A Site for Shore Eyes

Another Labor Day is upon us, and the whump sound of car trunks closing carries through the air as one family after another wraps up another season at the Jersey Shore. Oh, it’s not over completely, as used to be the case, but kids and teens have to head back to school and college, if they haven’t already.

In the fifties and sixties, before the concept of a “shoulder season,” the towns emptied by mid-afternoon on Labor Day and just about everything closed up for the season. With most of their young workers now absent and unavailable, businesses had no choice but to close up. Senior bus tours during the 70′s first started the season extension, meaning a few restaurants and boardwalk stores stayed open, with some restaurants offering special tour deals.

Morey’s Piers and other businesses started importing foreign labor to work during spring and fall, when American students were back in school. This was one of the biggest factors in enabling the shoulder seasons to survive.

I equate seasons with tides, so to speak. Summer represents high tide and winter stands for low tide, that less-than-desirable time for water enthusiasts of all types. Spring depicts an incoming tide in my mind, whereas autumn conjures up an outgoing tide.

During my youth, I often looked forward to a favorable high tide, meaning one that occurred at the right time of day to use it to its advantage, whether fishing, swimming, boating, or surfing. Fishing always seemed better on an incoming tide, and swimming in the bay pretty much required a high tide. Even surfing seemed to improve on an incoming tide.

Whenever it was that I had my eight-foot pram, I kept it tied to some pilings about twenty feet or so from the bulkhead, so going out in the boat required a tide high enough to swim to the boat. I also had to bring the boat over to the bulkhead to put on the mighty three-horse engine, something nearly impossible during a low tide event.

Low tides seemed depressing, and the shallow water in the bay got all mucky with lots of that seaweed that you can’t pop. It’s like wet paper. Marsh gas also escapes during low tides. Low tides at the beach are good for building mud castles and such, but that’s about it. I still hate low tides.

A lot of the fun we had back then was inspired by my friend, Rocco. Yes, Rocco first bought a serious diving mask and snorkel and talked me into getting them, also. Rocco first suggested we rent surfboards and try our hand at surfing, which we did. I’m pretty sure he was the guilty party who suggested taking the pram out the Intracoastal Waterway and circumvent the bell buoy in the ocean. I probably wouldn’t attempt it these days in an eight-foot boat, but it seemed pretty normal back then. It wasn’t, but we didn’t care. It would’ve been pretty interesting with just one person, and maybe a bit stupid with two, but with three people in that little boat it must have been pretty ridiculous!

I suggested attempting to ride our bikes backwards, sitting on the handlebars, because my uncle told me he had done it. We both mastered it, but our feat paled in comparison to what those crazy guys do these days on the BMX bikes.

Rules were a bit different back then, also, and I recall the only thing resembling life preservers were some seat cushions my parents had for a rowboat they had back in the forties. Seat cushions with straps used to be the life preservers du jour for boating. Water skiing with a ski vest was for sissies, but it eventually became prudent. The same for riding two-wheeled vehicles while not wearing a helmet. Now it seems very stupid, even on a bicycle!

We called a tide on a full moon or new moon a flood tide, which was great for both swimming and fishing. Unfortunately, after we started working on the boardwalk, the flood tide often occurred during our working hours.

Rocco and I both worked on a spiral slide on Fun Pier. He worked with me for part of the ’62 season, all of the ’63 season, and the first part of the ’64 season. In ’64 they asked me to switch over to running the old Tilt-a-Whirl, so our friend Jules, AKA Little Hazel, worked with Rocco on the slide.

The tide was always in during those times, or at least that’s how it seemed. In ’65 Rocco joined the Army, went through jump school, got sent to Germany, came back and went through Special Forces training. Right, he thought it would be fun to become a Green Beret and I just thought it was crazy. After getting my notice to go for a pre-induction physical in ’67 I dodged the draft in the Navy. The tide was obviously going out.

It ebbed after the first two years and then started its return. Rocco made it as a Green Beret, and did a couple of tours in ‘Nam. I did one tour in the brown water Navy over there. I got out in ’71 and he showed up at home with one of his army buddies. He had brought along his Norton Commando, and he let me try it out, but told me it wasn’t the same as my Vespa. He was right, and I remember the front wheel coming off the road each time I shifted, so I took it around the block and gave it back to him.

He got out a year or so later and I suppose the tide was high again for both of us, at least for awhile. Since then it’s been in and out, just the way it’s supposed to be, but I think we both still prefer the high tide.

My wife worried a bit about the impending Hurricane Irene because the media suggested it could be bigger and worse than the hurricane of ’44 on the East Coast. I happened to be in the hospital at the time, but she wanted to go home and lash down the furniture on our deck. I told her there wasn’t going to be a hurricane. Of course, she thought they were overmedicating me in the hospital.

I’m not an expert on weather, but I’ve seen many storms come and go, and this one, while big, didn’t really look like the hurricanes the weather people had shown us in the past. For one thing, the ‘eye’ wasn’t really an eye, because it wasn’t surrounded. The projected path also eased my fears of a big storm, because it appeared that it would head up the coast with much of it over land, and hurricanes simply don’t increase in intensity over land, despite Chris Christy saying it could change from a category I to a category II storm.

