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Oh Christmas Tree

/ Sue and Frank D'Elia / 2 Comments

The Christmas Tree is perhaps the one universal symbol of the Christmas Season, and has been the centerpiece of our Christmas celebration for all our lives. If you read my recent blog about Christmas Memories (https://rnewadventures.com/2022/12/12/christmas-in-the-city/) you may remember me saying that in our family, the tradition was that your folks put up the tree and that Santa decorated it, and that was indeed the tradition till it wasn’t, but it spawned a new tradition, making the decorating of the Christmas Tree an event. I remember back in our Jackson Heights apartment sharing the task with my best friend David, and some friends we both went to high school with. When we moved to Bayside, the tradition was expanded to include even more folks. Some were people I went to college with and others were folks I worked with. It just became another occasion and a way to celebrate the joy of the holiday season, with family and friends who were like family.

In a comment about my last post, my college friend Andy Bellenkes said “I rejoice in the memories I cherish, celebrating a Christmas or two with the D’Elias, watching your Dad put up the lights along the roof line of your house, sitting with you, your Mom and Dad (and others whose identities at the moment I cannot recall) in the living room and feeling the familial warmth and friendship that in my memories so characterized your home.” Even after Susie and I got married, we continued this tradition at my folks house.

Here’s a picture from my folk’s house in Bayside, at what was Billy’s first Christmas Tree decorating at his Grandparent’s home. An evening populated with good friends I worked with at ABC.

That baby in my arms is just born William Ryan D’Elia, who now is the father of our

three Grandkids. The little girl in front of my Mom is Melinda McGuire Geraghty,

now the Mom of two adorable little people.

As our kids got older, we also continued the tradition at our Mineola house. Some years there were friends of the kids involved, sometimes it was just family, but it was always an event. The holiday toasting flutes would be brought out, the André would be poured, and somehow the tree would always get decorated! I must admit that I am married to a lady with a sort of Christmas Tree Ornament OCD, who would often times rearrange the ornaments after they’d been placed on the tree (especially when the kids were small, and couldn’t reach that high), but we never objected! It’s a tradition of ours that started in New Hyde Park, traveled with us to Mineola, and now resides on Pennlyn Place in Ocean City!

And then there were the ornaments themselves that had become a D’Elia Family Tradition! There were a few things that came from our folks, that Susie and I remember seeing on the trees we had growing up, giving us a kind of time continuum from our childhood. Then there are ornaments that have memories attached to them from our 44 married Christmases, either from places we bought them or from events in our life. Although our tree is beautiful to us, it’s not a designer tree, with carefully curated ornaments! It’s a road map of our family, and our 44 Christmases!

So there you have it…the story of one family’s Christmas Tree, and the central part it has played in our holiday celebration!

As Susie and I sit here in Ocean City on this Christmas Eve, and look at the 44th edition of Our Family’s Christmas Tree, we think back on all our wonderful Christmas memories from Christmases past, and we reflect on the blessings of Christmas that we’ve experienced. We hope that this Christmas finds you feeling blessed, and knowing that you are loved by those in your life! Merry Christmas……

When Technology Kicks You In The Ass

/ Sue and Frank D'Elia / 5 Comments

We live in a marvelous world. A world that those of us of a certain age remember from our childhood being called the “World of Tomorrow!” We walk around with a computer in our pocket called an iPhone, that’s got more power than the computers that carried astronauts to the moon. Our cars literally think, and can tell us when they need service, control our speed relative to the car ahead of us, warn us when we start to wander into another lane or even brake for us. We can watch hundreds of channels via cable TV, and with Amazon Prime , Netflix, and the like, watch any movie ever made! Alexa can turn on lights, remind us of appointments, and actually run our house. Let’s face it, most of us will never use all the power that our cell phone possesses, or truly understand everything our 2022 car can do, and not even scratch the surface of the entertainment options 2022 brings us, or truly trust our friend Alexa! As great as technology is, it has also made us so dependent on it that when it’s not there, we are at a loss. Ever forgotten your cell phone at home???

Well, as this week started, we were going through our own version of a vast wasteland down here at the beach in Ocean City. Let me tell you our tale. Last week’s weather brought a lot of wind and rain, and over the weekend, we noticed that the lights would flicker from time to time. We had this back in our old house on Long Island, and just figured it was the storm and the wind blowing our above-ground power lines around. However, all day Monday, when there was little wind and the sky was sunny and bright, we noticed that the lights were flickering. Susie first noticed it when she tried to tighten a bulb in our front bathroom, only to discover that it was burned out. She wondered if the flicker was caused by that bulb, but as the day went on, we noticed the flickering in the other bathroom, our bedroom dresser lamp, and a lamp in the living room. Okay, this was something different. I went to bed Monday night trying to figure if it was something under our control doing this (perhaps the wine refrigerator or something else), or if it was an issue outside of our control.

Tuesday morning, bright and early, I called Atlantic City Electric to report the issue. Forget about speaking to a human being, but I figured I was on track when one of the categories on the problem list was “lights flickering”. Within a couple of hours, a service man from AC Electric was here, but his news was not good! Our “Meter Socket Connector” was severely corroded, and this was our responsibility, not the electric company’s! (Of course!) A little research, and then a call to DiMarco Electric had Joe DiMarco over here Wednesday morning looking at our problem. He noted corrosion not only on the meter box, but also on the line from the street and the line from our box to the house. Within about 15 minutes he had a quote for us, which we accepted, and a little after 1:00 he rolled in with his bucket truck and crew. By the time they left around 4, we had new service lines from the street to the meter box, a new meter box, and lines from the box right into our breaker panel in our bedroom. Even better, we no longer had flickering lights! Issue one resolved!

On to our next challenge or, “What the Hell is our House Trying to Tell Us Now” challenge!! Monday morning, as we were sitting here starting our day, suddenly our internet drops out. This had been happening recently and we expected that like in the past, it would pop back on shortly. Only problem was it didn’t! Then we discovered it wasn’t the internet, but our cable tv and our DVR too! Okay, now this was an issue! A look at the Comcast app told us that the problem we had needed an on-site service call, and the first appointment we could get was on Thursday morning! Since Susie had a 9:20 appointment at Shore Memorial for a Covid test prior to her hip replacement surgery next week, we took the noon to 2:00 window. So here we were Monday, with no internet and no access to cable TV or things we’d recorded on our DVR. Luckily we still have a blue ray player in our system and a good stock of disks, so for the rest of Monday, we watched an old Abbott and Costello movie, one of the 3 Gidget movies (we’d watched the other two already), and a Pierce Brosnan movie, After the Sunset. As far as internet access, we turned to our iPhones, burning through cellular data as we kept up with the world! Day one down, 2+ more to go!

