Manco and Manco Pizza

Two Kids At The Beach

/ Sue and Frank D'Elia / Leave a comment

Late on the night of November 3, 1982, our oldest child, William Ryan D’Elia, came into our lives. About 7 months later, he had his first vacation in Ocean City, New Jersey, and his first exposure to the beaches and boardwalk I had known as a kid. 4 years later, he was joined by his sister and brother, and Krissi and Kenny’s Ocean City life started too! For the rest of their childhood years, part of every summer was spent in Ocean City. In a way, Bill, Krissi, and Kenny grew up here, as this was the beach and boardwalk they knew as kids, and still love today.

On Sunday, June 13th, Susie and I drove from Ocean City to the Philadelphia Airport (a trip that would have been immeasurably easier had the Yankees not been playing the Phillies at Citizen Bank Park near the airport) to meet a flight from Raleigh/Durham North Carolina. There were 3 special passengers on that flight…our son Bill and his two oldest kids, 7 year old Layla and 5 year old Henry, who were here to spend a week with Grandma and Grandpa, and get to know the town that their Dad knew as a kid! After getting Daddy to the correct terminal for his return flight to Mommy and youngest sister, 2 year old Annabelle in North Carolina, Layla, Henry, Grandma, and Grandpa headed to their week of fun under the sun!

Our son had brought up the idea of this trip to us several months before, and we had busily been making plans. I think it was a toss up who was more excited: Layla and Henry or Grandpa and Grandma! We’d made plans, and Susie had lists of things we could do, but in the end, the beach, boardwalk, front porch of the house, and just enjoying our time with the kids was the best thing we did!

Of course, there had to be trips to the beach, with romps in the ocean, building sandcastles, burying each other, digging holes, finding shells, and kite flying. Turns out that Grandma and Layla did a better job getting the kite in the air than Grandpa and Henry, but in the end, the wind pulled the kite handle out of Layla’s hand, and even though the kids (and Grandma) chased it, the wind dumped it in the ocean. A nice man retrieved it, but it was a total loss. Wind: one – Layla: zero!

There was a trip to Hoys on Asbury Avenue where the kids got the required Ocean City sweatshirts, hats to keep the sun off their heads, and water shoes. For Susie and I, suddenly we were back in the 1980s and trying to keep our kids focussed on what they were looking for, and not the toys that were in the next aisle!

Ice Cream was always a part of our beach vacations back in the day, and the same can be said for Layla and Henry’s time with us. Not one, but two ,times did we head over to Custard Hut, where the hardest part was deciding what they were going to get, and keeping as much ice cream as possible off Henry! I know Grandma and Grandpa loved it, and I’m pretty sure the two little D’Elias did too!

Of course, there are things that are almost mandated by law that have to be included in an Ocean City vacation, and we followed all those rules too! From playing Mini-Golf (Henry has a decidedly “Happy Gillmore” like swing), to visiting the Discovery Seashell Museum (it was much better when our kids were young and run by people who loved the ocean as more of a passion than business), to doing as their Dad and Aunt and Uncle did as kids, and enjoying the big playground on 34th Street, to watching them make Salt Water Taffy at Shriver’s on the boardwalk, and then filling a bag with your choices!

A family rule is that no D’Elia can visit Ocean City, New Jersey without having at least one meal of “Hose Pizza”, and as good Grandparents, we followed that rule! The pizza place (it’s real name is Manco and Manco) has been part of the Ocean City Boardwalk since the 50s, and was one of the pizza places my Dad liked when we first came to Ocean City way back when I was five years old. The name “Hose Pizza” was given to it by our son Bill when he was 2 or 3, because unlike most pizza places, here they apply the tomato sauce via a hose, and once he saw that, when asked what he wanted to eat on the boardwalk, young Billy always said he wanted to go to “Hose Pizza”. The one we went to is the newest on 9th Street that used to be the old Strand Movie theater. Great to see that old building still being a part of Ocean City’s Boardwalk life, and great that Henry and Layla love “Hose Pizza” too, keeping a 4 generation relationship alive!

Ocean City’s Boardwalk features two big Amusement Piers, and what kind of Grandparents would we be if we didn’t spend at least one evening at the rides!! Layla and Henry enjoyed lots of rides at Gillian’s Wonderland, but agreed that they are pretty much done with the “baby rides”, and that next time they come, they’ll concentrate on only Big Kid Rides! They really liked the Bounce ride, the Superman ride, the Fun House, and the Glass Maze, where Henry refused to walk with his hands in front of him, and kept bumping his head on the mirrors! When I got them on the Merry-Go-Round, I told them to find Grandma and I, and wave at us every time they went around. About the 4th or 5th time around, Layla gave me a look, and I said to Susie, “Layla just gave me a Krissi look!”, you know, the one that says, “Shut up Dad and stop calling out my name!!!” Message received! Who says history doesn’t repeat!