We live at the shore and on occasion our house shakes a little from 50 mph winds, and we don’t tie down the outdoor furniture. I expected that or less. We got considerable less.

The global warming alarmists (GLOWARMS) wanted so much for this to be a big hurricane so they could point fingers and say they were right in predicting more and bigger storms due to global warming, or climate change. They have predicted this for years, and this time, near the end of the season, we finally get what might pass as a hurricane to prove their point. What this proves is that we’ve had one possible hurricane reach land in the past five years or so, hardly an increase from the storms that used to pound Florida before Owl Gore decided global warming was a factor in just about everything.

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, just released a study that claims that cosmic rays and the sun, rather than humans, are responsible for global warming, if there is such a thing. This is the group that built the Large Hadron Collider, and it succeeded in building a stainless steel chamber that recreated the Earth’s atmosphere.

I often hear, with no supporting evidence, that this species or that species is moving further north or arriving early due to global warming. Well, guess what? The laughing gulls left already! Yep, they hightailed it before Labor Day, something I’ve never before seen. The tourist season isn’t quite over yet, and there are plenty of french fries and pizza crusts to go around, so it’s strange that the gulls left. College football starts on Saturday, before Labor Day, so maybe the gulls wanted to settle into their winter digs to watch the games. Or, maybe the Earth is cooling.

Anyway, back in the hospital last week, a technician brought in an ultrasound machine to do an ultrasound on my heart. She said she forgot something and would be right back. The bed started shaking, and I thought it strange that an ultrasound machine would make my bed shake. Then I noticed other parts of the room shaking and surmised it must be an earthquake. My wife was outside and called me on the phone, asking if there had been a fire drill, because everyone came outside. I said I thought we had an earthquake.

This town is empty, for the most part, and is very quiet. After the mandatory evacuation, people were in no hurry to return apparently. This is quite unusual for the week before Labor Day weekend, but it’s okay by me.

It seemed strange sitting on my deck, reading the paper, and no raucous cries of the laughing gulls, hardly any boats going by, and just a few guys quietly fishing at the end of the street. It felt more like the post-Labor Day days of my youth. The air isn’t yet cool, but there’s a crispness that the summer air usually lacks.

The summer zipped by faster than usual this year, with much left unaccomplished. I never got a fishing line or crab trap in the water all season, partly because too many shoobies infiltrated the scene. I have nothing against visitors, but if I’m going to fish at the end of the street by our house, I don’t want ten others there to tangle up lines. You’d think they’d at least learn how to pick up a crab before attempting to catch some. Dangling a cloth or piece of seaweed for the critter to clamp onto is not the way to do it.

Some fish people still come and fish, but rarely catch anything. I saw a guy catch a small throwback sea bass, but that was about it. I don’t know what they’re using for bait, but it’s not something the fish are crazy about.

The egrets have the run of the place with the laughing gulls gone. The herring gulls and great black-backed gulls don’t harass them the way the funny guys do.

The ospreys will be the next group to move out, leaving the egrets, which usually stay the longest, but they still usually leave before the human snowbirds fly the coop for warmer climes.

The global warming alarmists (GLOWARMS) will stoop to any level to spread their false science. The latest is a news item reporting on the first death in the U.S. due to rabies from a vampire bat bite. They warn that the bats may be moving farther north due to climate change. As Owl Gore would say, what a bunch of BS, except he doesn’t use just initials in his unhinged rants.

Okay, so how are vampire bats moving north if the only U.S. death is from a Mexican immigrant who was bitten on the heel in his home town of Michoacan, Mexico, in Mexico’s southwest? He came here after being bitten and started to feel ill days after arriving here. Are these nut cases saying that Mexicans are moving north because of climate change? It’s obvious that the vampire bats haven’t. Duh! This is an example of disingenuous reporting at its finest.

Putting another dent in the GLOWARMS theories is a recent report by NASA showing that, from the years 2000 to 2011, the Earth’s atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than what was predicted on the alarmist’s computer models.

Dr. Roy Spencer, a research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer on NASA’s Aqua Satellite, says that real-world data from NASA’s TERRA satellite contradict multiple assumptions used in the alarmists’ models.

In a July 26 press release he said, “The satellite observations suggest there is much more energy lost to space during and after warming than the climate models show. There is a huge discrepancy between the data and the forecasts that is especially big over the oceans.”

Besides finding that far less heat is being trapped than alarmist’s computer models predicted, NASA satellite data show the atmosphere begins shedding heat into space long before United Nations computer models predicted.

The GLOWARMS also tout climate change (they almost never refer to it as global warming anymore, because it’s not getting warmer) as the cause in a rise in sea levels. Actually, the rise in sea levels is more associated with El Nino, and the increase can be seen in years when the event is very active.

Larsen and Clark studied the sea level rise over the past 6,000 years, based on geological evidence and historic records. The study they did in 2006 found there has been no acceleration of sea level rise in response to increased temperature or CO2 levels.

Another study done by Holgate in 2007 shows that the rate of sea level rise is decreasing. The mean rate of global sea level rise was larger in the early part of the last century (2.03+-0.35mm/yr 1904-1953) compared with the latter part of the century (1.45+-0.34mm/yr 1954-2003). NOAA puts normal sea level rise at 1 to 3 mm per year, about the thickness of a couple of pennies.

