Back to the Future

Lucy the Margate elephant. (My motorbike is parked in front — you could go up top.) (Long-ago photo by BobbaLew.)

25 years ago Yr Fthfl Srvnt set out on motorcycle for his original home in south Jersey. —I live in western NY.
My motorbike was a 1989 Yamaha FZR400, only 400 cc’s. Double overhead-cam, four cylinders, four tiny valves per cylinder.
To get by with only 400 cc’s it had to be wound to-the-moon. About 9,000 rpm at 60 mph. (Seemed unnatural.)
I got saddlebags and a tankbag. I also bought a rubberized rain-suit.
It began raining not long after I started. My route was good old Route 15 toward Harrisburg, then east to northern DE.
I drove that route hundreds of times. College was in western NY, and we later lived in Rochester (NY). Back then my parents still lived in northern DE, so Route 15 was the way home. (My parents eventually moved to south FL.)
I remember stopping at the infamous Campbell rest facility (“Kamp-bell;” not the soup), inadvertently parking in the handicap zone earning the anti-biker wrath of the curmudgeonly facility manager.
That meant parking 100 yards south of the facility next to its dumpsters. This encounter prompted snide remarks on my part, fulfilling my duty as a “biker” (gasp).
I was amazed at how well my rain-suit worked. 60-65 mph in a drenching downpour past Mansfield University. I had a glowering-intimidator on my tail — a Dale Earnhardt wannabee in a Chevrolet Astrovan.
Back then the infamous Blossburg Hill was still in use. It’s been bypassed.
By Williamsport the rain let up. I remember stop-and-go traffic around Williamsport due to the Little League World Series.
On Route 15 one passes all the hoary landmarks: the small golfball water-tower just south of Williamsport, Clyde Peeling’s “Reptileland,” Bucknell University in Lewisburg, and what used to be three-lane highway next to Susquehanna River. “Pass safely” = “Put the hammer down!” Seven or eight cars zoom past a slow truck in hopes of completing before “No passing.” (The center lane was for passing.)
On Route 15 one also passes “Green Shingles” restaurant just north of the NY border. It’s been bypassed. I wonder when I’ll see it burned out.
The next day I decided to visit my old boys-camp in northeastern MD on Chesapeake Bay. Many fond memories; I started there as a camper in 1954 at age-10, did four more times as a camper through 1958, then was on camp-staff 1959-’61.
The camp is perhaps a mile-and-a-half in from the highway. I’m on motorbike. As soon as I rode in, I hit the familiar smell that always greeted me if car-windows were open.
That aroma is right up there with seashore smell. No idea what it is, although it may be the woods you first encounter as you begin the road to camp.
My camp’s name was “Sandy Hill;” I blogged it. (That’s a link, dudes.)
Sandy Hill was a religious camp — my going there was compliments of my hyper-religious father. But Sandy Hill was much more than religion.
I was on horsemanship staff, and did a lot of canoeing.
25 years ago, Sandy Hill was still related to the religious institution that also had a nearby conference center. Sandy Hill was sold when that organization almost tanked.
Sandy Hill still exists, but now has different owners.
When I rode there it was still a religious institution, but the camp season was over. The camp was being used as a retreat for zealots. All I could do was ride in.
I rode to the old mansion-house, the palatial abode that once was a duPont family summer retreat.
All I could do was savor the smell. I was there maybe 10 minutes; I dared not dismount lest some zealot preach at me. The fact I was on motorbike made the zealots nervous.
From there I rode to my original home in south Jersey = Erlton, a Philadelphia suburb.
I lived there until age-13, moving to northern DE when my father got a better job.
We lived at 625 Jefferson Ave. in Erlton. and I visited Mrs. Walton in next-door 627. She was still alive in her 80s, and still in her original home.
She’d been my Sunday-School Superintendent, and did her best to convince me all men, including me, were disgusting.
That I was unworthy of any girl she didn’t approve of; certainly not the slatterns south Jersey generated.
She took me to our old church in Erlton, but it was clear she was upset with the pups running it. She still had a key to her beloved Sunday-School addition, but that addition no longer passed muster.
