive without our patronage. The iced tea glasses were rather small, by the way.

We haven’t hit the Vegas Diner yet, and they always put out fairly good diner food, with the typical Greek touch.

With Alfe’s scratched off our list we now tend toward the Lobster House Coffee Shop, and Hemingway’s, in the Grand Hotel. With summer approaching, neither of those will likely be easily accessible.

When I moved back up here from Georgia I never figured it would be so hard to get a decent sub or pizza around here. Those things used to be automatic. Sal’s, in the Crest, just reopened, and he makes a decent pizza, and throws in some New York banter to go with it. When Russo’s opens I’ll be able to latch onto a decent sub again.

And that’s about all the boring news for now, for whoever cares.