None of this stops the alarmists, and it’s common for documentaries on TV to refer to climate change as a fact, without even blinking.

The recent heat wave in parts of the U.S. was touted as record-setting, when, in fact, only about 0.4% of the temperatures were record-setting. We have heat waves every year in various parts of the country and various parts of the world. It’s called summer, and it often gets hot. It has ever since I can remember.

The sad part about all of this is that businesses will have to expend billions of dollars to meet the ridiculous demands of the EPA and other alarmists, and it will cost everyone. The fat cats in DC will make billions from it, and taxpayer dollars will fund ever more silly research as long as they keep the dice rolling. In the meantime, vampire bats are still down in Mexico and are not expected to move north any time soon, if ever.

References:

Holgate, S.C. 2007. On the decadal rates of sea level change during the twentieth century. Geophysical research letters 34:10.1029/2006GL028492

Larsen, C.E. and Clark, I.2006 A search for scale in sea level studies. Journal of Coastal Research 22:788-800.

Obama’s policies have led the U.S. to the brink of financial destruction, and could be due to only one of two possible reasons. Either he is a total idiot on economics, or he is intent on bringing the country down. Neither of those two scenarios is beyond belief for me.

He keeps chanting the mantra of the rich paying their “fair share.” Exactly what does he consider a fair share? The top 1% of wage earners already pay about 38% of all income taxes and the top 50% of wage earners pay more than 97% of the total income taxes. In the meantime, when are the bottom 50% of wage earners, who pay about 2.7% of the total income taxes, with many paying nothing at all, going to pay their “fair share?”

For some reason he is now fixated on eliminating tax breaks for “corporate jet owners.”

Back in 1990, Congress, in its infinite wisdom, passed legislation that added a 10% luxury tax on yachts, expensive cars, and private airplanes. The politicians rubbed their hands together in anticipation of the 31 million dollars per year they would rake in. Instead, it resulted in a net loss of revenue of about 7.6 million dollars. Okay, so they were only off by 38.6 million, but it got much worse than that.

In the end, 25,000 people lost their jobs building yachts and 75,000 more workers lost their jobs in industries supplying parts to yacht builders. More than 1400 workers in the aircraft industry and about 330 in the jewelry-making industry also lost their jobs. Egg Harbor Yachts filed for bankruptcy after going from 200 employees to five. Viking yachts was whittled down from 1400 employees to 68, and closed one of its two plants. More than 7600 jobs were lost during the first year and about a third of all U.S. yacht builders stopped production. Yes, many yacht-building jobs were shipped overseas.

That tax was repealed in 1993 after all the damage was done. It’s likely that a similar scenario would unfold in the private jet manufacturing world if Obama gets his wish.

For some reason, progressives think that the way to go is to punish corporations for making too much money. They don’t understand that corporations don’t really pay taxes. Individuals pay taxes, and corporations pass their tax burdens on to the consumers. All successful business, whether corporations, or privately-owned small business, understand that taxes are an expense, and must be included on the balance sheet.

Maybe they would understand it more clearly by looking at sales taxes, which are taxes on selling, not buying. Who pays this tax? The business is responsible for sending in the money to the government, but they collect the money from the customer, obviously. Yes, you, as a customer, provide the funds for a company to pay its sales taxes. When more people understand this concept maybe they’ll understand why cutting corporate tax rates and capital gains taxes benefits the consumer as much as big business.

Perhaps they’ll also understand that by punishing those nasty big oil companies by increasing taxes or eliminating tax breaks results in the consumer paying more at the pump. Why Democrats can’t grasp this concept is rather perplexing.

I won’t get started on the ridiculous “deal” the Republicans think they got by raising the debt ceiling, but I’ll leave with a very good quote:

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.

Barack Obama, 2006

Island visitors fish and crab at the end of our street, and it’s interesting to watch them. One of the biggest and most common mistakes is to use bunker (menhaden) for crab bait, and most bait stores sell it as the bait of choice. Now I don’t want to suggest that no one ever catches a crab with bunker, but let’s just say it’s not as common as one would expect.

The inexperienced crabber, if faced with the prospect of using bunker for bait, should at least ensure that the fish is sufficiently hacked up, preferably spewing a few internal organs. I’m not sure why crabs prefer food that’s messy and stinky, but prefer it they do, in the absence of chicken, which, strangely enough, is not a denizen of the deep. Maybe they just don’t get it that often.

My mother used to use chicken necks and she caught rather impressive numbers of crabs with them. I usually have no chicken necks, because we don’t buy whole chickens, instead opting for chicken backs, which are often found in a freezer case where none of the other dead chicken parts are stored. I don’t know what people do with chicken backs, but they make great crab bait, with crabs pushing each other out of the way to get to them.

It’s unlikely that most tourists bother to familiarize themselves with New Jersey’s fishing regulations, but often there’s someone around that has a working knowledge of size requirements, but not always. When crabbing it’s important to know that hard crabs must be at least 4.5 inches from point to point, peelers or shedders must be 3 inches, and soft shell crabs must be at least 3.5 inches. It’s unlikely that most crabbers I’ve observed would know the difference anyway. Some probably wouldn’t know the difference between a male and female and wouldn’t know what the sac on the back of a spawning female was all about.

