A Site for Shore Eyes

For me, autumn meant more than just football, although I considered that way up there on my list. I actually felt fall (and still do), and by that I’m not referring to the change in climate. I admit, though, that the feeling is more noticeable in the north than the south, primarily due to the difference in temperatures. I think I just contradicted myself, in a way.

For anyone of school age, autumn promised more holidays than any other season, and I always looked forward to all of them. The first (unless you count Labor Day) to arrive was Halloween, and I don’t care to discuss the merits of the holiday itself. My feeling is that it’s simply a time for kids to have fun, but some individuals seem to have nothing better to do than to find fault with anything that puts joy in the hearts of kids. None of us then considered ourselves pagans for following our teachers’ instructions to draw haunted houses and witches riding brooms in front of crescent moons.

We started our mischief early, making Halloween a season, rather than a one-day holiday, but our mischief never harmed anyone or caused irreparable harm to property. We mostly soaped windows, and no soap worked better than Ivory. Hey, it floated, too, if you actually used it for its intended purpose.

By the time the annual block party rolled around, the store windows were either decorated with art, usually from contests, or completely covered with soap. Jimmie Batts, a neighborhood store owner, often stood in his doorway, chuckling, watching us soap his windows. He also somehow managed to persuade one of the kids to wash the windows after Halloween.

Our trick-or-treating began on Mischief Night, but we actually first set out in the afternoon, covering the houses in the adjoining blocks. Our bags eventually got so full that we had to return home to dump our loot, then strike out again, although we never really struck out, if you know what I mean.

My older brother and I went to a house in the early afternoon one Halloween, and were greeted by a man who pointed what we hoped was a toy gun at us. Yes, we thought it was a toy, but we harbored just a tinge of lingering doubt. Foolishly, we took his advice when he said, “Come on in.” After entering, he stood there and asked us what we wanted, but before we could reply, we heard a lady shout from the kitchen, “Are you scaring kids again? Put that toy gun away!” He laughed and put the gun down, and it was indeed a cap pistol. Whew!

Some of our “customers” told us on Mischief Night that trick-or-treating was tomorrow, so we shrugged and left. The next evening, the same individuals told us that it was the night before. These special patrons apparently enjoyed washing windows on their houses and cars. Screens were just as easy to cover with soap, but probably harder to wash.

We then moved on to November, and New Jersey always gave us two four-day holidays. The teachers’ convention occurred two weeks before Thanksgiving, and it involved both Thursday and Friday, giving us both days off from school!

Thanksgiving always meant a special time for me. We got out of school a little early on Wednesday, after an assembly which usually included singing “Over the River and Through the Woods,” which brought not visions of sleigh rides into my head, but a trip by car to our relatives, about forty miles away.

Even though I lived in Wildwood, I looked forward each year to the Thanksgiving Day football game between Millville and Vineland. Wildwood held its final game the week before. My dad was a Millville grad, and loved football as much as I. The games drew SRO crowds, so to get any seat at all required arriving at least two hours before kickoff. The anticipation was much greater than any ketchup bottle could provide!

To top everything off, my parents always allowed me to stay with my grandfather, and aunts and uncles, until Sunday. I loved roaming the woods behind their homes, especially with the protection afforded by a BB gun, or, alternatively, their collie, Rusty. The trees eventually gave way to a huge car dealership, but that happened long after I lost interest in playing Daniel Boone.

Sunday always rolled in faster than expected, with school once again looming like a dark cloud. But the anticipation of Christmas just a few weeks away made the sky look quite a bit bluer.

The lights went up in the towns right after Thanksgiving, and Millville and Vineland always did it up right. Wildwood always made the effort, but apparently the telephone poles were staggered too much to allow proper and consistent alignment. It would have been nice to see all the bulbs pointing downward, but at least they decorated.