Tuesday morning I had an idea. As Comcast customers, we were entitled to use Xfinity hot spots around town. Could there be some near us? Turns out that there were, and although it was more of a pain to hook up our iPads than just using our own wifi, it worked! Then I had another idea…could I stream video on these hot spots. I did a speed test, and although they were nowhere as fast as our home wifi, it looked like it might work! We’d perfected the last couple of extended stays in Florida using my Apple MacBook Air to connect to our Xfinity account, and watch things through the computer that we had on our DVR. I also had an Apple MacBook Air to HDMI cable adapter that we’d used on these trips, along with a 20 foot HDMI cable. A quick turning around of our living room flat screen to find an open HDMI socket to plug in the cable and a connection to my laptop, and we were ready to go. I got the laptop connected to one of the hot spots, went to the Xfinity website and to the section that displays our DVR’s contents. Fingers crossed, I hit play on one of the shows we’d recored and viola…it worked!! Again, not as easy as just picking up the remote, but we were able to watch shows we wanted to see, not old movies!

Our appointment on Thursday was from 12 to 2 PM, and as typically happens, it was 1:00 before the gentleman showed up. I figured corrosion on the outside cables (like our electric problem), but it turned out to be the main connector in the wall that had gone south! The installer changed out the offending connector, and in the process, installed an upgraded modem we were entitled to. I am happy to report that we are now back in the 21st century with super speedy internet speeds, WIFI, and Cable TV! Ain’t life grand!

So there you have it. I have to tell you that earlier in the week, I really wondered what the technology Gods had against me, as the lights flickered and the cable went south. Of course, my first thought was were they connected, and if so, what had I done to screw up both. My second thought was that Susie’s surgery was just a few days away on March 1st, and we needed a whole house for her. In the end, turns out that sometimes things just happen, and with some patience (and money) you can fix almost anything! Of course, my fear almost came true when they were fixing our electricity, and during the process turned all our power off, and Susie happened to be reclined in the electric recliner! OOPS! Don’t worry, with my help she got out, but it wouldn’t have been so easy with a new hip!

Onward and upward!

The Dog Days of Summer

/ Sue and Frank D'Elia / Leave a comment
Breaker Boy and Beach Boy show the only way to enjoy the beach during the Dog Days of Summer!
Photo courtesy of Doc Anderson

Wikipedia defines the Dog Days of Summer as, “the hot, sultry days of summer. They were historically the period following the heliacal rising of the star system Sirius (known colloquially as the “Dog Star”), which Hellenistic astrology connected with heat, drought, sudden thunderstorms, lethargy, fever, mad dogs, and bad luck. They are now taken to be the hottest, most uncomfortable part of summer in the Northern Hemisphere.” According to the Old Farmers Almanac, “The “Dog Days” of summer last from July 3 to August 11.” Welcome to the Dog Days of Summer, 2021! Yes, as I write this, we are smack dab in the middle of the Dog Days. I know here at the beach, we are well aware that we are in them, as the humidity and the temperatures sore to beyond uncomfortable heights.

According to the web site Mentalfloss, “Dew point readings between the freezing mark and about 55°F are pretty comfortable. A dew point between 55°F and 60°F is noticeably humid. It’s muggy when the dew point is above 60°F, and it’s uncomfortable outside when it ticks above 65°F. Any dew point readings above 70°F are oppressive and even dangerous, the kind of stickiness you experience in the tropics or during a brutal summer heat wave.” For the better part of the past 2 weeks, our daily dew point (which is a combination of the temperature and the humidity levels) has hovered in the mid 70s! As I write this, our mid day temperature is 83 degrees with a real feel of 89 degrees and the dew point is 73 degrees!

Even when you’re actually on our beach, unless there is a nice breeze from the ocean, believe me, you feel that kind of temperature and dew point. If the wind is coming from the land instead of off the ocean, you get a dry warm breeze, which is often accompanied by bugs! Even better!

As Facebook reminds me daily, back before we lived at the beach full-time, this was the exact time we’d set aside at the house for our vacation. It started as two weeks in July, then went to three, and the last year I worked at WABC, we took the entire month of July in Ocean City. Now, we were admittedly younger back then (anywhere between 5 and 16 years younger), and all we had was our vacation time down here, so the heat and/or humidity wasn’t as much of a yard stick that determined our beach time. Today, that situation is different!

Luckily, we are just 500 feet from the boardwalk and just beyond it, the beach, so on the way down, after coming out of the beautiful air conditioning, the trip is easy. We traditionally love to get down there early (between 9 and 10 AM), when it’s both cooler and less congested. We unload our beach cart, set up our chairs, and settle in for 2-4 hours of beach time. Honestly, the length of our stay is determined by the weather conditions, if there are bugs or not, and how many jackasses decide to invade our space with their tents, canopies, etcetera. The issues come about however in the Dog Days when it’s time to leave. If we could only twitch our nose like Jeannie did on I Dream of Jeannie, life would be grand, but by the time we pack up, walk back to the boardwalk through the no longer cool sand, and then make our way back to the house, we are drained! A dew point like today really makes it hard to enjoy any part of the beach frankly, and so on many days like this, we choose not to go. We often say that we live here so our beach time is infinite, and although I know that’s not true, we just don’t feel like killing ourselves just to say, “we’ve been to the beach!”

The draining heat and humidity that the Dog Days bring us, change the experience for us. I still need a new knee, Susie needs a new hip, my asthma doesn’t like humidity, and spending EVERYDAY at the beach just isn’t that important to us. I know this may sound like blasphemy from someone who lives at the beach, but sorry, that’s just how we feel. We continue to love being in Ocean City, seeing the water every time we go on or off the island, and love our time at the beach…under our terms! Feeling like you’re in a blast furnace is just not what we’d call, “under our terms.”