When one of these individuals finally does land a crab it’s not unusual for a kid, especially a small kid, to tease it with seaweed or a stick, but that can be a dangerous, or at the least, a painful decision. A crab is capable of taking off a person’s finger, so it’s best to learn how to handle the critters, or to figure out how to get them in the bucket without picking them up, which isn’t usually difficult. Crabs are generally smarmy, and act indignant when caught. They will always try to get away, even if escape will result in their death because there’s no way to make it back to the water.

Crabs generally don’t give a hoot about the fate of their fellow prisoners, and will use others to climb on in an attempt to escape. When using tongs to put crabs in a pot of boiling water, one will often latch onto another, and both will end up taking the plunge at the same time.

I used to think of fishing as a relaxing pastime, but that was before the age of licenses, permits, rules, regulations, and charts. As I’ve mentioned in previous columns, fishing used to mean just fishing, and when one caught a fish it was either a keeper or not. A fish was generally considered too small if it seemed as if there wouldn’t be much meat left after cleaning. Not so anymore.

Upon landing a fish, it must first be identified, and then measured. Fish are measured from tip of snout to tip of tail, except for black sea bass and sharks. To see how those are measured requires looking at a diagram, which most people don’t carry with them while fishing. Once the legal length is established, it must be determined how many are allowed to be caught and kept, and, in the case of striped bass, or hybrid striped bass (whatever those are), where the heck you caught the darned thing. Oh, yeah, and whether or not it happens to be the season for that particular fish. I still haven’t figured out the difference between a summer and winter flounder, and the seasons for both overlap for part of May.

Who would know that tautog must be 14 inches long this year and that from January 1 to April 30 you can keep four fish; from July 16 to November 15 you can only keep one, and from November 16 to December 31 you can keep six fish? I used to clean fish and some guys would come in on a party boat with a bunch of tautog, but that was back in the days of reality, like the 1950s. Now, people with the New Jersey Fish and Wildlife Division, most of whom have probably never experienced catching a fish, sit around at a big table (I suppose) and determine the fishing regulations for the coming year.

Anyway, it’s not that much of a problem for the end-of-street fisher types. They cast their lines out in the channel and after a bit they struggle to reel in a possible record-breaking fish of some type, with the rod bouncing up and down furiously, and finally, after much reeling and dealing, they land their bait again, complete with sinker! They then examine the bait for wear and tear, as if any fish really cares about the condition of the scraps they eat.

Fish obviously lack genius capabilities, otherwise they would wonder how a strip of clam escaped from its shell, cut itself into a strip, and floated around a foot or so off the bottom. Instead they are simply attracted to any free food they can find, somewhat similar to my cousin Donald, who can smell a free buffet from several miles away. He’s a good guy, but he’s very thrifty, for want of a better word. No, I didn’t say cheapskate.

I used to see people catching small black bass and flounder from the street end, but they seem less plentiful this year, although oyster crackers show up on occasion. The oyster cracker is not something you put in your stew, it’s a fish also known as a toad fish. Visitors need to understand that these little fish can easily chomp off a finger or two, and they often come out snapping. They’re tough little critters, and are edible, but I know of no one who would consider eating them in these here parts of the globe. They perform okay as bait, though, after being cut up.

Anyway, most of these people probably don’t know that you must register with the NJ Department of Environmental Protection Division of Fish & Wildlife -Marine Fisheries, print out the registration certificate, and have it in your possession while fishing. It’s not that big a deal, because if you’re asked to produce it and don’t have it, the fine for first-time offenders is only $300.00 with a maximum of $3,000.00. A second offense will cost between $500.00 and $5,000.00. That’s not a misprint.

And so it goes. Probably fewer than 5% of the people fishing on the island even know about the registration requirement, and I’m not sure if anyone goes around checking. The registration is not required on a licensed party boat, and it’s not required for crabbing. Imagine paying $3000.00 and not even catching a fish!

It’s a good thing Wildwood reelected the mayor they recalled and kicked out of office, because now the city is looking for ways to rake in even more money to support whatever it is the city does, which certainly has nothing to do with making streets attractive and navigable.

Commissioners talked about charging beach fees, the absence of which brings people to Wildwood instead of the other resorts along the Jersey shore which charge fees for going to the beach. They’ve used the free beaches as promotions in advertising for three years. Not that Wildwood doesn’t already try, charging 25 cents for 10 minutes of parking. The elected officials want to do a study to see how much it would affect revenue versus tourism. It’s not too hard to figure out that if given a choice, many potential visitors would go elsewhere rather than pay a beach tag fee.

The three island towns like parking meters a lot, so why not put parking meters in business parking lots? The businesses downtown (or what’s left of them) have to deal with customers using parking meters, so why shouldn’t parking at Mickey Dee’s cost a few dollars?

Another great scheme they’re considering is renting out space under the boardwalk ramps as storage bins, I suppose, and possibly selling advertising on signs that would be plastered on the enclosures. How attractive!

You would think that elected officials would be more interested in making the streets more inviting, both by repaving them and by ridding the municipality of eyesores. I’m not one for excessive legislation, but owners of vacant lots should be required to keep them looking nice. Driving around Stone Harbor, Avalon, and Sea Isle City gives you an idea of what a shore community should look like, in terms of aesthetics. None of these municipalities look as deplorable as many sections of Wildwood, including the streets themselves.