A tradition we honored each trip to Ocean City when our kids were young, was getting an Ocean City T-shirt. It was a very involved process, that could take days to complete. First, they had to agree on which T-shirt shop we should go to. Then there was the process of picking out the design they wanted on the shirt. Last, they’d decide on the color T-shirt they wanted. These decisions often lasted the length of the trip, with the purchase finally happening on our last night on the boardwalk. We were able to speed the process up with Layla and Henry, and do it all in one day…our last day, on the boardwalk. We ended up at the same shop we usually shopped at with our kids, Layla and Henry knew that the design had to say Ocean City, NJ someplace (rule worked out when their Dad was 2 or 3), and they made sure it did. Design picked out, the two of them then had to decide what color T-shirt they wanted. With that taken care of, then it was time for the lady to put the design and the T-shirt into the heat machine, and make their shirts. I think Layla and Henry enjoyed following in their Dad’s footsteps, and Grandma and I did too!

That was some of the big stuff we did, but as I said up front, just enjoying our time with the kids doing simple stuff was just as wonderful! The first night they were here, I read them a story before going to bed. It was a story I’d written when their Dad and Aunt and Uncle were kids, and our three kids were the prime characters in the stories. They were called “Three Kids” stories, and I wrote a total of three of them. The morning after reading it, Layla came to me and asked if we could write a story about their time in Ocean City. She decided that we should call it “Two Kids at the Beach or Layla and Henry Visit Their Grandparents”. After we’d come home from somewhere, Layla would dictate what we should write while I typed on the computer. Multiple times during the day, Layla would come to me and say, “Let’s work on our story Grandpa,” and off we’d go for 10 or 15 minutes, and do just that. By the time Thursday was done, we had 7 pages, including some pictures. Grandma, the best editor around, corrected what we’d written, I printed it, and then Grandma laminated it so Layla can have it for a long time. I’m gonna miss those, “Let’s work on our story Grandpa” words from my smart, precocious Granddaughter!

We’re gonna miss those times we sat on the front porch and watched the world of Pennlyn Place go by. Like the morning Layla and I watched our 99 year old neighbor Doie ride her scooter down our driveway and up to the boardwalk for the daily Ocean City Flag Raising. That led to a discussion of Doie being a Marine in World War II and what being 99 means. Or watching Christina our mail lady arrive and have Layla say, “I’ll go down and get the mail Grandma and Grandpa.” Or Henry running down the stairs to put the garbage cans away after the Garbage Men emptied them and saying, “I got them Grandpa.” Or Layla waving to Emma across the street and watching her new Jeep come and go, and then talking to Emma’s Mom and Dad (sorry Bittenbenders if it seemed like Layla was stalking Emma a bit…). Or watching our neighbor’s dogs Beach Boy and Breaker Boy getting walked, and wondering when Doc was coming home. I had fun on Flag Day telling them what we were celebrating, and watching the kids decide they wanted to get a flag and flag pole for their Daddy for a Father’s Day present. They both became very comfortable in our house and we loved that.

There was meal time fun with Grandpa making eggs or Grandma fixing their waffles or cereal for breakfast, making sandwiches for lunch, cooking mac and cheese and hot dogs, or heating up pizza. There was the night we ordered Chinese Food and Layla and Henry eating everything, and then having Layla tell us, “It’s almost as good as North Carolina Chinese!” Or the day we discovered, as we sat down to eat, that yes, Henry does like McDonald’s cheese burgers, but NOT with ketchup and pickles! Or Henry and Grandma putting a puzzle together and Grandma working with both of them to make Father’s Day cards for their Daddy.

There was the day we switched cars around, and rather than go out in the Honda CR-V, we all piled into Grandpa’s old 2000 red Mustang convertible with the top down to go to the Acme Grocery and drive around Ocean City. The kids loved watching the top go up and down, which they did multiple times, but to quote what Layla wrote in her story, “Too hot, too much sun, too much wind and no room for feet in the back seat!”

So those are just some of the highlights of a wonderful week with Layla and Henry! I’ve heard it said that Grandchildren are the reward for not killing your own kids before they became adults. If that’s the case, we were richly rewarded last week. To spend the better part of 5 days with our two oldest, to learn from them, to see how they’ve grown, to get hugs and kisses, and called Grandma and Grandpa was a delicious treat for the two of us. To be able to watch them experiencing Ocean City, and to remember back to yesteryear when their Dad was their age, and doing the same things for the first time, was just a wonderful time capsule for us. It was a great week, and I just hope that it was as wonderful a week for Layla and Henry as it was for Susie and me! Thanks Lori and Billy for lending us your two oldest for a week!

