A Site for Shore Eyes

My grandmother probably could have made a lot more money if bed and breakfasts, rather than rooming houses, had been in vogue back then. I’m not sure what determines which is which, but B&B’s generally cater to people with too much money on their hands.

I grew up in a house where we rented rooms during the summer. A neon sign on the corner of the house read, “Bay View Rooms.” My grandmother provided breakfast and supper for the guests who chose that option, and most did, especially those already familiar with her cooking. Many guests returned from year-to-year, some staying for three weeks at a time.

As young kids, my brother, Larry, and I often “helped” our grand mom in the kitchen, and it’s still not clear whether this aided or hindered meal preparation, but bowls and paddles always needed licking, and kids like doing things such as grinding meat and running the mixer. There’s also something about rolling pins when you’re young.

Breakfast was usually pretty much the same each morning; eggs with meat, whether bacon, sausage, or scrapple (Yuk!), or any combination thereof. She also offered a selection of cereals for guests who preferred that option, or, if someone were into grapefruit, broiled or not, his or her wish would be granted. Jellies and preserves were always on hand, but the butter wasn’t butter, but margarine, or oleo, as my mom used to call it. My mom never used the stuff, recalling having to mix it up and add coloring during the war.

Supper was more elaborate, and guests usually sat in rocking chairs on the porch taking in the bay breezes and chatting while the scents from the kitchen played havoc with their olfactory senses. Eventually, my grandmother would push open the screen door to the porch and shout, “Come and get it!” The guests then filed into the sun porch and took their places at a long table my dad had built just for that purpose. Nowadays I can’t imagine buying that much food, but there always seemed to be enough if my brother or I, or both, decided to eat whatever was being served.

My grandmother always served iced tea, made fresh daily, in frosty pitchers. Both sweetened and unsweetened were on the table, and my favorite brew used orange slices instead of lemon. My brother, Larry, sometimes made the tea, but that wasn’t one of my specialties.

We also tended the ice water cooler in the hall, probably because it seemed like fun to dump trays of ice cubes in it. It’s not as much fun as an adult chore. I guess it makes a difference as to whether it’s something you have to do every day or something you can fool around with when you feel like it.

The guests (and I) loved my grand mom’s fried flounder and sea bass, both bought fresh, and her fried Jersey tomatoes, red, not green. She also provided yeast rolls and desserts, often pies. I used to watch her make a complete apple pie in about five minutes, except for the baking. With the leftover dough, she made what she called, “pinwheels” by rolling up pieces of dough with sugar and cinnamon and baking them.

Our neighbor across the street, on the bay, had a 40-foot sport fisherman that he used for pursuing marlin and other game fish. When he caught blues or bonita, he usually asked my grandmother if she wanted them, which meant I had to clean them. This wasn’t much of a problem, because I did that for spending money at the boat docks.

The most loyal of the returnees was the Hill family, coming in the early years by train from Philadelphia, and in later years by car. This was a bit scary, because Bill, the father, resembled Mr. McGoo, with his thick glasses and squinted eyes. That’s probably why he had curb feelers installed on his ’57 Chevy, which already had a dented fender the first time they arrived in it.

The Hills always booked three weeks in August. When they went out, they went as a family, and Bill always showed up first on the porch, jingling what must have been jackpot amounts of coins in his pocket while waiting for the others. The daughters, Marie and or Jean, came next, and Marie usually sat there rocking while smoking a cigarette, and Jean seemed to like one of the wooden benches by the door. She usually sat hunched forward, gripping the front slats of the bench. Eventually, Elizabeth, the mother, would appear, and off they would go.

It would have been difficult for guests to all get ready at once, because they shared one bathroom with a tub on the second floor, and a half bath with just a sink and toilet on the third. A shower was outside in the rear, with both hot and cold water, and beachgoers were supposed to rinse off before entering the house. Not all of them did, considering that sometimes the bathtub held enough sand to build a small sandcastle. The family used a bathroom on the first floor which was closed to guests. I suppose more bathrooms would’ve been required in order to call it a true bed and breakfast.