On another note, the Dog Days are also known for lethargy and bad luck, and I’m going to add another symptom…writer’s block! The last time I posted a blog was July 3rd, when I talked about the wonderful Father’s Day Weekend we’d had with all our kids and Grandkids. Since then, although I have sat down in front of my MacBook Air multiple times, and even started a few essays, nothing has jelled for me. Yes indeed, lethargy has been rampant in my brain!! But here I am, breaking the curse of Dog Day Lethargy by writing an essay about the Dog Days of Summer! Kind of poetic justice you might say!

Stay cool my friends, and like I do, thank God every day that we enjoy the legacy of Willis Carrier, the man credited with designing the first modern air conditioning system in 1902…probably during the Dog Days of Summer!!

See you on the beach….maybe.

Living in a Beach Town in the Summer

/ Sue and Frank D'Elia / Leave a comment

In January of 2005, Susie and I lived our dream, and bought our beach house in Ocean City, NJ. Located in the north end of town, about 500 feet down the street from the beach, it was truly our home…except during the busy summer months, when we shared our home with some renters, to help pay the mortgage! In November of 2017, we sold our home of 31 years in Mineola, New York, traded our New York license plates and driver’s licenses for the Jersey variety, and the home we bought at the beach in 2005 became our one and only home, and we became full time residents of Ocean City, New Jersey.

Ocean City is the northern most city in Cape May County. Estimates put its 2020 full-time population at around 10,800, but in the busy summer months of July and August, the population of our little beach town is closer to 150,000 men, women, and children. Befitting its start as a Christian Summer Retreat, Ocean City is a dry community. No liquor sales in town, no BYOB at local restaurants, no kegs on the beach. There are, however, two huge liquor stores just outside the city limit, over the bridges on the mainland, in Marmora and Somers Point. We are about 12 miles south of Atlantic City, and we get off the Garden State Parkway at Exit 30, so we are 30 miles from Cape May and the end of the Jersey Shore.

What we love about the place is that for better than 8 months of the year, it’s a sleepy little town. The kind of place where people in the local coffee shop and hardware store remember you, and where neighbors look out for neighbors. In July and August, it’s a hopping resort town, full of families looking to spend their week or two at the shore in our town. Are they all wonderful folks? Not always, but the vast majority of them are long time repeat visitors, who consider Ocean City their home at the shore. For years before we bought in 2005, that’s how we felt. Back when we rented out our house, we had lots of folks that came back year after year, and noted in our guest book that they felt they were home when they moved into our place.

So, how do we adjust during those months when our little sleepy down gains over 140,000 residents? Obviously, with more walkers, bikers, and cars driving around, you must be more vigilant than in say, January. It really seems that for some on vacation, turning their brain to “OFF” is a part of the decompression process. People walking and on bikes may pop out in front of you as you drive down the street. When you’re walking, you run the risk of our visitors not stopping at crosswalks when you’re trying to cross the street. Occasionally you’ll find yourself stuck behind a whole family riding 5 or 6 bikes all the way across the street you’re trying to drive down. Some consider stop signs and parking rules just suggestions, while others will drive down the street at 5 miles an hour sightseeing all the way! So # 1 on our list of Summer Rules is Be Vigilant!

Rule # 2 we try to abide by is only going across town on streets with traffic lights. There are a lot of stop signs in Ocean City, and in the winter months, it’s very easy to go across town on any street you desire. There are also streets all across town that have traffic lights in every block. From about mid-May through September, these are the only streets we use!

The third rule is all about traffic control. There are two exits for Ocean City on the Garden State Parkway. Exit 30 is the main exit and Exit 25 is for the southern end of town. In 2012, a new 9th Street Bridge opened up, replacing the 1932 bridge. Exit 30 leads to this new bridge which in turn leads right on to 9th Street in Downtown Ocean City. As such, it’s the main gateway to our town, and because of that, is avoided at all costs on Saturdays in season! House rentals in Ocean City typically run from Saturday to Saturday, starting between 2 and 3 PM the first week, and ending at about 10AM the second Saturday. Both the bridge at 34th Street (Exit 25) and the 9th Street Bridge need to be avoided Saturday morning as folks leave, and Saturday afternoon as people arrive. If you don’t have to leave Ocean City on a Saturday, DON’T, but if you do, take one of the two secret resident bridges into town! (They’re not really secret, but rather not bridges that most visitors know about or use…all the better for us!) So rule #3 would be to think twice before leaving town on a Saturday!

Ocean City has a great 2.5 mile boardwalk, filled with family friendly stores, places to eat, amusements, and mini golf! On a typical summer evening, it is THE thing to do in town if you are a visitor. However, there are lines to get food, back-ups at the mini golf courses, and lots of people trying to get on and off rides at the two amusement parks. If you’re a visitor to our fair city, it’s a wonderful way to spend the night, but for residents, not so much. The summer of 1983, oldest son Billy’s first summer on earth, we stayed in Ocean City for a week and did the boardwalk. For the next 30 plus years, we came with all three kids, and others, stayed in Ocean City and did the boardwalk. Even the years both before and after we bought the house, when Susie and I came alone to Ocean City, we did the boardwalk! Now, unless we have visitors that need to be on the boardwalk, we just don’t go! I guess rule #4 would be avoid the boardwalk unless necessary!

And then there’s the beach! We are very fortunate that we like going to the beach early in the morning (9-10 AM), while most visitors seem to do things in the morning, and come to the beach later in the day. Some wait till they’ve had lunch, some bring it with them and dine with the sand and the seagulls! By about the time the beach starts getting crowded, we’ve been there 3 or 4 hours, and are ready to head home for a cool drink and some lunch of our own. So, I guess part one of Rule #5 would be to go to the beach either early or very late (like 3 or 4 o’clock) in the day. We also use the behavior of renters as a rule of thumb. For most folks who arrive on Saturday afternoon, Sunday will be their first beach day, and at the other end of the week, Friday will be their last beach day. We find that Sunday and Friday are the most crowded beach days, so part two of Rule #5 is no beach for us on Friday or Sunday!

Rule #6 is simple…take your business elsewhere! While we love supporting our local businesses during the off season, during the summer months there are limited places to go to eat or shop, and lots more folks eager to experience the local businesses. We just find it easier in the summer to head off island for everything from hardware to bagels! Since we bought our house in 2005, we have discovered more things off the island that we never knew existed in all the years we’d been coming to Ocean City since my first year in 1955. We now consider our neighbor across the bridge, Somers Point, to be part of our community, and find it’s easier in all ways to shop there. While we may still run to the local Acme on 8th street from time to time, it’s far easier to shop at the Shoprite in Somers Point, a store that most visitors have no idea exists!