The weeks leading up to Christmas always involved a trip to Philadelphia, usually by train. The major department stores (Wanamaker’s, Lit Brothers, Gimbels, and Strawbridge and Clothiers) set up store window displays, and the toy departments always included spectacular train layouts. Wanamaker’s actually had a monorail running around the toy department, and we rode it every year! No one ever quite explained how each of the stores managed to have Santa sitting there at the same time, and I guess we were just too stupid to figure it out.

The pre-Christmas season also involved getting a tree, sometimes bought from a vendor, but often sought from the woods. The latter was the most fun for us, but didn’t necessarily yield the best looking trees. No matter, they always smelled better than the artificial ones I’ve since grown accustomed to, but the lights are now already on the tree upon its annual resurrection. Stringing lights on the tree seems like a lot of fun when you’re young, but in later years, reeks suspiciously of annoying work. Bah!

Hauling out the decorations and setting up the plastic villages also brought us pleasure, but what did we know? And, of course, before we set up our year-round layout, setting up and running our trains provided more fun than all of the rest combined, but the entire feeling of the season coursed through our veins for weeks!

Finally, though, it all screeched to a halt. Reluctantly, we crawled into bed for our annual bout with insomnia, and usually awoke before the sunrise, much to the dismay of others in the house.

We never got the threatened stocking full of coal for bad behavior, despite hearing rumors that one or more of our relatives had experienced that in the past. Our Christmases were always more than we had hoped for, and the good tidings always lasted at least for another week, when New Year’s brought us back to reality when we returned to school shortly thereafter.

So the feeling of autumn finally seeped out of our souls after New Year’s, although it officially ended a few weeks before. We now entered the “dead” season, with no really serious holidays until Easter. After plodding through the winter months, with spring and summer finally looming so close, who really cared about the fall?

Well, the boating season is almost over for most of us in South Jersey. Yep, the diehard fishermen (and women, if you’re PC picky) extend the season another month or two, but we less hardy and more sane souls opt for ending it in October. Actually, there’s nothing crazy about going out on the water in colder weather, unless you find yourself actually in the water. For me, though, it’s sort of like drinking room temperature coffee.

Our personal boating ended up as a big bust this year, thanks to, well . . . us. We failed to make enough time for much of it, and we never found the need to clear some space in our freezer for all the fish we were going to catch. I first started fishing around the age of ten, and the most important lesson I learned was that the only way to catch fish is to actually put your line in the water, preferably with some bait on the hook. There’s a chance that it may still happen, but my optimism ran out awhile back.

I’ve owned (sort of) a few boats in my day, and I’ve actually bought two of them. The others just managed to drift into my possession, I guess you could say. My friend, Jack, and I found a rowboat in the marshes about four decades ago, so we did what we thought was right. We hauled it out, took it to his yard, and repainted it with some old paint that was on sale at the local hardware store. We bought brand-new bottom paint, however.

We spent a good part of that summer rowing around the bay, monitoring the jellyfish population, mainly ensuring that they didn’t over proliferate. No details will be forthcoming, except that some large rocks may have played a part.

Instead of wasting money on slip rental, we “anchored” the boat with a grappling hook (we didn’t have an anchor) off the rocks lining the south end of the bay. It required a short swim to reach the boat, as well as to disembark. One not-so-fine day, there was nothing to swim to, and we never saw the unnamed vessel again.

My next craft was an eight-foot pram that someone gave to my dad, who gave it to me. The front, bottom plywood was coming apart, but I fixed it with some nails and some fiberglass stuff that I bought. I felt the need for speed, and was lucky enough to buy a three-horse Evinrude for $35.00. Well, it was faster than rowing. Well, at least it was easier than rowing.

This time I vowed to not rely on a grappling hook for securing my vessel. I tied it to a couple of pilings that just happened to be out there in the water across the street from my house. I guess I had this thing about swimming to a boat. I took the motor off after each voyage, which meant taking it off at the bulkhead and rowing or paddling the boat back out to its makeshift slip.