During the last two weeks, the other daughter, Doris, would show up with her son, Jerry, and his younger sister. As a doting grandfather, Bill always bought Jerry expensive toys, which he quickly broke, leaving the carnage behind. Some were still salvageable enough for us to use. Some of the toys were nice enough and big enough that my older brother and I almost prayed that Jerry would break them but leave them at least partially working.

Jerry would have probably been labeled hyperactive if he had been born a decade or so later, but he seemed about as threatening as a land turtle when compared to Vincent, from the Bronx. Vincent more closely resembled a Tasmanian devil than a turtle. Vincent figured out how to break more than mere toys. I don’t know if Jerry and Vincent ever stayed at the same time, but Vincent’s parents, Heimy and Frances, rented the top apartment in the back each summer for two weeks. Frances apparently felt at home there, because she spent much of her vacation leaning out the kitchen window and gabbing from her lofty perch with whomever would listen, or, more appropriately, whoever managed to not escape without being seen. They were nice, friendly people, though, but with a Bronx coarseness.

Many of the guests became more than guests and became friends of the family. This was sometimes good, but was sometimes a problem, but it’s not worth mentioning, other than mentioning it.

One family from Mount Vernon, New York had three daughters and one son. They bought a home on the water a few blocks away and spent many summers there. Yes, they were rolling in the dough, but their Wildwood Crest vacations started at the Bay View, in modestly priced rooms with a shared bathroom.

A mother and son duo showed up each year and he caught more fish with a hand line than many people caught with a rod and reel. Weird that their last name was Trout. . . I’ve never caught a single fish with a hand line, probably because I never tried it.

Rocking chairs sat in a row along the entire length of the porch, with a glider at each end. My bedroom back then was adjacent to the wrap-around porch and over the rustling of blinds from the bay breeze I often heard anecdotes, tall tales, and jokes from guests who often gathered on the porch at night. I suppose a six pack was cheaper than going to one of the many nightclubs uptown, and considerably less hectic. Some of their jokes didn’t make much sense to me, that is, until years later. Sometimes, when I learned another meaning of a word, or learned a bit more about the facts of life, I’d recall one of the jokes I heard and it suddenly made sense. Oh, so that’s what that meant. . .

My aunt, and sometimes my mother ran the place after my grandmother died, and there were some good years, but as my parents aged, so went the Bay View. For awhile they rented rooms to a few people, but eventually they stopped completely. They had neither the resources nor the ability to maintain the property, and by the time my mom passed away in 1984 and my dad in 1986, the structure needed serious rehab.

The subsequent owners, including those who presently reside there, made some changes. Whether or not all of them were good is rather subjective, and I undoubtedly express a bit of bias in this area.
They eliminated the sun porch and made it part of a big room. The center hallway disappeared, along with the rather majestic open staircase, which is now bordered by walls. A three-story addition was added to the back. The railings around the porch are now fancier, and a flare was added to the front steps. The biggest disappointment, however, is the absence of the awnings on the porch. Someone decided a gable would look nice in the center of the porch roof. This would pretty much make an awning in that location look silly.

The only reason someone would not want awnings on the porch would be that they were never there when the awnings were. The difference was remarkable, and we always hated when they had to come down for the winter. The awnings provided a cool refuge from hot summer days and made the bay breezes more enjoyable. In the fall, when they came off, it was as if the starkness of winter had arrived a few months early.

The present owners keep the property in fine shape, but I remember it from its heyday, and I liked it more back then, but that’s probably nothing more than a nostalgia thing. Yet I have to wonder what good is a porch without awnings, rocking chairs, and a bunch of people sharing their time?

In just the past two weeks, three people on bicycles were hit by automobiles, and two of them were taken to the hospital in critical condition.

I ride my bike pretty much every day, dodging both cars and pedestrians, and I see many others on bikes. Only a small percentage, including bicycle police officers, bothers wearing helmets. I consider my helmet one of those things I just won’t leave home without.

