As you read in the last stanza of this epic story, we’d gotten rid of just about everything we could in the Mineola house, and now the next big task was selling the house!
We’d lived and raised 3 kids in a house that was built in 1928. It was old, and needed some work, and we assumed it would go the way of other old houses on our street…demolition or gutting! I was really concerned about the how and why of selling the house, but once people heard that we were moving, we kept getting “keep me in mind” messages about the house. By late summer of 2017, Susie had a list of 4 people that were interested in buying our house! Who knew!! When the first person dropped out because of financial reasons, Susie called the second person who’d messaged her. This was a teacher that Susie used to call in when she arranged the substitutes at Hampton Street School, and she was still very interested in the house. She knew the house and the location because her cousin lived right across the street from us.
Susie set up an appointment late one afternoon for her family to come look at the place. She came with her husband, two kids and her father. They wandered from the attic to the basement, all around the property, and through the garage. About a month earlier, we’d worked out a price with our Lawyer Glenn, when he told us our original asking price was way too low. Susie had shared our price with the prospective buyer, and after the tour, we told them to go home and talk it over, and if they were really interested, make us an offer. They called us that night, made a slightly lower counter offer, we agreed, and like that, we’d sold our house!
We felt good about the fact that a house that had been good to us, was going to go on and be part of another family’s life. We probably could have asked more, and had the house on the market for months, but in the end we decided on a price that was good for us, and still left some money on the table so the new buyers could start to make our home their home. The house sold quickly, we didn’t have to pay a real estate agent a commission because we used none, we got the price we wanted, and after all our expenses, we were able to replace the money we’d taken from my 401K. We figured it was a win win for all!
So now, it was real. The house had a buyer, we had a closing date, and now we really needed to empty out the house. We gave whatever we could of our furniture to friends and family, took what little we could to Ocean City, and called the guy we’d had recommended to us to clean out the house. He showed up one morning, we handed over $3000 in cash, and before we we left for Ocean City, he told us he’d found needy families for our furniture. That made Susie feel better!
The next time we saw the house was early on the afternoon of November 9, 2017. That day, we drove back to Mineola, and after stopping at McDonald’s in Carle Place, had our
Our Last Meal after 31 years
last meal in our old house. It was very strange to walk around a now totally empty house, that in just a few hours wouldn’t be ours anymore. After eating, we cleaned up, threw our camp chairs in the car, and drove to the lawyer’s office on Mineola Blvd. Within an hour, we no longer owned 40 Fairfield Avenue, and walked out with a handful of checks, which we quickly deposited in the TD Bank in Garden City, before returning to Ocean City and our one and only home!
A couple of days later, we went to the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission office in Egg 
Harbor Township. We turned in our NY Driver’s Licenses and got NJ Driver’s Licenses, we got NJ License Plates for the Sonata (the Mustang already had them), and even registered to vote! In every way we could think of, we were now New Jersey Residents, and 854 Pennlyn Place was our one and only home!
We’ve been back to Long Island a number of times, since that November day when we sold the house, and of course, there’s no way we can go without driving down Fairfield Avenue. We’re happy to report that the new owners are well on their way to turning our old house, into their new house. We are excited to see what they are doing, and looking forward to the tour we’ve been promised when the work is completed.
Early work to the latest progress..so happy to see it live on!
Since that fateful day in November, Susie and I have survived our first winter at the shore. Sure, we’d been here before, but for just brief glimpses of what winter in Ocean City is like. What we’ve discovered is that we love the small town Ocean City turns into in the winter. We love the ability to go across town on any street you like, rather than 
our summer MO of only crossing town on streets with traffic lights. We love going to places like Ready’s or the Varsity for breakfast, and having staff know the customers. We love the quiet of our street, but also seeing the many folks who call Pennlyn Place their full time home. We did discover that it did snow a lot more this winter than it seemed to in the past, and that even though we gave away our gas snow blower, we might need something here, so we got a battery powered snow blower to supplement our shovels.
We celebrated our first Thanksgiving at the house, and had Susie’s sister and her family join us. Although we’d always done Christmas decorating at the house, we did an extensive D’Elia Family Christmas this year, with our family tree and ornaments, and white lights all around the outside of the house, as we’d done in Mineola. We were joined by Krissi and Mike and even Kenny and Chris came from the West Coast! All the D’Elia Family traditions were in force, from the kids putting their special ornaments on the tree while decorating, to Lobsters, Italian sandwiches and Cold Duck on Christmas Eve, to stockings Christmas morning! It was a very successful transition of the holidays from Long Island to Ocean City!