These elected officials seem content with sprucing up the main drag coming into town, primarily past New Jersey Avenue. I guess visitors are supposed to close their eyes until they cross New Jersey, then open them for the big Wildwood sign and the giant beach balls.

The city (or somebody) already profits from the Tourism and Development Tax, a 2% surcharge added to the tab at restaurants, motels, admission charges to amusements, and cover charges in nightclubs. It’s interesting that stores in all four Wildwood municipalities can apply for UEZ assistance, meaning they only have to charge 3.5% sales tax, yet they charge the full tax plus 2%. It’s anyone’s guess whether or not an establishment was granted UEZ relief but charges full sales tax and pockets the difference.

A boardwalk entrance fee was proposed a few years back. What an excellent idea! This would have people running for the boardwalk – the one in Ocean City, that is. It’s the old, squeeze ‘em for what you can get, no matter what it actually costs in revenue to businesses. If they ever implemented that fee I would probably finally be able to afford to buy a store on the boardwalk, because they’d be giving them away. The Morey’s would never allow it, however. They already have the deck fully stacked in their favor.

In the interest of assisting the commissioners, I’ve formulated a few ideas concerning raking in more money for the city. I propose an escape tax on all bridges in addition to the Ocean Drive bridges that already charge that fee for leaving the island. A toll booth on the George Redding Bridge would charge visitors to leave the city. New Jersey already has the entire state covered by imposing escape taxes on every route out of the state, so why not extend it to municipalities? Of course, a toll would also be required on the road leading out of North Wildwood, lest everyone avoid paying the toll by leaving on the one toll-free road.

The municipality could buy vending machines and place them strategically on the boardwalk and around town. Perhaps some of them could dispense pizza slices, making up for the two failed Papa John’s locations formerly owned by the present mayor.

The mayor and the other commissioners could lug those freezer chests around the beach, selling ice cream, rather than having the profits go to private individuals. This would swell municipal coffers.

The city could also impose a beachcomber’s fee, in addition to selling beach tags. Shells, driftwood, and other objects washed up on the beach would have to be bought from the city for a nominal fee.

The city government could buy some bikes and rent them out, competing with private enterprises. This would help pay for the bike path that Wildwood doesn’t have, although both North Wildwood and Wildwood Crest have both bike paths and bike lanes.

Wildwood could designate part of the beach as a surfing beach and rent surfboards and boogie boards.

Yes, there are many ways in which the town could make more money, other than by taxes, but the real question is, “What the heck are they doing with all the money they get now?” Hint: A clerk pulls in about $60K a year, and pensions for retired cops and other employees are rather large. The median household income for Wildwood as of 2009 was $28,552, unless you work for the city.

The barbecue competition brought visitors to North Wildwood last weekend. We never went, based on our experience last year. We first tried a business with a huge setup and many trophies from somewhere. They brought in the ribs already cooked, in cardboard boxes, and they tasted a lot like the containers. We then tried another place with local ties, and were not impressed. The food was mostly overpriced and just not that good, but that’s only my opinion. Nonetheless, we stayed home this year. Apparently a lot of other people don’t share my opinion, based on the number of people who attended.

I saw in the paper that one place right off the boards is selling fried Kool-Aid. Sounds yummy, doesn’t it? They mix the powder in some type of batter and deep fry it. I’m not sure what the attraction is for deep frying everything under the sun, but it doesn’t interest me. As I’ve said with other things, just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.

I’m convinced that elected officials in Wildwood are in cahoots with some shop that specializes in shock absorbers. Not much else could explain the neglect of the streets throughout the municipality.

While the boardwalk hasn’t really changed all that much, both Atlantic Avenue and Pacific Avenue appear to be poorly planned. Back in the day, the Shore and Casino movie theaters, as well as the Casino Arcade on the boardwalk, were quite attractive and inviting. Now we have an empty lot with exposed concrete block where the theaters once stood, and some unsightly go-kart tracks on the boardwalk. Bring back the Bubble Bounce, the Merry-go-Round, and the Roto Jets! That’s not going to happen, of course, but it would be nice.

Once upon a time, a building at Oak and the Boardwalk housed a roller rink upstairs and the Scoota Boats in the bottom. The Scoota Boats were powered by gas engines and a patron could drive one around for an allotted time. The Scoota Boats gave way to a very nice miniature golf course, but now we have just those stupid kart tracks.

I miss the days of my childhood and teen years at the Bayview, not the current restaurant, but a rooming house run by my grandmother. During the summer the house sported awnings on every bay of the porch, and the American flag flew on a flagpole at the corner. During holidays, multiple flags on sticks flew from the railings.

Guests often sat in the rockers on the porch, shaded from the sun and taking in the bay breezes. In the evenings and sometimes late at night they sat around on the porch drinking and telling stories and jokes. Our bedroom was just off the porch and with no AC we heard many conversations, both in the morning as well as late at night. Pizza, often called tomato pies back in the 50s started getting popular and guests often sent someone out for a pie or two. Tomato pies usually had the cheese beneath the sauce and still exist in some regional areas, but pizza dominates the scene now.

