THE BEACH QUEEN of Davis Avenue
My Aunt Rita’s Place at the Shore by Joe Van Blunk

Uncle Jim, Cousin Nancy and the Beach Queen of Davis Ave., Aunt Rita, circa mid-1960s. “Fun Pier” is in the background with its “Sky Tower” gondola ride. (to learn more about Sky Tower, see www.funchase.com )

Although this is a Wildwood, New Jersey story it began, like thousands of others, in the ever strong-beating heart of 2nd. Street South Philadelphia well over eight decades ago...

Those who lived through the early middle years of the last century were steeped, to one degree or another, in the grinding Depression and the catastrophic World War II. Having been born in the fall of 1954 I was lucky enough to have been raised by my parents, my relatives and their best neighborhood peers who had all gone through the American version of this worldwide crucible and I could not have been in better hands.

My Aunt Rita Anderson (nee Whalin) and her summer place on 228 Davis Avenue at the Wildwood, New Jersey shore were simply one and the same. Of course there were other influences like her husband my gentleman Uncle Jim and her handsome creative bachelor brother my Uncle Sonny. But in the end Aunt Rita’s powerful and persuasive personality dominated and inhabited the place.

With the help of many willing subordinates (family or otherwise) including my adolescent then teenage self, Aunt Rita ran the summer household at the shore. And she ran a tight ship. That is to the say, almost all parties were expected to pitch-in but in turn were pretty much guaranteed an overall cushy birth.

What I remember and what I am told from an ever-draining pool of living sources this take-charge matriarchal role was one Aunt Rita was accustomed to since it appears to have been thrust upon her early on in the Whalin family saga.

Aunt Rita passed away on November 24th, 2009...Thanks for some of the best Summers of my life...

With the help of my Uncle Sonny, Aunt Rita and Uncle Jim bought 228 Davis Avenue circa 1962. They rented apartments along this block for several years and found the neighborhood to their liking since it was very much like 2nd Street South Philadelphia: modest, clean and friendly. Of course this was during the much-touted “Golden Years” of Wildwood. Not Anglesea or Wildwood Crest...But Wildwood-by-the Sea. And from all of my research, oral history inquiries (formal/ informal), documentary filmmaking and personal experience it truly was a vigorous, exhuberant and easy time for our now anemic agitated Republic. This unique vibrant barrier island boardwalk town seemed to have it all, the way America seemed to have it all. We were, in large part, strong and riding high and ready to live the good life. So was Wildwood, the Blue-Collar Riviera by-the sea.

When anyone asks me what my favorite time of the day is at the shore I serenely answer...Now...I think I’ve always known the answer to that question but began to articulate it out of nowhere just recently. Maybe 10 or 15 years ago. It speaks volumes in a dewdrop. Every time of the day at my Aunt’s summer shore house was my favorite time and each one of those would require a book in itself. So I’ll write, all too briefly, about the mornings on Davis Avenue during that bright shining nano-second in the last millennium.

During the week when my Uncles Jim and Sonny were working in Philadelphia my Aunt Rita was the first one up and for some reason I often found my yawning sleepy way to the sun-filled kitchen right behind her.

Even at that tender adolescent age I was enthralled with the seaside morning. Two blocks east you could hear the surf pounding and roaring like a sea shell to your ear. And the Laughing Gulls were cackling since day break. To the west you could hear the old wooden trawlers chugging their diesel way in and out of port. On some mornings you could smell the fumes and they were as pleasant and enticing as everything else that was wafting on the sea breeze down Davis Avenue...scrapple, sausage, bacon, coffee, home fries, pall malls, pancakes...It was a routine but very sensual potpourri and I looked forward to being hypnotized by it every night just before falling off to sleep...Morning Glory indeed...

The core of my clan’s life at the shore was the beach. The beach superceded the boardwalk, the bars, the nightclubs, the fishing and crabbing and the matinee jam-sessions. The beach was where we really came together and hunkered down for the day.

Like so many other young families of that era we went to the beach in caravan style. My Father and Uncles lugged to the ocean a full compliment of strollers, cribs, crankswings and bassinets. They trudged through the hot white sand like a mini-mass exodus of sun-burned nomads sporting floppy hats, handkerchiefs, bath towel capes and white noses. My Mother and Aunts carried the provisions( saltines, peanut butter, potato salad, baby food, pretzel sticks, chips, candy, Frank’s soda and Piel’s big mouth beer) in a variety of ice-packed receptacles.

When we finally settled in after circling the beach chairs and coolers in wagon train fashion it was usually noon or so and we were ready for the long haul which was at least five hours. From here on in it was body-surfing, horse shoes, sand castles, beach burials, skim boarding, paddle ball, fudgiewudgies and the like. It was during this same time that my cousin Joe and I watched my Father “Babe” dig up a cherrystone clam, pry it open with an old shuck knife and eat it out of the shell! We raced back to the family beach camp to tell everyone what we had seen! They all laughed at our amazement and my Aunt Rita, sitting at center beach court said, “Oh that’s just Uncle Babe.”

In an attempt to drive away a now and then sense of utter desolation I begin flash-backing to my Aunt Rita’s modest Davis Avenue beach palace and those long gone days when my family was at its collective peak. It is of course a picture-perfect day-an organic Polaroid. Nothing but blue skies, a rollicking bath-water surf and the warmth of the august sun. There is not a dark cloud on the horizon nor on the minds of all of us who were there...And we are, perhaps for the last time, counted and safe.