On the Jersey Shore, family, and the wild distribution of human remains — Part 1
I spent a splendid weekend in New Jersey, which is not a sentence I ever expected to say. Granted, I grew up there, so one hopes I have spent at least a few splendid weekends in the place. Further complicating this sentiment is the fact that my primary reason for going was to host a memorial for my Dad, who died back in November. So forgive me if it seems odd that I had, all told, such a great time.
For reference, I grew up in what I’ve come to call “Bruce Springsteen Country”: Asbury Park and the beaches surrounding that landmark boardwalk were home to me, and to the past couple generations of my family. There’s a pipe organ in a big church in Ocean Grove, the odd little Victorian town one down from Asbury Park, that my great grandfather built. (The organ, not the church.) I was raised with sand between my toes. (Also, ceaselessly, in my butt.) And when I tried to go to the beach during the day this past weekend and remembered that I had to buy a beach pass to do it, I was just as mad as I was at age 9 or so, when they first started charging people to set foot on the beaches — or perhaps, when I first understood the fact. The scruffy old beach attendant and I had a nice civil exchange, sans eye contact, in which he intoned the litany he was hourly made to pronounce in answer to my question: “Do I really have to pay just to go down to the ocean for a few minutes?” “Only if it’s between 9am and 6pm during the season.” Sigh, grumble. “I’ll take two.” “Fourteen dollars.”
Suffice to say it was a weekend of much nostalgia, triggering of memories, falling into old patterns, and, gracefully and gratefully, finding new ones.
On Friday night my partner Chris and I cruised slowly into Point Pleasant Beach, a place where I, admittedly, had not spent all that much time as a kid. Some, to be sure; its Jenkinson’s boardwalk is wonderful, and was a nigh-requisite teenage hangout in the summer for the youth of Wall High School and surrounding. But it was considered “wild” enough by my mother’s side of the family that I was seldom permitted.
Nevertheless, in lieu of a Holiday Inn Express I had booked a room at the Atlantic Motel, a magnificent dump a block from the inlet where the fishing boats come in and a marvelous foggy ten minutes’ walk to the boardwalk.
Okay, “dump” is a bit strong. It looks pretty dump-ish on the outside, but the rooms are clean and recently-enough renovated.
Either way: we walked late down to the Waterfront (Jack Baker’s; as with Jenkinson’s, most properties along the Shore are owned by just a couple guys), listened to Queen and Sabbath, drank a beer, and stood out on the deck because the seats were all wet and the bar was too loud. It was an intense night: the ocean smelled amazing to me (Southern-CA-born-and-bred Chris found it smelled like fish), the fog was highly moody, the Jersey Shore mainstay had Goose Island IPA and not just Bud and Coors. We had a lovely, low-key evening, and walked back to the motel to collapse after our 7-hour drive.
In the morning, we hit a local joint with the wonderfully meta name, “I’m A Local Beach House Cafe.” All there was as it should be, with perky teenage servers not yet bored of their new summer jobs, and older couples with heckin smol doggos sitting out at the wet tables in the sparkling white gravel. Afterwards, we needed to remind ourselves that we have a convertible, even if it is a Smart Car. I drove us up to Sea Girt Beach, where we got out of the car and tested the empty sands for a bit. Nobody stopped us to ask for badges, because nobody was there.
Afterwards, we drove up the coast with the top down as far as Ocean Grove, through Spring Lake with its insane multi-million-dollar beachfront homes (but separated by a road, so that global warming doesn’t take them out); Belmar with its mini-golf and modest arcades; Bradley Beach, for which we classically had to wait out a drawbridge. In Ocean Grove, there was a street fair, and the air was rich with popcorn, cotton candy, and fried dough. I was nearly mesmerized; I let countless beautifully diverse and smiling people with their children and dogs cross the street, until I realized we were late.
We booked it up to Red Bank where I had planned the memorial, twining around the local lakes and inlets and shooting up the ugliest part of 35 to the Parkway. I think I waltzed in there just at the stroke of two, carrying the big third-grade-project cardboard trifold photo board I’d brought along with a bunch of beer and speakers I didn’t end up using. (The speakers, not the beer.) There was a long table and a quiet pizzeria and a bunch of relatives I hadn’t seen since I was seven, and I put all my stuff down and stood up my third-grade project and plugged my phone into the speaker I did end up using and put my Dad’s music on. I hugged my Aunt Sally, who is the best, and Uncle Gun, who is tied for the best. When I was setting up my altar, Gun said to me, “John’s in the car,” with that slight Teutonic accent and quirk of the mouth that allows him to say such things and have them be hilarious and kind. “Well, bring him in!” They did — a green plastic container the size and shape of a large brick, which weighed about twenty pounds. We put him on the altar with his pictures and little LED candles and the guest book for people to sign. I could almost hear him laughing.
I re-met my uncle Bill and aunt Patti, whom I literally hadn’t laid eyes on since I was a kid. My half-sister, who I didn’t know was my sister until I was in my teens, was there with her husband and kids, and they were excellent. My first-ever boyfriend showed up, and the brother and sister I grew up with — my mom’s friend’s kids, and we sat and talked about how fucked up high school was. My dad’s friend Ben was there, in this huge awkward wheelchair, and everyone scrambled awkwardly to make sure he had what he needed. And Catherine, the woman of about 50 that my Dad got to know in the last few years of his life, came with her dad, and they were absolutely lovely. Catherine cried a bit, and I didn’t, which didn’t seem odd, somehow. She was undoubtedly closer to him than I was, at the end. She told me that he was her best friend, even though he was hard to talk to sometimes with how his brain worked. I still was close enough to him to know what she meant: sometimes he could be infuriatingly manic, and others, his listening could be as deep as the sea. She looked like one of us with her red hair and blue eyes and sweet round face, and she ran her eyeliner when she talked about him. I hugged her, feeling family. My boyfriend noted that he looked at me across the room several times that day and I looked small, or at least normal-sized, amid the Hutzley clan.
We ate good pizza and subs (thin crust! oil and vinegar and shredded iceberg and red onions!), drank a few beers, and I started a short round of telling stories about Dad. Not too many took me up on that, but Aunt Patti obligingly told one about John paying the server at one of her parties so he could eat an entire plate of shrimp. My uncle Gun, who, amid Hutzleys, is the shorty of the family at maybe 5'10", told how he used to salute and call my Dad “Sir.” (He was 6'8", and possibly the least “sir”-inspiring human ever to live.) Somewhere Gun has a picture of me, Sally, and my sister Lisa all in a row, showing the powerful genetic strain of my dad’s eyes. I know I’ll cry again when I see it, the way I am, just a little, writing this.
Here are Part 2, featuring Even More Family, and Part 3, featuring Way More Jersey Boardwalk Action. As always, if you like my writing and would like to help sustain it, please consider donating at my Patreon.