The pandemic that hit in March of 2020 did change things up. Starting almost immediately after we came home from Florida mid-March, we saw more folks moving into their second homes. Many stayed through the summer, and many more than usual were with us all through this last winter. The real estate market in Ocean City is nuts, with very few properties for sale, and the ones that do come on the market, stay available a very short time and sell for sometimes more than asking. Rentals are also very tight, as we hear that more and more new buyers are planning on using their houses, rather than renting. What this will do for the economy and for our Summer Rules is yet to be seen, but whatever it takes, we will adapt and find a way to make it through the summer, counting the days till our beach town turns back into our sleepy little hometown!

Our Adventure in New Counters!

/ Sue and Frank D'Elia / 1 Comment

Our house on Pennlyn Place in Ocean City was built in 2001. When we bought the place in 2005, it was just 4 years old. At that point, we’d spent 20 years living in a house in Mineola that was approaching 90 years of age. Having 4 year old electrical, plumbing, cabinets, counters, etc was a new experience for us, and one that we loved. In those early years, although we loved being at the house, finances dictated that we rent out the house for 9 to 10 weeks every summer. Although we did painting and updated the furniture, we left the basic house the same. As you probably know, in 2016 I joined Susie in retirement, and in 2017 we sold the Mineola house and officially Ocean City became our home! Now it was time to make the house ours!

We’d always wanted a wine fridge, and after doing a lot of research, we bought a new “under the counter” model. This meant that it vented from the front so it could be buried under a counter. Then we added a glass doored cabinet to the end of our existing cabinets, which would hold glasses, and reside above the wine fridge. Now, all we needed to bring the whole thing together was to extend the counter over the wine fridge and under the glass cabinet!

The wine fridge and new cabinet before it got it’s glass door

The term “Builder’s Grade” denotes the quality of items that a builder puts in a house as part of the basic build. Our countertops certainly qualified as that! Built of Formica over plywood, they were serviceable, but without the cache of stone counters. In the beginning we figured that they were the perfect thing for a house that was still being rented. Unfortunately, they were also green as was the matching fireplace surround. In order to match the greens, the furniture we’d updated in our early years of ownership stayed in the green palate, even though Susie always thought that a beach house should reflect more the nature of it’s seaside environment, and blues and beiges would be much better colors. Now it was time for another updating and for a color change!

Susie did a lot of research on the type of counters she wanted, and everything she read led to manufactured quartz. That decision done, then it was time to select who we should turn to for help with this job. Once again Susie researched, checking out all the kitchen places in both Cape May and Atlantic counties. After several days of combing reviews and ratings, the answer looked obvious to her. Merlino Marble and Granite in Oceanview, NJ had by far the best reviews. Our next question was “How much was this going to cost us?” We took pictures, drew a diagram, and measured what we needed, and then we visited their showroom to see what was what.

We met with with Matt in the Merlino showroom in Oceanview, and talked about the job. He showed us what was available and took our measurements and promised he’d have a quote to us later in the day. After looking at all the samples in the showroom, we went home with 2 samples to choose from, and told him we’d be back the next day to return the samples. Remember, at this point, we still had no idea what it was going to cost us, but we’d pretty much decided that whatever it was, we would do it. That afternoon, true to his word, Matt emailed us a quote and we were surprised by how reasonable the price was. Having selected the quartz we wanted, when we returned the next day, we also told him we wanted to add in the fireplace surround. As quartz wasn’t a good material to use around the fireplace (doesn’t like heat), we walked the yard and quickly picked out a slab of marble we liked, and that worked well with the quartz we’d selected. He once again took our measurements of the fireplace surround, and using the material we’d selected, wrote up a contract.

The next step was to have the official measuring and template done. Here we had a little issue because we had to have a wall built for the far side of our wine fridge, so that it could be integrated into the cabinets. Once that was done, however, I called Charm at the Merlino office, and she sent Chris our way to do the design work. Using a laser, and computer, as well as a good old fashioned tape measure, Chris spent about an hour and a half plotting our counter tops, the island, and the fireplace surround in his cad program. This had to be exact (the reason for both the laser and computer and the tape measure back-up), as the cuts would be made in our quartz based on the design he was preparing. We were once again impressed.

This past Wednesday morning, at about 9:30 AM, Tim, Alex, and Dan showed up and first removed our old counters (goodbye green), and then started to do the prep work for the quartz installation. We had no idea that there was so much prep that had to be done, but they explained that having a good surface made the installation that much better. They used their crane to remove the old counters, and to bring the new quartz up to our porch, and in short order, our new kitchen started taking shape. When they put the first piece in place, we were thrilled, and as the work continued, our thrill level increased. The 3 guys worked very hard, with Tim taking charge of the counters and island while Dan and Alex worked on the fireplace. About 2 and3/4 hours later, the end result was nothing short of perfection, and Susie and I are thrilled at the transformation, and how our add-on cabinet and wine fridge now look like they were there since the place was built!

The entire process, from the first day we walked into the showroom took less than a month. From working with Matt and Charm at the showroom, to having Chris over to template the whole job, to the installation of our new counters, island, and fireplace surround by Tim, Alex, and Dan, Susie and I could not be happier! Everyone at Merlino was professional, and wonderful to work with! It was a real pleasure to have this job done by Merlino Marble and Granite…all home improvement stories should have such a happy ending!

BEFORE AND AFTER PICTURES

Next task is picking out and having someone install the backsplash….wish us luck!

2020…Year in Review – Part Two

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Here’s Part Two of our look back at 2020!

Susie’s Birthday

As the calendar turned to May, the weather turned better, and a major beach replenishment started in the North End of Ocean City! Seems like 2020 was the year of renewals, and we now have more beach sand, but it did take most of the summer. May is, also, of course, the month of Susie’s birthday, and we looked forward to a celebration at Angelo’s because, like mine in January, Susie’s May 28th birthday also fell on our regular Thursday night Angelo’s night! Alas, Covid changed the plans, so we substituted an Angelo’s take out meal and a cake made specially by her boys!