As we had done the two years before, late January found us heading south to Florida, for 
what is fast becoming a Susie and Frank in retirement tradition! We love car trips and we traveled down the west coast, came across the Tamiami Trail, went down to Key West, spent 5 great days with my cousins Jeanne and Walt, and ended our stay at DisneyWorld. It was wonderful to have a 3 plus week visit to summer, but when it was over, it was also great to get back to our home!
As spring came to the Mid Atlantic States, we enjoyed the longer days and the increasing temperatures. There was work to be done in and around the house, but knowing that we’d be the only ones to enjoy it, and not renters, made it fun to do! Summer came, and so did friends and family, and the activity level in Ocean City ramped up. While we do enjoy the quiet of the off season, there is a lot more energy in the town during the summer, and although we could do without a few of the summer renters, it is wonderful to see all the happy families that love our now hometown!
So that’s our tale. We now call a place that I first went to when I was 5 in 1955, took Susie to in 1980, a place we both loved, and a house in a location we dearly love, our home. It’s a story about family and friends that are like family, about making choices for your future, and about making decisions that pay off in the end. It’s also the story of a house that we’d lived in for 31 years, that was a great place to raise our three kids, go on to another life. It wasn’t demolished, but rather a new family is making it their own, and it’s life, and memories of happy times will continue! Yes, we could have sold it a lot sooner, could have spent less money carrying it for a year plus, could have realized our grand Tag Sale plan wasn’t going to fly, but in the end, we got what we needed, left a little on the table for the new owners, and started life in our “new” home that we loved.
Our dream was to have a house in Ocean City, and to not only have that dream come true, but to have it come true as successfully as we now have, well, we figure we must have done something right along the way! It’s a story with a very happy ending about living out your life, living your dream! What could be better!
As much as we love the traditions that have become such a huge part of our family’s life, as time goes on, things change. Eventually the fireworks display on Friday night at Bar Harbor ended, and we no longer had that anchor for our weekend. The kids got older, and they had their own life, and were no longer interested in Dad’s version of the typical American Memorial Day Weekend. For the past 13 Memorial Days, we’ve owned our house in Ocean City, and so that has led us to create new traditions. For many of those 13 years, we have had the kids join us at the house, we’d spend the weekend on the beach, on our front porch (when the weather has been better than it’s been this weekend), surrounded by our family and their friends, and our Ocean City friends who have become more like family than friends. We’ve celebrated Susie’s special day with the kids, at the Ocean City Yacht Club, at a surprise party at a friend’s house, or just sitting around having friends drop in to have a drink, and share her special day with her. If you ask me, great new traditions that will last forever!
From Billy’s first year in Cub Scout Pack 246, through the years when younger brother Kenny joined him, the years when Billy transitioned to Boy Scout Troop 45, to the years when Kenny and Dad joined Billy in Troop 45, to the years when Billy went off to college, and even long after Kenny stopped being a Boy Scout, marching in the parade was a constant part of this weekend. Some years my Mom would drive in from Bayside, and she, Susie, and Krissi would stand on the side of the road and cheer us on. Some years Susie’s Dad would join us in the parade, and we’d end up after the parade at a party at her Dad’s VFW Post in Albertson. Some years we’d sit on a neighbors porch and reflect on the day and the parade, and for many years, the day would end at our good friends Pat and Steve Grosskopf’s house, as Scoutmaster Steve would throw a huge post parade party for the Troop 45 Family!
But no matter where we are, and no matter what we are doing today, on Memorial Day Monday, my heart will always be walking the streets of Mineola, following a large group of young men, holding many American flags, being proceeded and followed by many other organizations, seeing friends and neighbors on the side of the road cheering on the marchers, and remembering the sacrifices that so many made so that we can have the lives we now enjoy. I’ll remember our long standing Memorial Day Weekend traditions, and always be thankful that it was because of the sacrifices of others, I am blessed with these wonderful memories, our wonderful family and friends, and the ability to live the life we now live. Our family was lucky that all those from our circle that served, returned home safe and sound, but for the thousands of families who were not as fortunate, today has even more meaning. Please remember them today, and their heroes who may have died at Pearl Harbor, or a trench in the First World War, or over the South Pacific or wherever they were standing up for what they believed.
Check out time was 11, and after we slept as long as we desired, and showered this morning (the BEST shower of the trip!), it was very close to 11 when we vacated the room, and went down to the valet to get the car. We had a little trouble finding the beginning of our trek for the day – we think perhaps our GPS girlfriend was a little under the weather this morning, but eventually we were on the right path. With the exception of about the first 10 miles of the 300 we did today, the rest was on Interstates, and this is the first day we’ve done that in some time. We headed north out of Bossier City, and it really wasn’t long before we passed out of Louisiana and into Arkansas, so another state for our list. Susie says Arkansas was state #21 of our trip!