I wasn’t always this way. Until I first gave up riding bikes at 17, I never wore a helmet, and I’m not sure they even made them. My first wheels were a scooter, a Vespa 125, which I rode for a few years, but never while wearing a helmet. Of course, I was both fearless and invincible, which explains taking two of my friends out around the bell buoy in an 8-foot pram with a 3-horse motor on it. Yes, it also explains many other stupid things I did which didn’t seem all that stupid until I guess, the age of reason set in and I started raising a family.

Let’s get back to the original subject matter. I don’t know the details of either recent accident, one involving a boy who was hit by a car and the other involving two teenagers hit by a car driven by a 77-year-old woman, not that there’s anything wrong with that. I do know that the boy who was critically injured had a head injury, and I’d almost bet that the teen also landed in the hospital because of an injury to his head.

I understand the need for young people to look “cool” by not wearing a geeky helmet, which isn’t required while riding on the boardwalk but is in all other places for those 16 and under. That’s a stupid law, because a person’s head doesn’t automatically get harder at the age of 17. Most kids (and I) don’t expect to fall off a bicycle; like how spastic can one get? Unforeseen problems sometimes arise, however, and wearing a helmet can make you look smart, even if you think it makes you look stupid.

Mechanical problems can occur anytime. Once, while riding a trail, I had almost completely stopped when I applied my front brake. It locked and slammed me instantly to the ground! Fortunately I only experienced a bit of pain, but my head never hit the ground. If it had, only my face was unprotected, because I was wearing a helmet.

If a cyclist gets hit by a vehicle, even at a slow speed, the impact can send the bike and the rider out of control. If wearing a helmet, the rider’s head usually survives intact. If not, it’s often the difference between getting scuffed up and being put on life support in the hospital. Road burn and even broken bones are not usually life threatening, but many head injuries are. The professional riders in Le Tour de France and other races wear helmets and survive some pretty impressive crashes.

Many states passed helmet laws for motorcycles, and many repealed them. Bikers (the other type) didn’t want the government telling them what to do, so many of them now ride without helmets. This is even stupider than not wearing one when riding a bicycle, because the impact is usually much greater. Even Evel Knievel was smart enough to wear a helmet, and he survived many crashes that probably would have killed him had he not been wearing one.

I suspect that one reason for so many bare-headed riders here is the large number of bicycles rented every day. A helmet requirement would require a few changes in the rental business, but safety should always trump profits.

While riding my bike it occurred to me that exercise increases my output of CO2, and I wondered how that compares with the amount generated by an automobile, or perhaps a motorcycle. Ha ha, I’m kidding, because I really don’t care about my carbon footprint, or whatever it’s called. What I care about it making money, so I decided I need a CAT scam. No, I didn’t say scan, I said scam, as in Cap and Trade scam. I’m going to sell carbon offsets.

What’s that, you may ask? Well, it’s simply a method of allowing huge consumers of energy, such as the behemoth Owl Gore, to pay me so they can produce more carbon. No, it doesn’t reduce the carbon output, but it makes money for me, and it makes the greenies feel good.

You see, I’m not a believer in this man-made global warming, or climate change thing. We have cold spells and heat waves, but overall, the global temperatures have been decreasing for at least the last decade. And that’s using trumped up temperature data, where many of the thermometers were deliberately placed in areas where the temperature was almost certain to be hotter than in the general area. For example, one was located near an incinerator, and another beside an airport runway. Some were simply ignored when they didn’t fall in line with hoped-for temperatures. Leaked emails proved there was a consensus all right, but it was a consensus to stack the deck in favor of the global warming, or “climate change.”

Global warming alarmists always quickly dismiss cold snaps as aberrations with no relation to climate change, but then holler that they told us so when a heat wave rolls around. They never seem to mention the effects of El Nino and La Nina, both of which affect global weather patterns, generally about every three to seven years. Nor do they consider large volcanic eruptions, which play havoc with weather patterns.

Whether or not global temperatures are actually increasing is less important than whether or not the increases are due to people’s interference. Historical data shows that the Earth was both warmer and cooler in centuries past, long before the industrial age and automobiles. Remember that in the 70’s the “experts” told us we were headed for another ice age, but after 30 or 40 years, we still haven’t unplugged our refrigerators.

