Sunday, November 4, 2012

Seaside Heights



Every time I remember the summer weekends when my children were little I have to smile.
Every Saturday and Sunday where the same, I would open the front door to find 5 or 6 children sitting on my porch with their beach towel under their arms looking at me with puppy eyes and asking me if I was going to the beach.
Of course the answer was always yes and they knew it. My husband and I would pack the station wagon with our two children and all the kids in the block and we went for the 2 hr. ride to Seaside Heights.
My children were the youngest ones at 3 and 4 when we started; the neighborhood kids were between 6 and 10. They all behaved beautifully because they knew that if they did not behave we would not bring them any longer. One of my nieces use to came with us sometimes as did some of the kids friends.
Back then we did not have seat belts or booster seats so we were able to pack many children in the station wagon, which was nice, now a day we would be able to only bring my two and one more, that’s it. Anyway that has nothing to do with what I am writing, that it’s for another day.
It was so much fun to play in the white sands and bathe in the salty clear waters.
We would go to the boardwalk for a walk and eat a big delicious pizza for lunch, one of the best pizzas you will ever have are in New Jersey.
Sometimes they would go in some of the rides and my husband loved to play the boardwalk games and win stuffed animals for the kids.
We did that for many years and we loved every minute of it as did the kids.
You see, that it what most everybody did on the weekends, we went to the beach, well actually we were the only ones in my neighborhood that did that every weekend, we did it Saturday and Sunday, anyway, many people did go to the beach.
We got to meet some families that were there every weekend, families like us that enjoyed the beauty of the Jersey beaches.
It was devastating to see pictures of the Seaside’s roller coaster in the water, to see the boardwalk gone, to see the beach town in ruins. Such a beautiful place it was…
I don’t live in the states any longer but for the period that I lived in New Jersey, Seaside Heights was a big part of my life, one that I always will remember.
Let me clarify that this was before those guidos from New York ruin the reputation of Seaside and when it was called the beach instead of the shore.