Getting There
All Roads Lead to Senior Week Wildwood, New Jersey. . . . 1972

Getting there, as they say, is half the fun. You can see this sentiment in the Odyssey, the Aeneid, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and, more recently, in the Motor Cycle Diaries of Che Guevara. So it was back then during that early summer week in 1972 when I graduated Bishop Neumann High School. It was our first time on the road for a stay at the Shore without parents, relatives or legal guardians - and we were chomping at the proverbial bit.

The Atlantic City Expressway was a drag - a sterile tube, a 3rd rate Japanese Bullet Train. We took the fabled Back Roads -551, 557, 47 - that our parents used in the Fifties and Sixties. These roads were all a little like Route 66, except that we weren't Okies headed for California but flush Boomer families riding down to the Blue Collar Riviera. And in '72, those roads still delivered on every level: there were the bars, restaurants, sandwich joints, custard stops and root beer drive-ins. Five Points might be an early first stop and was like going to Mecca. A ham and cheese on rye with an icecold pony bottle of Coke or Rolling Rock was haute cuisine. A little further down the road, a custard stand was another oasis in the mid-day sun. There you could stretch your legs and take in the early summer woods while stealing a glance at the freckled Milk-Maid Jersey Girl behind the counter.

The closer we got to Wildwood, the more intense the ecstasy of the ultimate Joy-Ride became. When we got out of the woods and started seeing more Marshlands and Delaware Bay Tidal Creeks, a visual and olfactory trip started to slowly kick-in. In between the running commentary, we'd start huffing that faint salt air like it was pure oxygen. We now knew the Shore was right around the next two-lane bend. We were returning to the beach with the primal instincts of Blue Turtles, dreaming their way back to the ancient coasts of Mexico and Central America. Hopefully there would be a full moon when we arrived. But in the morning we would not be laying eggs or dodging hungry Skuas as we rushed into the crashing cold surf to wash off a hangover and get ourselves cleansed from too long a winter.

Route 9 was the legendary, penultimate approach. The Parkway was anathema back then, another sterile tube for squares or people who were afraid of getting lost on a country road or in too much of a hurry to dig it all. To paraphrase Bruce Springsteen, we were sprung from its cages. 9 was a bonus rush of escape velocity and off-shore scenery at the same time. At this point, we were six inches off our seats, seatbelts and all. I remember several ramshackle stands along 9 where you could eat fried fish sandwiches, steamed crabs and raw shellfish served on heavy-duty gray plates. The knife andx fork was a wooden tongue-depressor with a prong on the end of it. We sucked down these briny delicacies, often standing up, with a cold local beer. Our eyes would roll, shark-like, to the back of our heads. Five Stars? Five Toques? Michelin Restaurant Guide? We hardly knew the Getting There names of some of these creaky plywood leanto palaces or if in fact they even had names. Captain this or Captain that, the owners were often crotchety old salts. They did not seem the types who would care much about official recommendations. Most of these Route 9 Captains appeared to get great joy from just watching the summer city folk gorge themselves on such humble saltwater fare as Croakers, Weaks, Flounder, Cherrystones, Blue Claws, homemade cole-slaw and Tartar sauce. These were a few of my favorite things.

The final approach to the Barrier Island of Wildwood, New Jersey can be found at the bottom length of Route 9 where two long entrances (several miles apart) barrel straight into it. One goes into Anglesea then North Wildwood itself. The other rolls right into Wildwood proper when it ends at the beginning of Rio Grande Avenue. Both roads cross a breath-taking expanse of back-bay marshland that clear your eyes then crack open your mind like a fresh coconut. From that vantage point, you can see for miles and miles. The aromatics at this point, especially at low-tide, can be truly intoxicating to the trained nose. On many crossings, these sights and smells have sharpened my considerable appetite for everything that is good about seashore living. And Wildwood had them all.

People familiar with the town would enter closest to where they were renting, visiting, or crashing - the last term being a counter-culture euphemism for freeloading. Unless you had urgent business (jam session, barbecue, dangerous liaison) on some other part of the Island this might make perfect sense. If you were staying somewhere in the middle, as we often did in hose Senior Week days, it didn't matter which way you went in. As I recall, we often took the north entrance so we could reconnoiter what ight be going on in some of the legendary locales - Moore's, Silver Dollar, Red Garter, Nut Club - where we intended to use false I.D. or sneak in later that night or weekend.