BLM

Late May and early June also brought protests all across our country regarding what many thought was the out of control behavior of many Police Departments towards our black citizens. The phrase Black Lives Mater was heard across the country, and even in our little beach town on the Jersey Shore! After a march in nearby Atlantic City had turned to destruction, there were fears that a similar thing could happen here when a march to Ocean City was planned, but our community and Police Department kept the action level headed and on target. It was a day to be proud of our community!

Summer Weather

June also brought beach weather, and since our porch was completed and in great shape again, a lot of beach and porch time. It’s what living at the shore is all about, and we made sure to take advantage. Susie and I always like going to the beach early in the day, and we continued doing that this year, which made it very easy to not get too close to our fellow beach goers!

The Oasis

Let’s just admit something here…”Our Boys” (Kenny and Chris) were bored! Sitting on the beach or sitting on the front porch reading was not their cup of tea! They did exercises, walked the beach and neighborhood, but really needed a project! One day, Chris came in and told us that Doc got a new backyard grill and that he’d said that Chris could take his old one. Suddenly we had a grill and the boys had a project! The Oasis was born!

As we share a backyard with our co-owners, the first task was creating a private area on our side and easing access to the back yard. We headed over to Lowes and purchased pavers to make a walkway to the back, and some palm trees for a little privacy. The boys now had a project! Neighbors across the street were throwing out some old small wicker tables, and Chris had another project…repaint them! Then Susie saw a gazebo structure online at Lowes, and we went back and purchased that. Another project…build the gazebo! The Oasis was well on the way! Then a set back…suddenly one day, as steaks were grilling, flames came out of the firebox and started the control panel on fire! Oh Boy!! The fire was put out, Doc’s old grill went to the curb, and we went back to Lowes and purchased a brand new grill. Stools were ordered, lights were strung, and the Oasis was in great shape! The boys had enjoyed the project, and we had a new backyard feature!

Outdoor Dining

The last time Susie and I had eaten in a restaurant was back in March, at a Cracker Barrel on our way home from Florida! We’d done take-out, and a lot of cooking, but we missed our Tuesdays at Charlie’s Back Bar with our friend Sue, and our Thursdays at Angelo’s in AC with all our Thursday Angelo’s friends! Early in June, many places started outdoor dining, and we were lucky enough that two of them were our weekly favorites!

Angelo’s converted their parking lot to outdoor dining. They had an extensive waiting area, a beautiful outdoor bar, a free-standing bathroom, and a very nice “dining room”, not under a tent, but covered by colorful sails! All our regular Thursday friends were back, and it was great to be back in the fold! We missed sitting at the bar with our friend Michael, but many times, Michael was our waiter. At other times it was our friends Theresa, or Rhonda, or Patty who’d serve us a couple of Grey Goose Martinis and a selection of the food we loved!!

Charlies took half of their parking lot and erected a tent, and although they were not open on our usual Tuesday due to staffing issues, and were serving a limited menu, we went Wednesdays when our friend Sue (or her daughter Carlye) was the hostess, and other friends like Jessie and Brett were delivering food! It was good to have two of our favorite weekly anchors back in place!

The Boys Head to Florida

Late in July, Kenny and Chris made good on their plan to move to Florida! Entertainment was gone, the cruise industry was closed down, and they needed to move on to their next adventure. Chris had been studying for months to take his Florida real estate broker license, and they’d found a nice Air B&B in St. Pete’s beach and paid for 6 months rent up front. It was time to leave Mom and Dad, after being locked up in the house with us for 4+ months at this point! After a couple of “Good-Bye” Dinners, it was time.

The boys rented a mini van, loaded as much as they could into it, and headed out! Once down in Florida, Chris continued his studies, took the test, and was now a licensed Florida Real Estate Broker – – color us proud! Kenny is now taking the same online course that Chris did!

Please stay tuned as we finish up our look back at 2020 in 2020…Year in Review – Part Three

Christmas 2020 Canceled???

/ Sue and Frank D'Elia / 3 Comments

Christmas is now, and always has been a big event in the D’Elia household. Early in our relationship, I discovered Susie’s love for Christmas, so much so, that on Christmas Day, 1978, I asked her to become my Mrs. Claus, and she said “yes!” This Christmas Day will be the 42nd Anniversary of “the day she said yes!” On our first Christmas in 1979 in our Port Washington apartment, I wanted everything to be perfect! We bought a much too expensive real tree ($75 way back then), but then forgot to get a saw to cut the bottom off before we put it into the stand, so we used our Ginsu knife to do the task! Christmas morning we opened presents while drinking Andre Champagne (it was $3.99 then) and watching Susie’s favorite movie, White Christmas! Unfortunately, WABC TV was showing the movie, and had cut it to 60 minutes including commercials, so unless you knew the movie, it made no sense! After our morning alone, it was time to pack up and move on to Susie’s Mom and Dad’s and the Johnson/Vincent/D’Elia Family Christmas Day Celebration! That first Christmas pretty much established the pattern that would be our Christmas for years to come!

Once the kids came along (Billy in 1982 and Krissi and Kenny in 1986), it just got more so. The entire period from Thanksgiving to Christmas was full of events like cookie-making, shopping (Dad took one of the 3 kids out alone on 3 days after work so they could shop for Mommy while Mommy did the same thing for Daddy!), wrapping, decorating, and just enjoying Christmas and all it meant to our family! Even before there was such a thing, we did our best to make it a “Hallmark Christmas Movie” holiday!

I think back fondly to our Christmases when our three were small. It always included Christmas Eve Lobster Dinners at Grandma D’Elia’s in Bayside, then running to the Community Church of East Williston for the Christmas Pageant and Christmas Eve services (Krissi was miss-cast as an Angel one year), returning to our house, often with my Mom in tow, and the D’Elia Family traditions of Italian Cold Cut Sandwiches, more Andre “cheap Champagne,” and watching Christmas Vacation! Once the kids were all in bed, it was time to attack their stockings, making sure to remove any Toys R Us tags from the packages and Dad’s task of assembling any toys requiring it! Christmas morning ALWAYS came too early, but the rules were the kids couldn’t go downstairs without us, so “Santa” would always leave a little something at the foot of their beds to occupy them, while the adults pried open their eye lids! Downstairs, everybody took their established places around the living room, presents were passed out, and the chaos of opening presents and keeping the presents separated from the wrapping paper got underway. They were fun days, that I’d love to be able to turn the hands of time back to….even the one year Kenny hated all his presents because he hadn’t gotten a kilt! Soon after presents and something to eat, it was time to either (A) clean up, because the entire clan was coming over to our house, or (B) walk away from the mess, dress, and travel to Susie’s Mom and Dad’s or her sister Barbara’s house to celebrate with the entire clan!

