Love Those Wildwood Days !

I've written before about the Wildwoods, New Jersey. But it's summer time, and you can never get enough of that Jersey shore town once the bug has bitten you.

The bride and I drove on down last week and stayed overnight at one of our favorite Wildwood Crest beachfront motels, the Olympic Island Beach Resort, and it was a fantastic little getaway as always.

Spent the first afternoon down on the beach for hours, and I can report that the water is really starting to warm up. For me, the ocean water temperature has to be around 70 degrees at a minimum to really enjoy it, and we were actually surprised that it was that warm already.

Often up in the northeast section of the country, the air temps can be hot and muggy, but the water temps remain a bit cool well into July. Not anymore, so be ready for wading into the waves if you head down now.

We soaked up a very sunny and warm afternoon just hanging on the beach, taking advantage of the umbrella rental joint. The young guy who popped in our umbrella was down for the season, staying with a bunch of friends from his Delaware County neighborhood. Ah, to be young and have nothing to do but work and hang down the shore all summer!

Oh, Those Wildwood Days!

There is peaceful serenity in the clear blue skies and the fast-rising sun, in the swooping and squawking of the seagulls, in the clatter of bicycle tires along the boardwalk on a typical laid-back summer morning in the Wildwoods.

There is excited chaos in the colorful lights of the amusements, in the smells of the incredible variety of foods, in the dull roar of thousands of conversations taking place among the throngs along the boardwalk on a typical free-wheeling summer night in the Wildwoods.

For my family and me, and for countless others for nearly a century now, summer means “Wildwood Days”, a trip “down the shore”, where every day’s a holiday, and every night is a Saturday night.

The place is known by many names: Wildwood, the Wildwoods, Wildwood-By-The-Sea. There are the old names: Anglesea, Holly Beach, Wildwood Crest.

Today we have the three boroughs that include Wildwood, North Wildwood and the Crest. But whatever name it goes by to you and yours, the place is known by all of us as the epitome of the family summer sun and fun vacation spot.

As a boy, my family had a place on Magnolia Avenue, just about a half-block off the boardwalk, not far from the famous Groff’s Restaurant. It seemed that every night the line would form outside Groff’s for the dinner crowd, stretching all the way down Magnolia away from the boards. We had a small place, usually crowded with parents and kids, aunts and uncles and cousins, and many friends.

After a few years, a few of the aunts and uncles organized and bought a place farther away from the madness, on Leaming Avenue at the far southern end of Wildwood, about 2-3 blocks from the Crest and about five blocks from the boardwalk. It was much farther away from the action, but it was still down the shore, and the new house was bigger with a number of bedrooms and a nice sized backyard.

For most of the 1970’s and even into the 1980’s, this was the Wildwood of my youth. A family shore house filled with uncles rising early to go crabbing and then coming home and playing pinochle on the front porch, aunts cooking up those crabs and many other meals while keeping the conversations flowing on family news, and us cousins running around the house, the streets and the boards.

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

This website/blog. Fantasy baseball. Fleetwood Mac (pictured). 

Pizza. Citizen's Bank Park. The Godfather I & II. 

My 1994 Toyota Camry. The O'Reilly Factor. 

Cable TV series from HBO and Showtime, such as The Sopranos. 

Dinner and a movie with my wife, the Debber. 

The Eagles (both the Philadelphia pro football team and the singing group). 

Books on important topics by conservative authors. The Washington Times and Town Hall websites. 

Veal parmigiana with a side of pasta. A cherry gelati with vanilla ice cream from Rita's.

The sound of Harry Kalas broadcasting a Phillies game on a warm summer evening. The Big Five.

My pillow.

The columns and/or talk radio programs of Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. 

Seinfeld. My cellphone. St. Lucia. 70's rock and pop music. 

And of course, spending time with my wife Debbie, daughters Christine, Kelly and Melissa, and granddaughter Elysia. 

A slice of pizza from Sam's on the Wildwood NJ boardwalk. My golden retriever Petey. God and country. Jellybeans and salt water taffey. Coca-Cola. 

These are just a few of my favorite things. Pretty eclectic, huh?