Once you were deep inside the belly of the Island with the music blasting and the car gasping extra hot you immediately started to squirm and rubber-neck at it all: the landmarks, the familiar neon signage just lighting up against the dark blue sky, the motel/hotel signs and symbols, the tan girls with fragrant damp hair, the sun-burnt guys humping cases of Iron City and bags of low-end package goods back to the musty rooming houses and apartments, the hardcore beach stragglers heading home in the near dark all covered shaman-like with sand and wet towels and a short- stack of pizzas cradled in their arms.You were taking it all in- both barrels, full blast- and loving it and itching to be a part of it all as soon as possible.

We made arrangements that weekend to stay at a vintage 40s/50s hotel called the Maryland Hall. Located on Wildwood Avenue about a block and a half from the Boardwalk and Beach and about the same distance from the glittering strip of clubs and bars on Atlantic and Pacific Avenues you could not ask for a better base camp from which to take on the South Jersey Shore.

It seems that there were two married couples running the place. They might have been in their thirties. From our eighteen year-old eyes they might as well have been in their eighties. I remember them being somewhat friendly and cordial even to us. I also remember with much greater clarity how quickly this hospitality dissipated as the weekend progressed and we methodically began to trash the place with our wild teen-angst, our dire lack of etiquette and civility and finally just by our being on the premises. From about day one or two the police were either in the lobby or parked outside writing citations like Christmas cards. Meanwhile we were having a Blast.

The Maryland Hall seemed to have a mixture of old and new plumbing. Some rooms had a modern shower stall while others had a claw tub with a blue rubber shower hose fixed to the spigot. We had the claw tub but we never intended to take a bath in it. Just after arriving a patrol was sent out for alchoholic provisions. Upon their return the claw tub was filled with ice, canned beer and rot-gut Tequila. For the girls there was wine and our sommeliers list was short: Bali Hai, Boones Farm and Mateus. With any extra chip-in money the patrol leader would buy one cordial and one exotic: Harvey's Bristol Cream and Japanese Plumb Wine. All of these went into the ice as well. Otherwise you would gag and throw-up if you took them at room temperature

Wildwood days were a special trip. We had a bleary-eyed cut-rate breakfast at Uncle Lou's followed by an invigorating late morning game of touch football on the beach. Around noon we had a cheesesteak/hoagie lunch at Luigi's on Pacific and Davis Avenues. For dinner there was Macks Pizza or Nates Hot Dogs at two for a dollar. After dinner we repaired to the batting cages or a miniature golf course. I refer to this now as the Long Lost Golden Schedule.Or The Last Time I was a Millionaire.But in the end it was the Wildwood Nights that we were truly after.

The Wildwood Night did not really begin, even for greenhorn High School Seniors , until about nine or ten p.m. For some it was much later. But you could hear it start to crackle just after dark. And we rushed out into that sweetest of nights with the pent-up hunger and great expectations found in the full-bore beating of three-thousand Teenage Hearts. We were intoxicated by lava-hot hormones, longing, desire and Pabst Blue Ribbon Blood Magic. We moved through and embraced the brightly lit night with the knowledge that we were leaving Sugar Mountain for the first and last time. What we found out there was profound but not complicated. It was simply the all too brief miracle of a perfect summer night by the beach and the sea. There were soul-soothing breezes that caressed and encouraged your tribe and a raucous street party that seemed to whisper under the din "It will never end." There was some great music too.

CODA

One group of Maryland Hall guests pushed a small cedar chest out of a third floor window. Like the coffin at the end of Moby Dick it landed and floated in a swimming pool adjacent to the hotel. It was at this point that Senior Week '72 was effectively over. With the threat of criminal charges we were told to leave. We felt we had no recourse, legal or otherwise, so with our blistering hangovers we packed then quietly complied.The Maryland Hall Hotel disappeared. It might have been a victim of the Old Hotel/Motel massacres of recent years.It may have burned down. Whatever the case I know of a number of places where it still stands, safe from developers, arsonists and anyone else who would have you believe that it never existed.

Joe Van Blunk is a Freelance Writer who has written for the Olde City Times, the Jewish Exponent and Chris Mottola Inc., a national Media Consulting Firm. He is the Co-Creator and Producer of three Documentary Films: including Boardwalk. For the last fifty years he has spent part of every summer with his family and friends at the Jersey Shore. Mr. Van Blunk resides in South Philadelphia where he supplements his income as an I.L.A. Longshoreman.