My greatest adventure also included Jack, as well as my other lifelong friend, Rocco. We set off in the morning, or as close to morning as teenagers get during the summer months. The engine was all gassed up (the tank was directly on the engine, sort of like with a string trimmer), and we had another gallon in a plastic gas container. Our personal flotation devices consisted of three seat cushions I found in our basement, left over from a rowboat my dad had back in the forties.

Our course had been carefully planned, meaning Rocco said, “Hey, let’s go out to the bell buoy!” It sounded like a reasonable suggestion to me, and I don’t think Jack really objected to it, because he set off with us.

I know this means nothing to most people, but what it meant to us was heading out across the bay to the Intracoastal Waterway (we called it “The Channel”), heading a few miles down toward Cape May, then going out the inlet between the rock jetties.

We encountered some fairly large wakes from other boats when we hit the channel, but we plied along, the tops of the gunwales (sides of the boat, for landlubbers) just a few inches above the water. It took a bit of time (more than an hour, probably more than two) to reach the inlet, then heavy with traffic. I think we all found ourselves a bit surprised by the number of boats and the size of some of the wakes they were throwing. Back then, a U.S. Coast Guard self-righting whaleboat stayed in the middle of the inlet, tracking boats entering and departing. They gave us some funny looks as we passed.

We discovered the bell buoy somewhat farther out than we remembered it, but that was probably because of the smallness of the boat, as well as its lack of speed. The ground swells seemed enormous, and I found it fairly difficult to navigate, and at one time thought the waves might overcome the steerage and toss us into the towering buoy!

Fortunately, we made it around without incident, and headed back to the inlet. About halfway in, a commercial boat that considerably dwarfed ours passed by, and the wake was larger than anything we had encountered, including the ground swells in the open sea. The little three-horse was no match for the strength of the wave, and we found ourselves heading toward the jetty, riding the crest in much the same way as one of those outriggers in Hawaii!

Fate smiled down on us again. At high tide, our little plywood boat would have surely been dashed on the rocks, but low tide left a narrow area of beach between the rocks and the waterline. The final push by the wave flipped the boat near the beach, spilling everything, including the plastic gas container, into the water! Even stranger, my uncle just happened to be walking on the beach, but he showed no apparent surprise, probably from years of experience observing my behavior.

Okay, so the gas took on a bit of seawater, but the gas already in the tank wasn’t affected. We relaunched the boat and got underway, heading back toward the channel. The engine sputtered to a stop about halfway home, which made it time to test the now waterlogged gas in the spare container. Initially, the engine sounded as if it found the taste of the new gas completely unpalatable, but the engine underestimated my resolve. It acted like a small child attempting to spit out food he or she doesn’t like, but eventually swallowing it reluctantly.

Yes, it took considerably more time to complete the second half of our journey than the first, but we made it back. I even had enough time to get ready for my job on the amusement pier that evening.

It took 18 years before I acquired another boat, this time a 15-foot runabout. It ventured into saltwater only once, in Calibogue Sound, near Hilton Head, South Carolina. All of its other time was spent in freshwater lakes and rivers.

I’ve rejoined the saltwater fleet, so to speak, where I feel most at home. Our craft is a bit larger, 28 feet, and much more seaworthy than my old eight-foot pram. And it’s more complicated, has more moving parts, and costs a lot more to operate. It’s also considerably more comfortable, with most of the amenities of home, but in compact versions. But sometimes I almost long for the simplicity and reliability of that tiny little boat that my friends and I used to forge a lifetime memory of an adventure.

I generally watch most of the Law and Order mutations and write off most of the inconsistencies to poetic license, or sometimes, just plain ignorance. Whatever. I remember one episode where a woman’s car stopped because someone put a ping pong ball in the gas tank, which got sucked down and cut off the gas flow. Never mind that quite a bit of suction would be required to overcome the buoyancy of a ping pong ball – I just want someone to explain to me how you would fit a ping pong ball through the gas tank filler pipe, which is restricted to the size of an unleaded gas nozzle. Like, where could you buy leaded gas if you wanted to, for that matter?