A great week, only needs a great weekend to cap it off, and that’s exactly what we had next! Look for our next blog, Lake House Fun, coming soon to an internet near you!!

Ocean City, NJ….Part 2 

/ Sue and Frank D'Elia / 2 Comments

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Our little family on the 40th Street beach in Ocean City in 1983

img_0749It’s hard to believe, but it took Susie and me 20 years before we rediscovered Ocean City.  It was during a trip to the Jersey Shore, the spring just after we got married. At the age of 30, I walked the boardwalk I’d first walked when I was 5, and discovered that so much was familiar.  Some of the stores were different, but the rides, and the smells, and the sights, and the atmosphere was exactly what I’d remembered!  It was an incredible reconnection with my past, and the best thing was that the girl who had just become my wife felt the connection too!  Who says you can’t go home again?

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John’s House

So, although the connection was there, the early years of a young couples lives are full.  For us, these were the years we bought our first house, and started our family.   The next time the D’Elia Family traveled to Ocean City was the summer of 1983, when son Billy was 7 months old.  We rented an old house in the 3900 Block on the west side of Central Avenue, and it reminded me a lot of the house we’d stayed in when I was a kid.  First, no air conditioning.  Okay, we’re at the shore and we’re in our 30s…of course we can live without AC!  The bathroom was painted purple and had a huge claw tub, but no shower.  The

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The purple bath

shower was located outside, at the bottom of the back stairs.  Billy was, of course, in a crib, and Susie and I got to share a double bed!  The rest of the house was furnished as if some old lady had just locked the door in 1957 and never came back…which was fine!  The one thing that cinched it for me, was that just like the house we stayed in when I was a kid, our rental house had a big front porch, full of more overstuffed furniture and surrounded by almost floor to ceiling windows. There was no TV in the rental, so just like when I was a kid, our afternoon and evening entertainment was sitting on the porch watching the world go by!  We didn’t have Campbell’s Seafood Take-out to watch, but the comings and goings of Central Avenue, and the neighbors across the street kept us plenty occupied

 

We rented from a young guy named John who stayed in a small first floor apartment, while we had the whole second floor. We always wondered if this was indeed an old family home, because the decorating style was definitely not in keeping with a young guy who drove a black Pontiac Trans Am! (think Smokey and the Bandit) One of the downsides of the place was that the outdoor shower, at the bottom of the stairs, was just outside John’s kitchen door.  We never saw what the downstairs looked like, but John and his friends always seemed to be in the kitchen, making the taking of a shower a little strange, because it kind of felt like you were showering in their kitchen!

 

img_0460But we were in Ocean City, half a block from the beach, and we loved it!  So did the rest of the family who came and visited us that first year!  My Mom and Dad came down, and relived those 6 summers long ago that Ocean City was our summer home.  Susie’s folks came too, as did her sister and husband and her brother and his girlfriend, and everyone enjoyed our summer rental…even if it was only for one week!  Traveling with a little baby is never easy, and we had “stuff” loaded in and on the car for our week in Ocean City.  By the time we were packed, our little Toyota Tercel was full…trunk, trunk top luggage carrier, back seat, and even a portable roof rack!  Porta crib, high chair, stroller, and all the other necessities made packing and unpacking a big job….thank God we have kids when we are young!  That first week as a family in Ocean City sold us, and with the exception of extending our rental to two weeks, for the next 3 summers we called “John’s House” our summer home! 

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Billy and Daddy on John’s Front Porch

 

Our “summers at the shore” were filled with days at the beach and in the water, meals cooked at home most nights, walks on the beach in the evening looking for shells and beach glass, and trips to the Ocean City Boardwalk.   It had been 22 years since I’d been a img_0399little kid in Ocean City, but there were still so many things from my childhood that remained.  Stores and rides that were still on the boardwalk.  A trip on the merry-go-round on Gillian’s Fun Deck, or some salt water taffy from Schrivers. A pizza “cut” from Mack and Mancos which I think was my Dad’s favorite place for pizza on the boardwalk when I was a kid.   Sounds of the Ocean City Pops coming from the Music Pier, and the movie theaters I remembered.  The Surf, the Moorlyn, the Strand, and even the old Village Theater, that had started on the ocean side of the boardwalk, but when they moved the boardwalk towards the ocean, found itself on the shore side!  Just like when I was a kid, Ocean City was still a img_0747dry town, and even in the early 80s had Blue Laws in effect, making a Sunday night walk on the boardwalk very different than it was any other night of the week. Amusements and theaters were closed, as were most stores.  The few stores that were open had large areas closed off containing objects that you couldn’t buy on a Sunday.  On a Sunday night, the Ocean  City boardwalk was about walking and looking at the ocean…much the same as it had been when I was a kid. 