This year, however, how many folks will be singing along with the Christmastime classic, “Its the Most Wonderful Time of the Year”? A recent Good Housekeeping article, had the rather ominous title, IS CHRISTMAS 2020 CANCELED DUE TO COVID 19?”. In Italy and Germany, all Christmas Markets around the country have been canceled. In NYC, visiting the tree at Rockefeller Center will be a new and different experience this year, requiring tickets! Why, even here in our decidedly “Hallmark Christmas Movie Town” of Ocean City, NJ, many holiday events like Miracle on Asbury on Black Friday, the Christmas Parade, First Night and First Day celebrations, have gone the way of our 4th of July Fireworks, the Night in Venice Boat Parade, and the Boardwalk Air Show…all events where folks might gather, have been canceled!

Obviously, things will be very different for many families in 2020, and a lot of folks are really having trouble finding their Christmas Cheer! Thanks to the Corona Virus, over 300,000 of our fellow Americans have lost their lives, and millions are affected by those deaths! A lot of folks are unemployed with little prospect of getting jobs, and entire industries have shuttered and many have no idea when, or even if, they will be able to get back to work. For many, many families this year, Christmas is indeed canceled!

It’s sad, but I’ve heard so many people say that they just can’t get into the holidays this year. They wonder why they should put up a tree or decorate the house. “It’s just not going to be the same,” many of them say, “so we might as well forget it and skip it this year!” Why even my very own Mrs. Claus had some trouble finding her holiday spirit early on! I’m sure a huge part of the reason for us is that this will be a very different Christmas for the D’Elia/Fox/Mikowicz Family. Blessedly, Covid has not directly touched our family’s lives, as it has so many around the world, and in our local communities, but for the first time in our married life, we will be spending the holiday alone! On one hand it’s very sad, that we will not see our kids, their spouses, and our Grandkids, but there is a part of us that’s kind of looking forward to the luxury of doing whatever we want, whenever we want, on Christmas Day! We may absolutely hate it, but for now, we are looking forward to finding out what we’ve never had in our 43 years of being together is like! In the end, Christmas Spirit did indeed find the D’Elia Household, and kind of like in Show Business, The Show Must Go On!!

So the tree is up and decorated..

The Manger is in place…

and Susie’s got her SnowMan/SnowWoman Village together…

The Windows are decorated…both inside..

And out!!

The outside of the house is in the Christmas mood…

And even the Honda CRV is ready!!

Susie’s got her wrapping station set up in the den, and gifts for our kids and Grandkids have been wrapped, packed into boxes, and after multiple trips to the Ocean City Post Office and UPS, just like Santa and his sleigh, the gifts are on their way to North Carolina, Florida, and New York!

Traditions are an important part of our holidays, and while some are going to be different this year, the ones that have been and will continue to be maintained are like a warm hug! Lord knows, we all could use a hug this holiday season! So no matter what you celebrate, I hope the magic and the spirit of the season is able to find you, and bring just a little bit of joy to your heart. We can’t forget the people who are no longer with us, or those suffering spiritually, medically, and financially this Christmas. All we can attempt to do is to share the warmth of the season with those we love, and look forward to a better Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa in 2021! Susie and I send our love to our whole family…those that joined via birth, those that became members through marriage, and those who who are part of our family because of friendship!

Happy Christmas to All, and to All a Good Night!

PS – Two pictures from our first married Christmas, 41 years ago! Susie that morning in our living room in our Port Washington apartment, and the Manger under the tree..the same Manger I might add, that is pictured above! Bought for our first Christmas in 1979 at A&S in Hempstead and still with us!

Our Front Porch

/ Sue and Frank D'Elia / Leave a comment

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Almost 15 years ago, when we saw our now forever home on Pennlyn Place in Ocean City, one of the first reactions we had upon seeing the house was, “What a nice front porch it has.” Funny, but back in 1986, when we first saw our house of 31 years in Mineola, we were taken by the fact that it too, had a lovely front porch. I guess we’re front porch people!

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The day we first saw our Mineola House in 1986.  That little boy in the picture is our oldest son Billy…father of three!

What surprises us is the number of people at the shore who obviously aren’t! We regularly drive by house after house with beautiful front porches in Ocean City, Ventnor, Margate, Longport, Sea Isle City, etc, and the one common thing we see are empty porches! Hot nights, cold nights, perfect temperature nights..it’s all the same. The other common thread is the blue glow of the big screen TV lighting the living room! We find it sad that so few porches are used these days, especially considering the locations!

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The day we decided to buy 854..Susie and me and our friend Pat Grosskopf

As I said, when we first saw 854 Pennlyn we loved the porch, but we hadn’t seen it’s true potential yet! When we bought the house, it was already equipped with awnings, and when we put them up that first spring, we were amazed at what a change they made. They seemed to make the porch bigger, and definitely turned what we’d liked before as a porch, into an extra room! As the previous owners had taken their porch furniture with them, we made the first of many trips to Cape May Wicker and outfitted the porch with an army of chairs.

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As the years went by, we added more things, and a few years ago, Susie got something she’d wanted for years…a sofa on the porch! We were lucky one fall to wander into Cape May Wicker on a “just looking” trip and found a wonderful deal on a 3 cushion wicker sofa and a perfect coffee table in their clearance center! Add a rug, rearrange a couple of our porch chairs, and we had a perfect two room porch, with both a sitting area and a dining area!

Our Two Room Porch with Sofa and new Dining Set

But we were not done yet! On another one of those “just looking” trips at Cape May Wicker, we found the perfect dining set, and again it was in their clearance center! Then just before last summer, we changed out our old Kmart type cooler for an incredible Yeti Model…the last cooler we’ll ever buy!

Just a word about the cooler. Years ago, when we were renting from our friend Denise on Asbury Avenue, her porch was also one of our favorite places to spend our rental weeks. We noticed that at a house across the street, the owners always had a cooler on the front porch, filled with beer and the like. We loved that idea, and when we started outfitting the porch, we added a cooler to the mix. It was perfect because it freed up lots of space in the refrigerator, and a cold drink was always near at hand! We stole their idea, but then we took it to the next level, by adding a drainage system to our cooler. A hose that goes down the side of the house, and a valve that lets us open and close it, making changing out ice as simple as can be!