But forget Law and Order (the show, I mean), because one of the most ridiculous of the ridiculous happens to be CSI Miami.

I admit to often watching the show and suffering through the far-fetched story lines and pathetic acting, but isn’t the cinematography great, especially in HD?

Horatio annoys me the most, and ranks up there with the best of the worst actors ever to disgrace the small screen, which keeps getting bigger. Soon, moviegoers will see an announcement in the theaters that the movie has been formatted to fit that screen.

But back to Horatio and his stilted melodramatic so-called acting. Most normal people don’t speak as if everything they say carries monumental shock value, while making them sound cool and clever. Nor does Horatio sound cool and clever, although he obviously thinks otherwise. Nor do most “normal” people, when talking to someone else, address them by name in almost every sentence.

I’m only guessing, but I think that if someone talked to me with a cocked head shoved almost in my face, it would take a lot to resist punching him in the face. Okay, so a woman could get away with it, but that’s beside the point. I wonder why this guy doesn’t invest in a neck brace, because his head has gotten so big he can’t hold it straight.

But the real corker is the way he aims his pistol, head cocked to the side (again from the enormous weight, I suppose), with the gun right in front of his face. This works well with a rifle, but only a moron would attempt such a thing with a pistol. Bending your arms to such a degree to position the gun near your face leaves little resistance to the kick. Coupled with the fact that an automatic is involved, the slide has this silly tendency to retract with each shot. I’m not saying that you would definitely end up with a black eye or bloody nose, but why take the chance? Well, with Horatio, it’s all about the proper pose, technical consultants be damned!

And then there’s the monotoned blonde, who memorizes and recites her lines so well, without actually understanding how such lines would be spoken in real life. She sits at the other end of the spectrum from the type of acting seen in movies such as Gone With the Wind, where every line was overly emoted.

Generally, most of the other actors on the show perform a credible job, especially considering the material they’re given to work with.

And I’ll probably continue watching the show, although it’s nowhere near my “must watch” list. Horatio’s brother has been killed twice now. Maybe Horatio will eventually meet a similar fate and make some of us cynics a bit happier. Maybe he’ll even take the blonde with him.

I sometimes think that growing up when I did, during the fifties and sixties, gave me and others a much fuller experience than that of later generations, including the present-day crowd. The kids of today, of course, would probably surmise that I suffered from a mild, or even serious, brain malady. I can see their point, even if I don’t agree with it completely.

I welcomed central air conditioning when it came along, as well as AC in cars, and wouldn’t want to be without either. But that doesn’t mean that I wish we had either one when I was a kid. Yes, I remember some hot, stuffy, sweaty, and very uncomfortable nights with little sleep, and feeling almost sick to my stomach from the oppressive heat while riding in my parents’ car. So why would I, or anyone, for that matter, remember things such as those with any degree of fondness?

Well, it’s simple. I also remember the many nights with the breeze rattling the Venetian blinds as it wafted through the windows, coming off the bay. A gust felt like the proverbial “breath of fresh air,” and created almost a soul-cleansing sensation, making me feel great to just be alive! Air conditioning can make you feel very comfortable, and gives great relief from hot, humid weather, but it can’t breathe life into your veins the way a gentle breeze somehow figured it out.

Nor can the AC unit in your auto bring the feelings, scents, and sounds of a summer day on a back road into your car. And long after the sun disappeared for the day, the car windows brought the summer night in to ride along, with its somewhat crisper night air and somewhat more eerie sounds.

The kids today carry cell phones around with them, and not just plain old phones, either. They can download music, take pictures, and some even have a GPS system, making it hard to get lost. Having phones with us when we were young would have been a mixed blessing. Sometimes we preferred that our parents not be able to contact us, or, in some cases, know what we were up to, or where we were. But there were times when a phone would have been much desired – times when we could have summoned a parent to come pick us up and save us a long walk home. Times when the recreation center closed up, turned off its lights, and left us standing outside in the dark. I remember one cold, winter night when some teenagers went exploring the marshes across the bay, and their boat drifted away. We heard their calls for help and called the police, who eventually rescued them. A cell phone would have simplified the whole process. Yes, we had public telephones, but they weren’t always at hand, and when they were, we often lacked the dime required for a call. I ran out of gas one night on a rural road, and to this day, I don’t remember how I contacted my dad - I only remember him showing up with a can of gas.

