THE SCORE AT THE SHORE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (07-01-21)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     Just as we were about to leave last Thursday afternoon for a long Father's Day weekend at the Jersey shore, an extraordinary thing happened: the United States Congress did something. It made a federal holiday out of June 19th, also known as "Juneteenth." It commemorates the day that the Union proclaimed it was going to enforce the abolition of slavery in Texas, the last state to do so. It's a day that should clearly remind us how easy it is for greed to attempt to justify something unjustifyable. And how carefully we must protect the mainstream press, voting rights and everything that keeps democracy from being taken over by the greedy.

     It's also a day that resulted in the confluence of TWO holidays, which meant an extra hour of traffic on the Garden State. If I shorten the name of the holiday to "Junth" I can get an earlier start on the Tappan Zee Bridge. My sisters come from up and down the Eastern Seaboard to spend a little time together by the sea with me and their kids.

     On Father's Day, dads ride for free at the Castaway Cove amusement park. They used to ask to see your kids so they could confirm that you're an actual dad. We had four dads and only one baby, so we were thinking we could pass the baby down the line as handed them our tickets, but luckily it didn't come to that. I'm not one to look down on anybody, but the ferris wheel is my favorite, because the beach looks like an ant farm from up there. It's much more pleasant than thinking the same thing about my kitchen counter.

     At night we traveled over the bridge to Somers Point in search of beer, since Ocean City is a dry town. Nightlife was almost back. Almost, because staffing is short these days; some blame plentiful unemployment checks, others blame stagnant pay, but it may just be that in a strange year of peaks and valleys, people have shifted their priorities. One restaurant said that their new chef was arriving July 1st, he's probably also stuck somewhere on the Garden State. Also, all the pool tables are missing in action, either to make room for regular tables, or a casualty of coronavirus overzealousness. If anyone ever caught covid from handling the balls, they certainly never told anyone about it.

     In the morning you can bicycle the two-plus mile boardwalk, and you'll have plenty of competition. You'll be sharing the road with strollers, strollers pushing strollers, joggers with no pressing engagements, power-walkers, scooters, e-scooters, e-bikes, surreys and parents teaching their kids how to almost run into me with their bicycles. I even saw a guy on a goofy eliptical contraption, looking very smug as if he knew the exact opposite of what I was thinking. It's a jungle out there, and everyone is vying for position, because someone is always trying to pass somebody who is trying to pass somebody else, and it's the same with the people going in the other direction. But it's a pleasant ride, and I realized that the only reason I have to try to go any faster is to get to the end quicker so I can relax sooner. Maybe I should just relax first and see what happens. I saw a young mom pushing a pram with a cute baby in it, and I could fast forward in my head 80 years to see it the other way around.

     This year we saw something a little different: a handler walking around the boardwalk with a falcon on his arm. I thought that they could have been on a date but it turns out the town hired falconers to parade around with birds of prey to scare off the seagulls. It seems to work, and the seagulls can be intimidating. Even as we were on the boardwalk eating doughnuts, a tern swooped down and grabbed my neice's doughnut and almost flew away with the whole thing. It was a scary Hitchcockian moment, and I immediately rushed over to her to find out if the doughnut was okay. Then, after the birds of prey appeared on the boardwalk, there was not even a pickled herring gull to be seen, although the falcons made off with a family of six.

     And when I looked around and saw that there was finally a decent parking spot, I realized it was Sunday, and our long weekend was shorter than I hoped. I figured if we leave early enough we can beat next year's traffic.