King Neptune Instructs

My Father, Joseph “Babe” Van Blunk was considered by both my immediate and considerably large extended Irish-Catholic family to be the quintessential Wildwood Guy. Mr. Wildwood. An adult, but not too grown-up, Wildwood Poster Boy. Many of my family’s close friends, including some of mine, recognized this distinct quality in him as well, for it shined on across bloodlines and generations. Every once in a while I remember thinking that complete strangers also saw this “Wildwood Aura” around him. Just by his routine exuberance alone — pitching clam shells on the beach, biking the morning Boards, eating a waffle and ice-cream-he could make someone smile and think: “This guy really knows what this place is about!” It was a tiny miracle, but a miracle nonetheless.

And of course there’s one in every family-sometimes two. They just love the place a little bit more, or in some different way, than the rest of us. We all loved it to the brink of minor obsession or light cultism but there were always certain individuals who seemed to take it a step further. They seemed to personify or even channel the place through their interactions with it. When they are on the Island -”Down the Shore”-they appear to be on a higher wavelength...or in a euphoric salt breeze-induced fever or trance. Their actions at the Shore speak louder than all my words, for they were driven by nothing but deep love and pure joy. They were the first ones up frying bacon and making coffee and the last ones to bed, popping the tab on a night-cap can of Piels then turning the lights off on the porch...This and so much more was my Father at the Jersey Shore.

Although he was not born and raised there he might as well have been. Upon inspection, you will find his unofficial credentials to be impeccable. His Grandparents built a summer house in West Wildwood circa 1916. From his sketchy memories of the place, it was spartan if not ramshackle and they did not complete its construction in one summer but several. He told us that one season a large part of the roof was being reconstructed and that they slept under the stars for most of that summer. He recalled this open-air situation as quite pleasant until the gnats and mosquitoes decided to launch a Kamikazi attack. But more than a few summer nights were dreamlike and miraculous when you could look up through the open roof and watch the clouds, the stars and the hightide full moon moving majestically through the old wooden beams.

As far as I can tell from a handful of crinkled old black and white photographs and my Father’s personal recollections, his boyhood summers in West Wildwood made him nothing less than a Saltwater Huckleberry Finn. One such photograph, taken pre-World War II, shows him and his younger brother, Dick Van Blunk, in an ancient wooden Skiff. They are both standing in the boat, my father in the bow, my uncle in the stern. My dad is holding a thick wooden oar twice his height. Wet and happy, they both appear confident and comfortable in this bayside setting. My Father told me that they had always worked when they were at the shore and that this picture showed them at one of their jobs-Skiff handlers for a local Marina. This paltry but powerful picture brings me to my Father’s most serious practice of the Art, Science and sublime pleasure of Crabbing on Grassy Sound. He moved about these waters like he created or discovered them. In a very private way, I think he considered them a gift from God and Nature and loved and respected them as such. I also think he felt compelled to share them with his family and friends for the same reasons. While gripping the throttle of the blue-smoking five-horse Mercury outboard and finishing his second can of ice-cold Rolling Rock he would become one with all of it, for I remember seeing it in his deep silver-blue eyes just as he was transferring it to mine.

During the early and middle 1960s my Father took me, my brother Bobby and several of our cousins on some classic crabbing trip adventures upon the dark green waters of Grassy Sound. If the tide was running high he would take the boat into the deep western reaches of the snaking tidal creeks where you might be momentarily hypnotized by the beauty and the quiet.

He always rented an old clunky wooden outboard motor skiff from Otto’s Boats. Located in the Wildwood Yacht Basin, Otto’s was a no-nonsense operation that carried everything you needed to pursue and catch blue-claw crabs: hand-lines, cage traps, peach baskets, nets and rock-hard frozen oily bunker also known as Menhaden. The only thing required after being outfitted in this basic manner was experience, instinct and enthusiasm. And my Father had an infectious abundance of all of the above.

On one such special trip he took my cousin Joe and me on a very early morning outing.. It was August and the weather was late summer perfect. My Father always liked to hit a certain tide for the crabs and this morning’s tidal mystery (according to his calculations and secret alchemy) required an extra early rise and pursuit as we were on the water by a little after seven a.m. After dropping anchor, there was a slight breeze blowing through the great expanse of water and marsh and the tranquility at that hour felt like the beginning of the world. You could flush a Heron and watch it fly off without saying a word.

Later in the morning after a long productive stretch of ecstatic shouting and laughing (in between the intense whispering when pulling the lines and traps) we found ourselves with a peach basket full of big crabs. After telling us how to pull and retrieve the anchor, my Father told us how to cover the Jimmy’s (male crabs) with seaweed in order to keep them cool and alive. He let us take turns steering the boat as well. About half-way in, he told us to feed the left-over bait to the Gulls who followed in our wake until the bait was gone and this was another good thing to do. After that, we could not stop looking at the crabs in the basket nor could we stop talking about them as they scuttled about vainly in their limited Death-Row space.

After docking at Otto’s and pulling the basket and our personal gear from the skiff, my Father would squareup with Otto or one of his employees over a cold beer and then we would walk home. Home was my Aunt Rita’s duplex which was several blocks from the dock...I can only describe that afternoon walk as glorious on every level. We were nothing less than a Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn conquering army under the benevolent command of my Father “Babe”- our very own King Neptune. The neighbors and passersby came out or stopped us in our barefoot path to gaze at the briny jewel box treasure chest catch from Grassy Sound-our catch! They ooh-ed, aah-ed, nodded their approval and complimented us on our prowess as crabbers. Some offered to buy them from us but we weren’t selling. Salt-strained, sunburned and tanned, we beamed with pride and exhilaration as my Father smiled and laughed out loud at the stripped-down joy of it all. King Neptune then instructed his two boy army to march on...For these brackish, ornery hardshell creatures had to be cooked alive in a boiling witches brew of water, vinegar, salt, flat beer, pickle juice, old bay, red pepper, bay leaf and a smaller variety of old time not-so-secret ingredients...And like everything else that stoked his roaring Wildwood fire, my Father, King Neptune indeed, had his Crab Boil down to a science. All you had to do was watch, listen and follow his instructions.