We had no video games to take up our time. Pinball machines, and, to a lesser extent, electric trains, satisfied our thirsts for electronic adventure. Most people only hauled their trains out for Christmas, but my brother and I kept a permanent layout in the basement. Mostly, though, we passed our time outside, either playing whatever sport was in season, or just thinking up something to do. Wire ball was a constant, when only two of us were available. It involved throwing a ball up over telephone or electric wires running across the street. If the other person caught it, it was an out, and a miss scored a single, unless the ball hit the wire, in which case it scored a home run. Now, most places feature underground utilities, so wire ball has pretty much become a thing of the past.

Color TV was something most of us only dreamed about. The sets were very expensive back then, and only a handful of shows featured color broadcasts anyway. When my grandfather bought a color TV, we watched a lot of shows like Hazel, just because they happened to be in color. And the color wasn’t that great, requiring adjustment between almost every different show. Of course, we kids itched to get the color looking right, which usually evoked shouts from our grandfather, who didn’t seem to mind whether the people on TV were jaundiced, or suffered from severe sunburn. The adjustments, of course, including the volume, had to be performed at the TV, since remote controls were almost nonexistent. A friend’s parents had a Zenith TV with “Space Command” remote control. Remote control meant that the channel knob would clunk from channel to channel by using a remote, which, however, didn’t operate the volume.

Basically, we had three watchable channels on VHF, and a couple on UHF, and most people watched the latter channels rather infrequently. Because we lived about 80 miles or so from the broadcasts coming out of Philly, reception wasn’t always great, and sometimes faded in and out. Our antenna was on the roof, and sometimes the wind would turn it a bit, and it would have to be adjusted. Some people spent the money for a rotating antenna that could be controlled from the TV set, but we never enjoyed that luxury. In the early 50’s, we also required a booster, which sat atop the TV. Every time the channel was changed, the booster would have to be adjusted in the same way of tuning an analog radio. What fun!

Okay, so maybe some things weren’t all that great back then, but we managed to squeeze as much as we could out of what we had. We didn’t have AC, or cell phones, or high definition color TV with 150 clear channels. But we dreamed a lot. We knew air conditioning and color TV would reach all of us eventually, but we also wondered if the time would ever come when someone developed the two-way wrist radio that Dick Tracy sported. More importantly, though, we could talk about it over a vanilla malt at the local soda fountain, or while sipping an RC while sitting on the newspaper stand in front of the neighborhood grocery store. Those little things made up for a lot.

I sat around thinking about how to create a TV ad for pushing my artwork. I’m talking strictly hypothetically, because the revenue generated from all of my collections wouldn’t buy a minute of TV time. Actually, I think we’d be down to microseconds, and since subliminal advertising isn’t exactly legal, it’s easy to see why this is purely speculative. What’s not easy to see is why I would even waste my time thinking about it.

The easiest way to come up with an idea would be to pattern an ad after one or more of the ads for other products currently running. What, you say that’s not creative? I’m simply following the trends in Hollywood, which opened up its morally bankrupt vault and tossed in a big chunk of original thought.

The latest rage in Movieland trends toward attempting to get in the Guinness Book of World Records for either remaking a movie the most times, or perhaps for seeing how much worse a remake can be than the original.

Like, how many times can they remake King Kong? Then there’s The Poseidon Adventure, The Pink Panther, The Longest Yard, and Caddyshack, to name a few. Speaking of which, has anyone ever actually watched an Adam Sandler movie? I guess that’s one way to get yourself placed in the record books.

So back to my ads. I guess I could follow the beer commercial scenario, and have some college kids attempt to either steal, or trick someone out of, one of my prints. That would indicate that my work is very desirable, whether or not it actually is.