I’m not sure exactly when drivers started getting so incompetent, but it’s not unusual to see vehicles crossing the center line, even solid double lines. Way back when, the streets in the Crest were two-way, but now most of them are one-way. The bridges on Ocean Drive used to be wide enough for buses to pass in the other direction with no problem, but many people can’t even negotiate their SUVs and keep them in the lane. Tire marks decorate the entire length of the curb on the toll bridge.

This brings us back to the many useless traffic signals in the Wildwoods. Most of them are timed so that when one changes to green the next one turns red. I think it’s called mis-synchronization. Many of them stop traffic on the main thoroughfares for non-existent traffic on the side streets. With gas prices skyrocketing, one would think that someone with a brain would order these lights either turned off or removed. Oops! We’re talking about local government people here!

We live on a dead-end street that stops at the water. For some reason, people seem to think that this is a South Philly neighborhood. Last night a group of teenagers, with their mother, were fishing and talking loudly, as well as smoking marijuana, or at least that’s how it appeared. They were passing it around, so there’s only assumption here.

Their loud talk included frequent usage of the F word. I remember a time when you could go to a store, or to the boardwalk or beach and never hear such language. People no longer respect other people or their rights, and using such language loudly and in public is quite insulting. That’s where we are as a society, with coarse public language; men and women tattooed from head to foot; children being raised by one parent, or even worse, by Daddy and Daddy, however that works; and the general degradation of morals. The aim by the progressives is for a secular state where anything goes, as long as God isn’t involved.

With our current excuse for a president, both morals and the economy are worse than ever, even under the inept Jimmy Carter. At least Carter was inept.

It’s becoming more clear to me now how Obama got elected; why so many liberals believe in man-made global warming; and why homosexuals, who make up less than two percent of the population; have gained so much ground over the past decade. The average person (or at least the average juror) is a blooming idiot, and this became apparent after the verdict of the Casey Anthony trial.

The prosecution presented overwhelming evidence, albeit circumstantial, indicating that Casey Anthony was directly responsible for her child’s death. Evidence showed that she had done internet searches for chloroform and on how to break a neck. Experts testified that an odor of human decomposition remained in the trunk of her car, as was originally reported by Casey’s mother. Her father, a retired police officer, testified that the odor was from a decaying body based on his years of experience. A hair that matched Caylee’s was also found in the trunk of the car – very strange indeed. Additionally, experts testified that above normal levels of chloroform were found in the trunk.

The remains of Caylee were found in a swamp near the home and duct tape had been wrapped around her head and across her mouth. Forensic experts testified that the duct tape had to have been placed there before the child’s death.

Casey partied for 31 days after the child’s death, telling her mother and others that she had left the girl with a fictitious nanny, and later, that she had left the girl with a fictitious boyfriend. She even took police to a place where she said she worked, even though she didn’t work there.

The judge, for some reason, excluded emails that Casey had sent to others, particularly one male friend, which indicated that she felt confined because her daughter kept her from going out partying. She referred to the girl as a “snot bucket.”

For some reason, Casey’s mother testified that she had done the chloroform searches although she was actually searching for chlorophyll. Computer experts testified that Cindy (the mother) was logged on to her work computer at the time and could not have performed the searches on the home computer. They also established that none of the searches were for chlorophyll.

None of this mattered to the jury, and I watched interviews of several of the members after the trial. My thoughts are that these are really low-level thinkers lacking the ability to apply common logic to situations. I would not want to be stranded in the wild with any of them.

They claimed that the prosecution never determined a cause of death and that they had no forensic evidence, such as DNA or fingerprints. Obviously, they spent way too much time glued to the boob tube, watching CSI and other crime evidence shows.

Caylee’s body had decomposed to skeletal remains. Unlike preserved evidence, which can carry meaningful DNA for years, decomposition leaves no trace of DNA. Nope, no fingerprints, no DNA, no chloroform; and none of those things would be expected to be found after a body decomposed.

What the jurors believed were the lies made up by Mr. Baez, the defense attorney, who claimed that Casey’s father may have abused her as a child; that the child accidentally drowned and he disposed of the body; and that someone could have found Caylee’s remains and wrapped duct tape around the skull. None of these things actually occurred, but making up scenarios and impugning an innocent man’s reputation is par for the course for your average slime ball defense attorney.

Way back when I sat on my first grand jury, the assistant prosecutor told us that most of us had probably heard that circumstantial evidence was weak. He said it depended on the evidence and that, in some cases, circumstantial evidence can be stronger than an eyewitness account. He asked us to imagine that before going to bed at night, you looked out the window and it wasn’t snowing. You get up in the morning and your spouse tells you it snowed last night. You look out the window and see no snow. That’s an eyewitness account, but without the snow, you have to rely on the spouse’s story. Now, suppose that before going to bed you look out the window and it’s not snowing and there’s no snow on the ground. In the morning you look out and see six inches of snow on the ground but it’s not snowing. That’s circumstantial evidence that it snowed, but it’s pretty strong evidence.