From there I rode to my Uncle Rob’s in Pennsauken, north of Camden, the south Jersey extension of Philadelphia. My Uncle Rob was my father’s younger brother.
He told me anyone named “Robert” in my family is automatically disapproved. That included him, my paternal grandfather (his father), and now me.
(Scuttlebutt had him disapproved because he preferred Fords over Chevrolets. He was even a life-long Ford salesman.)
He called my Aunt May — his baby sister — to come visit. “MayZ” arrived and started nattering me, just like my grandmother used to do with anyone named “Robert,” although not me. (With me it was my parents.)
My Aunt May is divorced from her first and only husband. “Is this why Al started frogging around?” I asked — his name was Al. “He couldn’t take the constant yammering?”
My Aunt May went ballistic. She started yelling at me. “Don’t furrow yer brow at me,” I said. “My father used to do that. Compared to some of the goofballs I parry driving bus, yer angelic!”
I felt bad. Now I had my Aunt May all bent outta shape.
“She had it coming,” my Uncle Rob said.
That night I rode to Swedesboro (NJ) and stayed with my Aunt May. The FZR stayed parked outside.
Next day to the south Jersey seashore. Again, many fond memories.
Like “Lucy” the Margate elephant (pictured above).
“Lucy” was originally a beachside hotel, that turned into a tourist-trap.
(Two different Lucy links, readers.)
“You ain’t goin’ up in no Margate elephant!” my father shouted angrily. “That’s 25¢; WE’RE BROKE!” My paternal grandmother got my sister and I up in Lucy; 50¢ total.
I stopped for breakfast at a roadside diner, and started crying on my pancakes. I was alone as always. I feel like I never had loving parents; they were always badmouthing me.
I think my mother eventually realized my father was turning me away, but it was too late. She was a zealous partner at first.
Beyond that I was way too smart; they had no idea what to do with me. My father was smart too, but apparently more suckered for religious zealotry.
My first stop was Lucy, but that was after hitting the wonderful aroma of the Jersey seashore. I got that riding the causeway out to Longport, south of Margate and Atlantic City.
On motorcycle smells are strident.
Then south toward Ocean City (NJ). The barrier island Ocean City is on is now connected to Longport by drawbridge over a bay inlet.
In Ocean City I set out for 59th Street beach. Of all the beaches I’ve been to, Huntington and Manhattan near LA, Fort Lauderdale, Jacksonville, Daytona; 59th Street is still the best.
But ya gotta wear shoes, lest the sand burn yer feet.
I still have a container of 59th-St. beach sand under a window in my kitchen.
My first girlfriend and I did 59th-St. beach back in 1962. Did it again in 1968 with my new wife.
“Where is Sea-Isle City, anyway?” said a guy’s tee-shirt in a nearby grocery.
“I know where Sea-Isle City is,” I said; “south of Ocean City, and north of Wildwood and Cape May.”
And we all know Wildwood is the plastic pink-flamingo capital of the entire known universe.
I bet he never wore that tee-shirt again.
Maybe 10-15 minutes at 59th St. beach. Park motorbike, then walk out and collect sand.
In the ‘50s my Uncle Rob bought an unheated summer-cottage in Ship-Bottom, north of Atlantic City on Long Beach Island.
I stayed there often with my parents when my Uncle allowed us to use his cottage.

Me at age-10, severely sunburnt.

Sleep was difficult, the salt-spray aroma was so heavy.
We were there when Hurricane Carol passed offshore, lashing the beach. (I think it was the Hurricane Carol of 1954 — there was also one in 1953.)
My mother took us all up to the beach in our ’41 Chevy. Its wipers couldn’t cope. My mother got out wrapped in a bedspread, but had to get back in. Her bedspread was soaked.
After 59th Street I headed back inland to visit my Aunt Betty and Uncle Irv, still in south Jersey. My Aunt Betty was my mother’s youngest sister. Irving died not too long afterward, then my Aunt Betty. My Aunt May is my only living Aunt; she’s 87.
After Aunt Betty I rode back home = a journey goin’ to my grave. My roots hadn’t changed hardly at all.

• A “golfball water-tower” has the water vessel atop a single pylon, spread at bottom resembling a large golf-tee. I always notice because I helped paint a golfball during a college summer job. That golfball is pictured below.

The “golfball” water-tower in Ventnor, NJ. (The golfball near Williamsport is much smaller.) (Long-ago photo by BobbaLew.)