Another way to indicate that my prints are worth more than just chump change would be for a young lady to fail in luring her boyfriend away from watching a football game by suggesting some intimate moments together. That is, until she indicates that she also has one of my prints sitting atop the satin sheets!

Or, I could go for the low ego value. One person would stand in front of his (or her) prized Rembrandt, holding a megaphone, shouting, “Because I want to impress everyone.” Similar events would take place with Van Gogh’s, Dali’s, etc. Finally, the not-so-proud owners of a Ron Mathis print would toss the megaphone, content with the feeling that, while the print may not impress anyone, it certainly is a nice addition to their home. That’s really not far fetched, you know. And look at the money saved!

Going off in a different direction, some phony-voiced carny could shout over a background of annoying thump-thump sounds about my big art BLOWOUT SALE! You know, the thing about how all inventory must go to make room for new items. Prices so low you have to do the Limbo just to buy one of my prints.

No, I guess that’s not an avenue I’d choose to pursue even if I could figure out a way to make it work. It just sounds so cheap, and my artwork isn’t cheap. It’s just inexpensive, with the real value in the eye of the beholder.

Last week, hurricane, then tropical storm, Ernesto sort of roared up the coast and hit South Jersey. I figured our boat would be fine, since it was tied securely with two ½” lines. I figured the fenders would help, too.

The winds here in Woodstown were in the 30 MPH range, just enough to make some noise and blow a few things around outside. Then I brought up The Weather Channel thing on my computer and noticed that the winds down around the Cape May/Wildwood area were sustained at about 51 MPH, with gusts up to 72. I started wondering if maybe I should have added a couple of spring lines, or something.

We made it down to the boat a couple of days later, and were relieved to see it still sitting in its slip. It looked a little funny, though, with the canvas missing from the top. Hmmm . . . Apparently, a fellow boater rescued the canvas, and placed it on the deck. The canvas itself was okay, but the wind ripped the zipper pockets off. The support frame was bent considerably, but I managed to straighten it.

We then discovered something else that we deemed interesting. The stern line was down to one of three strands, but some thoughtful fellow boater had secured the stern with line from one of our fenders.

I usually err on the side of caution with things like hurricanes, tropical storms, and gales. My attitude approaching indifference, in this case, seemed strange to me. For some reason, I never even thought about the canvas, probably the most vulnerable part of our boat!

But maybe my mind is becoming affected by the indifference of some of the other boaters out there on the waterways. Through the years, the amount of ignorance concerning rules of the road, common courtesy, and safety, has both amazed and annoyed me. No-wake zones apparently apply to only us and about 75 percent of the other boaters. The other 25 percent think that they were designated as no-wake zones only to inconvenience them from reaching their destinations at break-neck speeds.

The good news is that New Jersey passed a law this year requiring boaters to take a U.S. Coast Guard course on safety and rules of the road. The bad news is that apparently many people simply ignored what they considered as just another inconvenience for them.

Jet skis look like tons of fun, and are probably one of the greatest boating menaces ever created. They would be fine, if operated by relatively sane individuals acting responsibly, but like boats, they offer them to anyone who can come up with the money or financing. In NJ, taking a course is required, which doesn’t seem to stop anyone who doesn’t take the course from operating these things. This summer alone, three people were killed on jet skis in the back bays of South Jersey.

A young lady in her twenties drowned in Union Lake, in Millville, while swimming off a pontoon boat. Not surprisingly, no throwable personal flotation device (a requirement) was on the boat. Some boaters either never check to see what’s required by law, or simply ignore the inconveniences of maintaining a safe vessel.

There was no excuse for me not taking preventive measures to protect our boat from wind damage. If the vessel had broken loose, it could well have damaged other boats in the area. I can’t blame my negligence on the deficiencies of a small part of the boating world, and I’m thankful that someone else in the area at the time saved me from the consequences of indifference to a serious situation.