Freddogg Off The Chain

Three friends riding in a gray 1963 V.W. Beetle with a sunroof, gas was 30 cents a gallon, each was packing a five dollar bill and sleeping bag heading to the Jersey Shore from suburban tract housing Philadelphia. We were migratory creatures riding in economy class but didn’t have the social awareness to realize it. We slept in marshes and on the beach under rescue boats, never owned a cooler but always seemed to be around free food and beer.
We swam in the warm ocean at night, loved the taste of salt water and did the slop and the pony to the music on the A.M car radio. The girls we encountered on the boardwalk were freckled and tanned and copper-toned of hard muscle and always surly to any invitation to a party. “Get a job, creep” was a little harsh for us boys from the way back outback but we expected it and, in fact, the nastier the putdown the more likely the girl matriculated at a Catholic girls’ school.
Forty-five years later with regular gas at $3.75 a gallon and families driving Expeditions, Escalades, Suburbans and Sequoias, resort towns on Delmarva are worried that the wandering squadrons of squanderers of disposable income will spend their leisure funds on backyard tents, gas grills, and hamburger and hotdogs purchased from Sam’s Club at bulk prices kicked by plenty of beer and chilled Schnapps plucked from the Rubbermaid fish cooler. There are no travel costs and no driver designees; home is just a Fosbury Flop away.
The fun-for-its-own-sake summer family vacation has become cost prohibitive for the unimaginative sub prime marauders of the market place with rental properties charging through the roof prices and camping has become just too Coleman stove gay with all the accessories and pup tents and teeny hibachis and little TVs and campsites booking weeks in advance.
The only foolproof hedge fund to guard against cost prohibitive family vacations was understood by our low rolling, rear engine propelled, sun drenched and mosquito drilled five dollar friends a half century ago. Move to the Coast; find a job in a place where you can see the ocean every day. Live somewhere that is environmentally sensitive to migratory water fowl. Make friends with watermen, know the various hunting seasons, buy an expensive shotgun you will never fire and join a club that ends with the word “unlimited.”
Liberal Arts graduates and charter members of Parrot Head Clubs understood the endless summer of our youth before it was too late. We understood that young people tan and old people weather but where is the transition zone? Perhaps Dylan understood: “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” You can feel the salt air absorbed by your pores as it drenches your soul changing your “attitude and latitude” as Jimmy Buffet sang.
The vacation and the party and the careless spending on entertainment come to locals every summer like tides running under a floating dock. The vacationers are a monetary necessity for resort town economies but only if you are in the service industry. Teachers and lawyers are immune from dire economic indicators unlike those who traffic in tourists.
The greatest gift passed down to the children and grandchildren from those who moved to no horse beach towns that rolled up the sidewalks after Labor Day 40 years ago is the gift of being “Born at the Beach,” which should be on a tee shirt.
Kids who don’t know how lucky they are--isn’t that what we want for our children? They grow up among loving adults who have never grown up. The party always comes to them; they never have to travel.
Beach kids have a certain ingrained look of hospitality etched into their faces. They enjoy entertaining their landlocked cousins and shrugging their shoulders when asked “Is the tide coming in or going out?”
The Cummings Turbo Diesel free market economy of America has turned in on itself, swallowing careless spenders like gulls on garbage, terns on trash and otters in the outflow pipe.
The Beetle Bug is returning to the beach but it is a lark not a necessity. Sleep in a bag back by the bay with five dollars in your pocket and a can of warm beer and Homeland Security will be on you like greenheads on an oiled fat back.
You can’t go home again but the smart ones moved to the beach a long time ago.