As we didn’t get a “free breakfast” this morning, we decided to do something we rarely had done the past 2 months, and that was stop at a fast food place for lunch. We’d see Whataburger for many days, and even this morning in Louisiana, but they must not cross into Arkansas, so we settled for a Burger King, in of all places, Hope, Arkansas, the birthplace of Bill Clinton! The exit is marked with a huge sign saying, “Hope, Arkansas…the birthplace of President William Jefferson Clinton”. I know they are trying to be respectful, but who ever calls him anything but Bill? Oh well, he is their home town boy!
If you share driving, like Susie and I do, you are rather dependent on rest areas along the highways as an easy, convenient, and safe place to switch drivers. Back in the beginning of this trip, you may remember that Indiana and their “Toll Road” earned bad points from us for having so many closed rest areas. Well, sad to say, but Arkansas is another state that makes you either pull onto the shoulder to stop, or exit the road altogether, as so many of their rest areas were closed.
The first was a fun thing, The Idaho Potato Museum in Blackfoot, Idaho. If you remember back to when our trip was still in single digit days, we stopped one day at the Spam Museum and then had a photo op with a huge Green Giant statue. Susie joked in our blog that we’d had our protein and vegetables that day. Well, we completed the meal today in Idaho!! The museum is housed in an early 20th Century train station, which in itself was interesting to look at. All through the building there were exhibits on how potatoes are grown, why in Idaho, and how they are shipped all over the country. They even have a cafe when you can get fresh french fries, and chocolate milk that actually has potato flakes mixed in. The young lady at the counter said that it’s the best tasting chocolate milk she’s ever tasted, but we didn’t partake. A really neat exhibit they had was a whole wall of potato mashers. There were well over 300 of them, many kinds we’d seen before, but some really unusual, and interesting ones. After looking at the “wall of mashers”, we discovered it was a Boy Scouts Eagle Project! Because we were “out of staters, we got free taters” upon leaving. Our free taters, were Hungry Jack Scalloped Potatoes, which after reading the box, we found out are made in California! It was a fun place to stop, and although not as odd as the world’s biggest ball of twine, does complete our food museum triple play!
They have, as all places like this do, the obligatory gift shop and cafe, but this center also had a bunch of static displays, a museum, and a collection of Oregon Trail art. What we really enjoyed though was the time travel they allowed us to do, as we joined an 1852 wagon train across the country. It cost us $20, but it was a small price to pay for a very enjoyable and educational experience. First we went to the gun shop, where we learned that every person above the age of 12 had to have a rifle at a cost of $20. Then on to the General Store, where he talked about what supplies a family would have to take on the journey, and how much it cost. Then we were taken to the wagon shop, where we learned that a Studebaker Covered Wagon would cost us $100 (yes…the same company that made cars when we were kids), and how much 6 oxen to pull it would cost us ($20 each for another $120). The total expense for a family of 6, to travel with the wagon train was approximately $1200, this in a time when the average annual wage in the country was $156. Our Wagon Master pointed out, that because of this cost, the members of the wagon trains were not wage earners, but by enlarge, people who sold businesses or farms, and who were putting their entire life’s wealth into this trip across the country. They truly had a lot at stake!
our trip so far since leaving Long Island is 3088, as of pulling into the Ogden Sleep Inn tonight. It’s still incredible to us that we have driven so far since we left home! We both think that those weekend trips we made from Long Island, to Ocean City for the past 11 years we have owned the house, have made spending the day on the road easy for us. Whatever the reason, we haven’t minded the driving, or the roads, and we are still speaking to each other. Perhaps mark that up to the rum and coke we end each day with, and the vodka we end each night with! That and having a nice hotel, with a king sized bed to sleep in! Oh, and what with all the mountain driving, Susie has learned, and perfected, the art of putting the Sonata’s transmission into the manual mode, and down shifting! Good girl!!
For those of you who may not know, IN-N-OUT Burger is a West Coast fast food chain. All their meat comes from one of two company owned plants and is delivered fresh daily to the stores. Because of this, they are basically in California, and the South West, and I guess Utah!!! They hand cut the fries in the store daily, and have a very simple menu, with their only entree items being burgers! It is a favorite meal stop for us every time we are in Vegas (I know where all the Vegas area ones are located), and we’ve also eaten at locations in California in our travels. In addition to the regular menu, they have what’s called a “Secret Menu”, but it’s not really that secret! What we had tonight was Double Doubles, Animal Style with Animal Style fries! Heaven!! The burgers are great, the fries are so fresh, and going Animal Style is just the icing on the cake! Take a look at the attached picture, and if that doesn’t look good to you, then you are missing a real treat!!