What I find most amazing is that many of these juries felt that Casey was guilty, but didn’t think the prosecutors proved their case. I wasn’t aware that juries are supposed to deliberate in that manner. It’s clear that these jurors didn’t really understand the meaning of “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Prosecutors don’t necessarily have to prove something absolutely. If they did, a large number of cases wouldn’t even make it to court. Reasonable doubt means that it would be inconceivable in your mind that the person isn’t guilty, based on the evidence presented.

From my perspective, by analyzing the evidence presented by the prosecution, I would have voted to convict, and the best Casey Anthony could have hoped for with me as a juror would have been a hung jury. Of course, I didn’t vote for Obama, either.

Last weekend saw crowds here swell to near bursting levels, with hardly a spare parking place on the entire island. Yes, this is how it used to be, back in the heydays in the Wildwoods. Of course, back in the fifties and sixties, many of the top stars in entertainment appeared in various nightclubs here, but that all went away sometime after casino gambling arrived in Atlantic City.

In another brilliant move by whoever plans these events, the Fourth of July fireworks went off at 10:00 on the Fourth of July, which happened to be a Monday this year. Many, if not most, of the visitors had left long before then. If they came in early enough they probably caught the regular Friday night fireworks, which weren’t quite as spectacular, but were very nice.

The waterways also saw a lot of traffic, and I saw some boats pass that were probably overloaded. Boat capacities are rated by the Coast Guard, and one boat had eight people in it when the capacity was probably five. One guy in a little outboard came churning up Richardson’s Creek and started circling near where a boat had pulled in a few houses down from ours. I thought he was chatting, but he was actually a bit irate and said something about his daughter was in the boat (I don’t know what boat) and that what the guy did wasn’t very cool. He then chugged back to wherever he came from.

On both Friday and Saturday traffic backed up for miles on all roads leading toward Cape May County shore towns. It took my cousin two hours to drive about five miles from her work to home. We headed out of town for a family party on Sunday and the traffic was light, as was expected. The town cleared out fast on Monday.

Everything changes, and so it is with summers on the island. The separate amusement piers gave way to the Moreys, who own most of the piers, and sell tickets or wrist bands more like the way they do it in theme parks. In days of old, every pier had different owners and sold different tickets. Now one size fits all. When I ran rides on Fun Pier, some of the riders apparently thought that Fun Pier, Marine Pier, Hunt’s Pier, and Sportland Pier were all the same place, and would sometimes hand me tickets from one of those other piers. I usually said nothing, but didn’t put the tickets in the ticket box, either. Maybe it was a bit dishonest, but I liked some of the rides on the other piers and preferred riding them for free. Hey, I was a teenager, so that sort of excused me!

The island felt a lot safer back then. That’s not to say crime never happened, but we all left our doors open, protected only from the bugs by our screen doors. Of course, living in a rooming house, our front door had to be open to the guests, but every house on the block was pretty much the same with respect to leaving the doors open. I still remember the frequent whoosh of the door closer/damper. Everybody knew everybody else, but now it seems that nobody knows anybody. They’re just the people down the street, or the people who live over there. We used to know everyone and their names. The towns of the Wildwoods seem considerably more transient these days.

I remember back in ’71, renting a truck to move out of town to our new house. I asked how much deposit he wanted and he said he didn’t need it because he knew who I was. Yes, times have changed.

Most mothers didn’t work back in the fifties and sixties, so they came down with the kids while the father worked in the city during the week. Now we’re seeing more and more people renting out their homes on occasion, and many of them show up only on weekends. With most of the mothers working jobs, they don’t come to stay for the summer, except for those in jobs such as teaching, where they have the summers off.

This is a problem for businesses because there’s often a shortage of teenagers who can work the entire summer. The bigger businesses, such as the piers owned by the Moreys, recruit young workers from China, Ireland, and some Russian-speaking countries. They fly them here and provide a place to stay, all for minimum-wage jobs, but minimum wages in this country are better than those back in the workers’ native countries. Hiring these people for the summer creates many communications gaps, but at least most of them are hard workers.

Fun Pier used to hire many college students from Marshall College (now Marshall University) in Huntington, West Virginia. Why they wandered here year after year isn’t clear, but they did. I suppose if the school had offered a course in game stand management that would have explained it, but such was not the case. Wildwood Linen Supply used to hire students from Bob Jones University in South Carolina, a Christian college, and they worked hard. The business used to provide them a sort of dormitory on the second floor.

Ice cream plays an important role in beach communities during the summer. Hassel’s on 20th Avenue, puts an obscene amount of ice cream in a single cone, but it also costs almost as much as a modified half gallon in the supermarket. Dreamsicles on 10th Avenue, also serves hard ice cream but also sells soft serve that’s very good and reminds me of the stuff places sold in the sixties, before DQ took over the industry. Yes, other ice cream stores also offer a good product, but are too numerous to mention. On the boardwalk, Kohr Bros stands still occupy several locations, and a Mr. Softee stand was added this year.

Without the big names performing here the island has lost a bit of its excitement and intrigue. It’s still a great vacation spot, but the additional buzz concerning the various entertainers of the day is gone. Clubs such as the Surf Club, the Hurricane, the Beachcomber, the Rainbow, The Manor Supper Club, and Lou Booth’s all hosted major entertainers, sometimes with a number of stars appearing concurrently. All we have nowadays is some oldies stars appearing at the Convention Center, usually during the off season. That’s quite a comedown from days of old, but at least it’s something.