But who cares? I’m going into the cap and trade business, and you may just wonder how to go about this, just in case you want to try it. I could write a lot more here, telling you how you can make thousands of dollars each day while sitting in your pajamas, if you simply send me enough money to pry the secrets free from my mind. I can even offer a discount if you respond within a certain amount of time.

That’s not necessary, however. All anyone needs in order to make a fortune in the cap and trade business is to sell some air to big companies. Yes, that’s right, let them pay you to belch out enormous amounts of carbon dioxide from their manufacturing facilities and corporate offices. Tell them to crank up the heat in the winter and turn up the AC during the summer months. Leave lights burning (preferably incandescents, while they last) 24/7 365. Just like Owl Gore and Obama, you’ll never have to work a day in your life.

Where do you get these so-called carbon credits to sell? Well, I guess the EPA will help with that. Using complex formulas it determines how much CO2 is permissible, depending on the size and scope of the operation. You then give (or take, who cares?) credits for any company which produces less than its quota in emissions. You then simply sell the credits to companies that need to exceed the allowable amount of emissions. Yes, it sounds something like a shell game, but that’s only because you’re not quite green enough. Weird, isn’t it that being green in this case means not being a greenhorn?

I, like thousands of scientists, do not believe that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. That was simply a theory, later recanted by the person who first considered it. That person also happened to be one of Owl Gore’s professors. Whether or not Gore actually believed the theory is irrelevant when one considers the millions of dollars and phony accolades he received for riding the bandwagon.

Plants need CO2 to survive, and, through photosynthesis, they generate oxygen for other life forms. Carbon dioxide is used in fire extinguishers, especially for electrical fires, and is used for refrigeration and cooling in its liquid form.

In its solid form it is known as dry ice, and is used when something must be kept cool for longer periods than would be possible with regular ice, especially when food is shipped over long distances.

It has many industrial uses, and is also used in the food and beverage industries, and adds the bubbles to soft drinks, beer, and some wines.

CO2 also provides a quick way to inflate survival rafts, and has been used as a propellant in air guns as well as aerosol cans.

Yes, carbon dioxide has many uses, but its most dangerous use is by whacko environmentalists, who wave it around as a cause of man-made global warming. If they manage to get climate change legislation passed, the average person will see utility rates skyrocket. That’s a major part of the plan. Obama himself has even said so, and he and his group of investors stand to pocket millions if the legislation is ever passed. All it will take is a few idiot RINOs like Lindsey Graham, (Rin, S. Carolina), who has supported the “climate change” scam.

If you can’t tell from his appearance that Graham is a mealy-mouthed liberal, just wait a few seconds for him to open his mouth. He’s worse than McCain and runs about even with Arlen Specter, who finally ran head on into responsible voters.

Many Republicans tossed confetti in the air when Scott Brown was elected to Ted Kennedy’s seat. They figured he now tipped the scales to defeat the socialist health care bill. Congress decided to push the bill through anyway, even though they lacked a few votes. The elephants quickly cleaned up the mess with their trunks after Senator Brown proved his worth as a dedicated RINO, voting with the Dems on a few ridiculous bills, such as “financial reform,” which is nothing more than a payoff to the unions. I guess Mr. Brown wants to be known for “reaching out” to the other side, a gesture still practiced by some Republicans, even though it’s pretty much the same as trying to pet a rabid mongrel. As the folk song says, “When will they ever learn?”

It’s both easy and troubling to observe that cap and trade legislation may enter our lives, whether we want it or not, and whether it’s generally good or bad for our welfare. We’re supposed to have a system of checks and balances in this country, but the current president has succeeded in circumventing Congress for passing much of his socialist agenda.

Getting back to the situation at hand, so-called green energy will cost everyone, just as the ethanol fiasco has increased prices of both gasoline and food. It has also proven to be less efficient than regular gasoline. The greenies keep pushing for all-electric cars, while utilities struggle to keep up with output. Where do they think the power to charge the batteries will come from? Perhaps I’m a modern Don Quixote, because I understand that wind and solar power provide intermittent service and require huge resources in land. Fuel cells may be the best option for the future, but no one seems very intent on pursuing that technology. Until they do, I just want to cash in.