Over the years, our porch has been the site of so many happy memories. From just Susie and I, to time spent with our family, and time spent with our Ocean City family! From the moment we open it up in the spring, right around Memorial Day, to the day we decide in the fall it’s time to power wash the furniture and put it away for the winter, it is our choice location in our home!

Even at Christmas time, our porch comes into play. Just like we did in Mineola for years…
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The porch at 854 Pennlyn might not be available for partying during the holidays, but it definitely says Christmas!!

Take a look at some happy memories through the years. From our Family to our Ocean City Family, to our visitors and extended family…everybody ends up on the porch!

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Our last word on this topic…If you have a porch at your house, use it! It’s too important a resource to ignore!

At the Shore Since ’44

/ Sue and Frank D'Elia / Leave a comment

Charlies!

We have owned our house in Ocean City for 14 plus years (it will be 15 on January 28, 2020), and for about 13 of those years, Charlie’s has been a go to place for us! Located just across the bridge in Somers Point, Charlies is one of those local bars that are indeed the real life incarnation of the bar in the TV Show Cheers, “where everybody knows your name”!

In 1944, Helen and Charlie Thomas opened a classic “corner bar” in Somers Point, and Charlies has been an important part of the community ever since. The original bar was located across New Jersey Avenue from its current location, and moved to its current building in 1953. The building, and indeed the business, have undergone many changes during the 75 years that Charlie’s has been around, but the one constant in its history, is that four generations of the Thomas Family have run the place. Today, fourth generation brothers Jim and Jeff Thomas are the link back to their Great Grandmother and Great Grandfather, the founders!

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The Thomas Brothers..Jim and Jeff

Today, Charlie’s is still that corner bar (located on the corner of New Jersey Ave. and Shore Road) where everybody (well, maybe not everybody, but a lot of folks) indeed knows your name! The first time we went to Charlies, it was when our Mineola friends Pat and Steve Grosskopf were visiting with us, early in that first year of ownership. We went in for dinner one night, and got a table in the front bar room. We had a waitress who was a real pro, but at the same time a real smart ass. She was wearing a button that said, “I’d Card my Mother”, but she knew the answer to every question we had about menu items or beers that were offered. She joked with us, she kidded other customers, she called them by name, and she was the perfect professional waitress! Little did we know, she was also destined to be our very good friend, but that part comes later!

Until we retired and stopped renting our the house during the peak summer months, our MO was to travel down to Ocean City at the very least a couple of weekends a month, and for the better part of 10 or 11 years, Charlie’s was our Friday night stop. In the beginning, I’d take the Long Island Rail Road train into Queens, meet up with Susie, and off we’d go to the shore. As time went on, Susie got braver, and would drive to pick me up in the city. Some days we made it down early, some days, later, but we always had our Friday night at Charlie’s! Creatures of habit that we are, if it was Friday and we were down at the Shore, we were at Charlies!

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Within a short amount of time, we were Charlie’s Friday Night regulars. We’d check in at the hostess desk with Carol or Colleen, and always request a table in the bar area. While we waited for our table, we’d enjoy the bar and a couple of pint sized Screwdrivers (with fresh squeezed OJ) or two from Wes or Kelly, and enjoy checking out and interacting with the many other Friday night regulars. Of course, in the summer months, the crowds were much bigger on a Friday night, but Fridays just equaled Charlies for us!

Once our table was ready, Carol or Colleen would show us the way, and hand us menus, and within moments “our waitress” would say hello. Unless she wasn’t there on a particular night, we sat exclusively with Sue, the lady I referred to on our first visit. Sue always knew we were probably going to have another Screwdriver, and most nights saw an order of Charlies’ Wings in our future. Now, let’s talk about those wings.

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While Charlies has a full menu of dinner items, I always think that the best things on Charlies’ menu are what I call “bar food”, and right at the top of that list are their wings and what they call BBTs (boneless breast tenders). A single order of wings contain 13 pieces, usually pretty evenly split between drumettes and wingettes, while a single order of BBTs, contain 5 pieces. The chicken is fried perfectly and sized just right. In fact, some days, as soon as you drive over the 9th Street Bridge, you start to smell Charlie’s fried chicken! Then there are the sauces! Here’s what the menu says about them: “Tail Gun (mild), Top Gun (Hell Fire! No Kidding!) Southwest (our secret BBQ sauce), and their newest, Stinger Sauce (Tangy Honey Garlic).” They are all good, but our favorite, and I’d have to guess most sold, is Tail Gun sauce. Now, you can get your wings and BBTs dry, with sauce on the side, but that’s not our way. Grab lots of napkins and homemade blue cheese dressing! Get your wings sauced and hot! Make a mess of your face and your hands, and enjoy!! It’s the only way to roll!!

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In addition to the great wings (which Susie swears are the BEST she has ever had), other great items on the menu include their soups, sandwiches, salads, burgers, cheesesteaks, and specialty sandwiches. Then there is their huge beer selection, appetizers, chili, wraps, and fries, but that’s only some of my “bar food” favorites! They’ve got pastas, and dinner selections from the Land and from the Sea (as their menu denotes). Whatever you are in the mood for, they have it! Take a look for yourself at their extensive menu and make yourself a little hungry! http://charliesbar.com/menu.pdf

Although the food is certainly great, in my opinion, like at any establishment, it’s the people that keep you coming back Over the years, we’ve met some great folks there. Like Carol and Colleen working the hostess desk most Fridays, and Kelly, and the late Wes, at the bar, waitresses Natalie, Jess, Sarah, and of course the lady I spoke of earlier, our good friend, Susan Earsom Waniak! We also got to know Sue’s son Chris and her daughter Carlye, who also are part of the Charlie’s Family!

Sue is a professional waitress, not something that is that common anymore. She grew up working at her Aunt’s Jersey Shore business, and she knows her job inside and out. She knows how to take care of her customers, and she knows how to deal with those, shall we say, high maintenance customers too! After years of having her wait on us every Friday and occasional Sunday breakfasts (Charlie’s is open 7AM to 3 AM Monday through Saturday, but opens at 9AM on Sunday for breakfast), I guess we officially got the Sue Seal of Approval, and we morphed from just customers and server, to friends. That’s something Susie and I are very proud of!

