I live in Wildwood, NJ. It's a resort area with a 2 mile beach, boardwalk, rides, motels, etc... A lot of people come down starting Memorial Day until Labor Day.
This weekend we have nothing but teenagers who love to come down to my city to drink alcohol, have sex, and just be idiots. It's going to loud this weekend! Their cars stereos are going to be loud... BOOM BOOM BOOM!
It's amazing. 9 months out of the year it's dead. It's very quiet, but in the summer it's much different. A lot of noise!
I'm sitting in my apartment this weekend.
Every day's a holiday and every night's a Saturday night! :biggrin:
My folks (briefly) had a house in Ocean City, a sedate and dry town. My cousins had two. Good times as a kid, trolling for returnable bottles that you could turn in for enough money for more ice cream and candy than was good for you.
At age 13, when my parents went to Europe, I opted to spend the summer "down the shore" with my cousins. For spending money, I had a paper route. Because people came and went in one and two week intervals, there was no fixed clientele, and so you had to pedal you bike while bellowing forth, in a loud and clear voice, "Hey get your three star, sports final, Bulletin!"
Mortified at first, I soon got used to it. My highlight was when a fetching young thing my age bought a paper and tipped me a whole dollar. I was in love!
Wildwood, so close and yet so far, was known as the place where the goombahs from Northeast Philly -- known for their slutty daughters, their lunkhead sons, and their vivid summer sartorial choice of loud bermuda shorts over black socks, topped off with a wife beater -- vacationed.
We did not go.
And so it was, years later, that I found myself alone and sprawled on the all but deserted Wildwood beach just before 10am. It had been a long, long night and morning. Hallucinogens were involved, specifically mushrooms. The waves gently cascading over the stones and shells made them look like diamonds.
Diamonds!
I heard Blind Faith's "Presence of the Lord" coming at me in gorgeous stereo from all across the ocean. I knew at that moment that if I started wading into the sea towards Europe, and just kept going and going, that I couldn't possibly drown because I was immortal.
I wisely chose not to.
We had started out on the beach just before dawn, but by 10am I had long lost sight of my buddies. And so it was that I found myself prone on the beach, staring at the lone other person, a girl about my age about 20 yards away, her hair provocatively flowing in the wind.
Just a few yards away from my face which was parallel from the sand, seagulls serially fought each other over a food scrap -- one getting it and then another causing it to let go, over and over agaIn.
Freaky.
And yet the sight of the girl was idyllic. I knew she and I were meant to be.
And then . . . WILDWOOD happened!
At precisely 10am, unseen and unknown by me loudspeakers crackled on and blared forth, "Good morning! Welcome to Wildwood beach. Please rise for the national anthem."
She got up.
My mushroom infused idyll was shattered.
I turned my back on her and rolled over.
Later, my three buddies were bullied and hauled off to jail by the police as they came out of the water, four beaches down from where we'd gone in. The current had been strong and had swept us along. None of us had heard the lifeguards frantic and persistent whistles.
Wildwood.
I never went back.*
*This is an absolutely true story and no mere literary exercise. Also, Wildwood sucks.
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