Wildwood, Wildwood Crest, and North Wildwood all offer weekly free concerts, but the acts this year are not that well-known, most of them being tribute bands. What is a tribute band? It’s a band that pretends to be some other famous band, I suppose. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but it’s really just something that’s not quite the real thing.

So the summer moves on and the days started getting shorter with the onset of the summer season. If I were still a kid in school I would see the summer shrinking faster than I wanted it to, but now it’s nothing more than a change in the weather patterns. I just might try to nab a couple of flounder, though. They’re right out the front door.

My wife, her sister, my cousin, and I went back in time last Saturday at Wolf Trap, when we watched and listened to the Ultimate Doo-Wop Show. The evening started right on time, with Deke and the Blazers walking on stage singing a capella. Their harmonies sounded crisp, and we would learn later that the group is quite versatile. While performing their last number, members of The Blue Suede Orchestra quietly took their places by their instruments. This group’s name would be more appropriate if it were the Blue Suede Band, rather than orchestra, but either way, the group is quite good. Imagine, if you will, playing music for about nine artists, and making it sound very much like the original recordings! The members of this group are quite young by comparison with those they back up, but they do an exceptional job with a guitar, bass, drums, keyboard, sax, trumpet, and trombone.

The All Girls Group included Margaret Williams, of the Cookies; Louise Murray, of the Jaynetts; and Lillian Walker, of the Exciters, as well as an unidentified male singer. All were quite good, but when Lillian sang “Tell Him,” it was 1962 again, with the Exciters on stage peforming perfect vocals and the BSO providing extraordinary duplication of the background music.

The Dovells showed up next, and, at least for me, provided the low point in the show. It’s not that they weren’t good, dressed in their matching white suits, but they lacked the vocals of former lead singer, Len Barry. Apparently none of the current members is able to really come close to his unique sound.

The Fleetwoods, featuring Gary Troxel appeared next, and he hasn’t lost much in the vocal department, even at 72 years of age. The two female members are not original members, but they performed the harmonies quite well. They did about four numbers, including “Tragedy,” “Come Softly,” and “Mr. Blue.”

The Crystals include original member, Dolores “Dee Dee” Kennebrew; Patricia Pritchett-Lewis;, and Melissa Antoinette. They did a commendable job of several of the group’s hits, including “He’s a Rebel,” but Antoinette let out a long shriek seemingly unrelated to the song that actually hurt my ears. After the song, she let out another long shriek, and I considered both of them offensive to my ears.

Jimmy Clanton came out next, and, in addition to singing his hit songs, he engaged in quite a bit of humorous patter, relating how he once asked a girl in the audience if her mother told her to go see him. She said no, it was her grandmother. He brought out Deke and the Blazers to perform the background harmonies in “Just a Dream,” and they sounded great. He finished with his classic, “Venus in Blue Jeans.” Clanton wrote, along with his wife, Roxanne, “Hardcore Health,” a wellness program. He writes a column by the same name for www.mybestyears.com. Jimmy will turn 71 in September.

David Somerville, the original lead singer for The Diamonds, performed next, and his portion was quite good, telling stories as well as singing. His voice hasn’t lost much in 77 years, and he still seems quite spry. Maybe he reads Clanton’s columns. He performed the stroll, sounding very much like the original, and got some audience help on “Little Darlin’.” He also did very good covers of “Silhouettes,” by the Rays, “One Summer Night,” by the Danleers, and “Oh Boy,” by the late, great, Buddy Holly. He told of his days riding on Allen Freed’s bus with many of the old rock and roll stars, many of whom are no longer with us.

Jimmy Beaumont and the Skyliners, or at least the latest version of the group, wrapped up the show. He seemed a little flat on some of the numbers, but when he closed with “Since I Don’t Have You,” he somehow managed every note.

Anyone attending a doo-wop show in 2011 certainly doesn’t expect to see all of the original members of any group, but it’s usually important that the original lead singer show up, and if that’s not the case, it’s difficult to generate any real nostalgia. The Dovells did cover their songs, but as I mentioned before, they need Len Barry.

After the show, some of the performers happened to come out the stage door when we were heading for the car. They were going to a meet and greet. My wife spotted Jimmy Beaumont and just had to have his autograph. I told him she is one of his biggest fans, because she is. In fact, that’s the reason I bought the tickets. Jimmy Clanton was walking away when I told him I remembered when he was in Wildwood, NJ. He said, yes, he was, and asked if I was from there. I said yes. About that time, my cousin said something, we turned, and she snapped our picture. She caught me by surprise.

Attending an oldies show always brings some mixed emotions, because along with the joy of hearing the music and remembering some good times, it also reminds us of our age and mortality. When The Diamonds released “Little Darlin’,” my paternal grandfather had been dead for seven years and all of my other relatives were still alive. My late sister was still four years away from being born. Ike was in the White House and no one was considering the ridiculousness of same-sex marriage or global warming. We had no cell phones and only had about 3 channels on our black and white TVs. I was in fourth grade. A year later, when “Just a Dream” was out, the only change was that my maternal grandmother had passed away and the Chevy design changed more radically than Ford. And that’s how it was, and didn’t we feel good about America?