As often happens, life moves on. Eventually Sue stopped waitressing on Friday night, and we were transferred over to Natalie by Sue. Then I retired, so Susie and I no longer drove down to Ocean City on a Friday, and no longer had to fight the Friday night crowds on the Garden State Parkway or at Charlies. The result was that eventually, Friday night no longer was our go-to night at Charlies,. But don’t despair, for all is not lost!

img_1021-1You see, on Tuesday night, Sue holds court at the Back Bar (Captain Jacks Bar – Named for the late Jack Thomas..Jimmy and Jeff’s Dad) at Charlies! It’s a night populated by her regulars. First, some of her older customers, the “Dessert Club” comes at about 5 PM, then at about 6:45, Susie and I show up, along with some of the other second string regulars like Liz and Mike. Then after we’re done, she has others that show up depending on if volley ball is in session or not. The only thing we have to decide on is what we are going to eat that night. As soon as she sees us walk in the door, Sue already has our drinks in progress. Since we’ve been low carbing, and staying away from OJ, our Screwdrivers have morphed into Grey Goose Martinis, and we are hardly settled on our barstools, before the chilled glasses of goodness are in front of us! Now, if it is Tuesday night, and we are in town, we are at Charlies! We are indeed creatures of habit!

Sue knows the name and drink preference of virtually everybody who sits down at the back bar on a Tuesday night! (10 months out of the year that’s true…for July and August, all bets are off and the area’s population, and Charlie’s customer base swells for the summer) It’s just a continuation of that “Corner Bar” atmosphere that the Thomas Family has been known for over the last 75 years! Jeff is usually the brother on the premises on Tuesday night, and he always has a hello for most of the customers at the back bar, (Hell, he grew up with a lot of them) in addition to helping Sue out with ice, more bottles of booze, or even delivering an order. It’s just that kind of place, and Jeff is just that kind of person!

Like many of the other restaurants that we love, Charlies is a Family! It’s a family made up of the Thomas Family, the long term servers, and bartenders (on any given night you’ll find many of the same folks working that were there the first night we ever went to Charlies), and the repeat customers. It’s a place to enjoy a good drink, some excellent food, in a familiar surrounding. It’s a place where they know your name, and you know theirs, and where you feel at home! Is there anything better you can say about a restaurant? It’s home!

If you remember I said above that Sue had morphed from customers and server to friends? Well, I’m happy to say that Tuesday night isn’t the only night of the week, because on Friday, we exchange positions, and Sue gets to be the guest at our house! Her favorite spot is on our front porch, but all through the year, you can depend that if all 3 of us our around town, Sue will be dropping in on us about 5:30, and I get to make HER a drink! You’d have to know me to really understand what a kick that is for me! She’s a good friend, and important part of our Ocean City life, and one of the reasons we are so glad that a place we’ve loved forever, has become our forever home!

See you are Charlies!

Sunday, March 4th, 2018

/ Sue and Frank D'Elia / 1 Comment

As I warned you might happen the other day, you didn’t get a post yesterday, so here it is!

We woke to a pretty, if chillier day than we were used to, at the Hampton Inn in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina. The temperature was in the 30s when we got out of bed, so we knew that the socks and sneakers were destined to make a return. Our toes were not happy campers! It was the last day of our trip (Day 24), and now that a great trip was almost over, we were looking to get home!

Speaking of the trip being over, we’ve come to the conclusion, that when a trip is over, a trip is over, and nothing you do can change that fact. Something clicks off in your head, and your desire to do any more sightseeing, or make unnecessary stops, is just gone. To be honest, in our original plans, we had two more hotels reserved, and stops at several Atlantic Ocean Island points, but on reflection, we just wanted to get home, so we changed those plans and were looking forward to being home tonight, rather than mid-week.

As we talked about in Saturday’s blog, one stop that we did plan to make, was in response to a text we got on Saturday from Paula and Jerry Mikowicz, Krissi’s boyfriend Mike’s folks. They live in Columbia, Maryland, and wondered if we might like to make a stop off to have lunch with them on our way up I-95. They were supposed to be in New York this weekend, visiting with Mike and Krissi, but the nor’easter on Friday canceled those plans. We had a very nice lunch at Clyde’s on the Lake in Columbia, and enjoyed the conversation we had with Paula and Jerry.

(Lunch Picture – As you can guess, there should be a picture of the 4 of us having a very nice lunch in Clydes, but as we often seem to do, we forgot to take a picture of the food, of each other, or to have the waitress take a picture of the four of us. We are bad at remembering that)

We traveled a total of 391 miles yesterday, staying on I-95 until we crossed the Delaware Memorial Bridge and joined the New Jersey Turnpike. Traffic wasn’t bad, except for a construction delay approaching Washington, DC. We lost about a 1/2 hour there, causing us to meet up with Paula and Jerry just in time for our 1:30 reservation. Speaking about the delay, why is it that so many morons on the road just increase the traffic delay, because they don’t read or follow signs? A big digital sign, more than a mile before we lost the right lane said, “RIGHT LANE CLOSED AHEAD”, but still there were people in that lane right up until the last minute, making the rest of us stop, so that they had someplace to drive! Don’t get me started!!!

Again yesterday, we saw a number of utility trucks heading north on I-95. Saw in the news this morning that there are still a lot of areas without power, so know our friends from the south will be a welcome sight in many neighborhoods!

Once we’re on the New Jersey Turnpike, it’s an easy trip up to Exit 3, where we join Route 168 for a few miles (and a cheap WAWA Gas Station) to get to the Atlantic City Expressway. In less than an hour from there, we transition to the Garden State Parkway, and made the short ride down to Exit 30, and home. A brief stop at the Acme on 8th Street to get some half and half for the morning, and we were backing into our driveway.

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We unloaded the trunk into the garage, had a nice relay going up the stairs with our stuff (really could have used Disney’s Boardwalk Resort’s Bell Staff), and we were home!! In case you’re wondering, no Chinese take-out after our lunch in Maryland, but it was good to be home, changed into comfy clothes (or PJs), and started hitting some DVRed shows we’d missed (NCIS and NCIS New Orleans). As great a trip as it was, we are happy to be home!

Susie and I were talking over some highlights of the trip yesterday in the car, and we will probably have a recap post for you this week, but know that we loved just about everywhere we went, everyone we met, and everything we experienced. It was indeed a great trip!

See you soon….