It’s The Summer of Seventy-Nine
It’s the end of October, outside my window the leaves have changed, the nights come quick, so what better time to talk about a shore house my friends and I rented during the summer of nineteen-seventy-nine in Seaside Heights, New Jersey.
What amazes me, when I look back at this house, and the fact that we rented it for the entire summer, was the fact that I didn’t have a job.
Where the hell did I get the money?
The world may never know.
But, we had a house, less than a block for the beach. There were six of us (more or less); when you have a shore house the number of occupants is fluid.
While you read this, you’ll notice I don’t use anyone’s name. There is a simple reason. Its been over forty years since these events, and my memory may juggle the characters and their situations. I’d rather keep them anonymous than get them wrong.
The events are real, the names have been omitted to protect the innocent.
Get a Job You Bum
Before the summer started, three of us got jobs in a restaurant on the boardwalk. Truth be told, only one of us actually worked there.
A few days into our non-employment, as we enjoyed time on the front porch, noticed the manager of the restaurant head toward us down the street. Like world class athletes, we sprinted from the porch, ran through the house like it was on fire, emerged from the back door, and hurdled the back fence for the gold, and disappeared into the night, never to work (or not work) there again.
Speaking of restaurants.
On the boardwalk in Seaside was a pizza place called The Sawmill. It opened at eleven-thirty every day for lunch, and had specials like ‘two hot dogs and soda for a dollar’ or ‘slice and a soda for a dollar’.
When they rolled up the garage door entrance to open, we would be there. Day after day, week after week, we were there, on the boardwalk, as we waited to place our order.
One afternoon, after weeks of this, as the garage door cleared open, the owner looked at us, sighed, and asked, “Don’t you guys have jobs?”
“Nope,” we answered in unison, “two dogs and a soda, please”.
War – What is it Good For
Food was not the only commodity that we looked to save money on, there was also alcohol.
Morgan David 20/20 is, to be generous, a wine. It is not a wine to be served at dinner, or on a date, or in any social situation. It is a wine that twenty-somethings will drink to get drunk quickly if they have no common sense, and very little money. Hence, its nickname:
Mad/Dog 2020.
To keep drinking from becoming boring, you need to be creative (you didn’t know that, did you?).
One afternoon, with novelty glass in hand (holds a half-gallon of liquid) filled with Mad/Dog 2020, played the card game War with another occupant of the house.
Rules? Simple—you drink every time you lose.
Why is this a drinking game? Because someone loses on every hand. In fact, sometimes both participants lose on a single hand. Bottom line, everyone gets very drunk. Why is drinking Mad/Dog 2020 significant in this game? Because by the end, each person gets lobotomy drunk.
Which led me to this:
After an afternoon of playing War, and no longer able to function as an adult, I staggered into the house and went to bed.
To clarify, this house did not have bedrooms. It had one big room with a half-dozen mattresses on the floor. It had two entrances, with curtains for doors, and to land a spot at night it was first come first served.
I entered the empty room, fell onto the closest mattress, and fell asleep (passed out).
Not sure how much time passed, but suddenly a slew of bodies burst through the curtains, landed on the once empty mattresses, and feigned sleep. A few seconds after that, the curtain drew back, and I was looking up at a not-to-happy police officer.
“I don’t care who took it,” the officer said in a slow, deliberate voice, “just put it back.”
Without another word, he turned and walked away.
After a moment to process what happened, I got up and went outside.
Not sure what their end game was, but for some reason my friends unplugged and rolled a soda vending machine from the corner deli to the front of our house. Then, to escape from being discovered, ran into that same house, leaving the vending machine on the sidewalk.
I turned, and paraphrased the police officer’s words with, “I don’t care who took it, just put it the fuck back!”
It’s Definitely Coming down
In May of nineteen-seventy-three NASA launched the space station SKYLAB. After nine years in space, with its orbit decayed, SKYLAB would return to Earth in July of nineteen-seventy-nine. No one knew exactly where it would enter Earth’s atmosphere, so people were rightfully nervous.
One Air Force general, in order to assuage people’s concerns said, “It’s definitely coming down”.
I know I felt better after hearing that.
We knew we had to do something, and we knew drinking would definitely be involved.
In the nineteen-seventies, Utica Club Beer could be purchased in beer balls (no time for jokes, please). They held about five gallons of beer, was the size of a medicine ball, made of a frosty white plastic.
Day after day we would buy a beer ball, divest it of it’s content, and move on to the next. Once a beer ball was empty, a hole was cut in the bottom, the plastic cleaned of any residual beer, then it was given to me.
I drew a cartoon face on the front, nothing particular, just whatever came out of my fingers. The general’s quote was written on the back, and the process repeated until we had enough, one for each member of the house.
Once completed, we sat on our porch, beers in hand, happy in the knowledge that if SKYLAB crashed anywhere near Seaside, we were protected with our heads squarely inside our helmets.
So This is Christmas
After SKYLAB burned and scattered harmlessly into the India Ocean (our helmets worked!), we realized a holiday was just around the corner.
What holiday?
July twenty-fifth, ‘Half-Way to Christmas’ of course.
We bought an artificial Christmas Tree (how, in the middle of July, I don’t know). Set it up on our front porch and decorated it with empty beer cans and bottles stabbed on each branch.
It was around this time we noticed that entire families, who returned to their cars after a day at the beach, would cross the street as to not walk directly in front of our house.
On July twenty-fifth we took the tree up to the beach, planted it in the sand, and celebrated Christmas. Not many, if any, put their blankets by our group. In truth, if I saw those people today, I’d think ‘what a bunch of assholes’.
Yes, we were those assholes.
The Church of Perpetual Sorrow
And through it all, there was Rose.
In hindsight, I feel sorry for Rose. She was our neighbor, lived alone, and was a full time resident of the town. If I was Rose, I wouldn’t be mad at us (we were loud, but not bad), I’d be mad at the idiot who rented the house to us.
Rose would sit in a folding chair in front of her house (no porch) and talk to us throughout the day.
“A lot of dead soldiers last night,” she said one morning and I honestly didn’t know what she meant. Was there a battle? A national emergency with the armed forces?
No.
To Rose, empty beer bottles or cans left on the ground, were dead soldiers.
Rose gave us food, but also admonished our actions at times. We were respectful of her, but didn’t curtail our actions because of her.
Rose saw it all. A group of guys with plastic decorated beer balls on their heads. A Christmas tree with beer bottles as ornaments. Drinking games and dead soldiers. People coming and going all hours of the day and night. Families crossed the street to avoid our house (and hers, unfortunately, by association)
It was a long summer for us. Maybe even longer for Rose.
Rose would come out periodically, broom in hand, and sweep the small patch of cement in front of her house. She didn’t seem happy (hopefully not because of us) so we called her ‘St. Rose of the Church of Perpetual Sorrow’.
Did I mention we were assholes?