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Gillian’s Fun Deck…now the Water Park

 

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Dinner from Campbells with Susie’s Mom and Dad and sister and husband

It wasn’t just the boardwalk that held memories of my childhood at the shore, downtown Ocean City still looked much as it had when I was a kid.  Stores like Stainton’s on Asbury or the Chatterbox and Bookers restaurants on 9th Street. So many of the big old houses through town were now B and Bs, catering to a new generation of tourists.  Every summer we had to have at least one meal from Campbell’s Seafood, my old neighbor on Asbury.  When we’d go down to pick it up, I’d look across the street at the old house we use to stay in, and be that 5 year old again. The new Campbell’s was built on the parking lot and the parking lot was where the old building was, but the menu and food was much the same. We’d get the meals in the white boxes and be fascinated when they’d run them through the string tying machine, giving you a neat stack of boxes, all trussed up and ready to take home. Unfortunately, something else was the same and that was when we got home, there always seemed to be something wrong or missing from the order.  

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Wonder who took this picture?

img_0752Another thing that was the same as when I was a kid in the 50s was communication with home.  Now, this may be hard to believe in the times we live in, when virtually everyone is walking around with a phone in their pocket, but the only way we had to check in with what was doing at home and to assure everyone that we were good, was via a pay phone.  Looking back in my mind, I recall there being blocks of pay phones on the Oceanside of the boardwalk, and img_0753lots of folks using them.  That’s what we’d do on nights we were at the boardwalk, calling either Susie’s or my folks to check in. On nights that we didn’t go to the boardwalk, we’d walk the two blocks to the corner of 40th Street and West where there was a pay phone outside of a restaurant.  This was the way it was in the 50s, and still the way it was in the early 80s.

Something else that our kids have a really hard time understanding is the fact that when we first started going back to Ocean City in the early 80s, there were no such thing as ATMs!  Frankly, it’s even hard for me to remember what the world was like when you couldn’t access your bank accounts from almost every corner anyplace in the world, but that’s exactly what you dealt with when you went on vacation way back then!  It really impacted us one summer vacation when oldest son Billy must have been 3.  It was early img_0751in our Ocean City stay, and one morning we decided to go downtown and rent a surrey for a ride along the boardwalk.  A surrey is basically a cross between a bike and a car, in fact it’s like having two bikes side by side…..four wheels, 2 sets of pedals, and instead of having two handlebars to steer with, there’s a steering wheel.  So we rent a surrey, and since Billy is so small at that point, he gets to sit in a basket on the front of the vehicle. We have a nice hour or so ride, and as we get back to the rental place, I pull down the break lever on the steering column just as Billy turns and sticks his little hand in the wrong place!   He screams, I scream, he starts gushing blood, and Susie grabs him up. We run down the street to the car, jump in, and speed off to Shore Memorial Hospital in Somers Point!  Well, long story short, the X-rays showed a break and after an appointment with a local orthopedic doctor the next day, all was well…but for one thing.  Billy couldn’t get the finger wet for the next couple of days! 

So there we were, at the beach for 2 weeks with a three year old, planning that most of our days would be taken up by hours and hours on the beach, and suddenly we had to put that plan on hold.  So what else could we do?  Trips to the boardwalk, visits to Cape May, and just about everything else we could think of to occupy him cost more money than spending the whole day at the beach.  Our cash that we had with us that was budgeted for our two week stay was going fast, and I really worried if we would be able to stay the whole time.  Luckily I discovered a way that an American Express card and a personal check could buy you AmEx Travelers Checks, but I look back on that time and really wonder how we got along without our modern conveniences like ATMs and Cell Phones!  

So we spent 4 great summers at “John’s House” as a family of three, but by the next summer, everything would change.  You see, upon getting back from Ocean City in the summer of 1986, pregnant Susie’s scheduled appointment with the doctor revealed not one little baby growing inside her but two!  With just a scant few months to wait, we needed to wrap our minds around the fact that our family of three was about to turn into a family of five!  Our twins, Krissi and Kenny joined the family on November 20th and suddenly we were parents of 3 kids under the age of five!  Of course, with changes in family size, other things have to change, and our plans for the D’Elia Family’s Summer of 1987’s Vacation did too!

One thing that didn’t change however, was our destination.  Where better to introduce our new babies to the beach, than Ocean City, NJ? So, come June of their first year, Susie and I loaded up the van with a 4 year old and two 7 months olds, two cribs, two high chairs, two walkers, and about everything else we could think of, and headed to Ocean City.  Two changes though, this year we decided that 3 weeks would be better for our expanded family and our destination was not “John’s House”.  

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Billy and Mom at 3917 Central Ave

For the summer of 1987 we upgraded our residence by moving from the west side of Central Avenue to the east side.  That summer, we spent our time on the second floor of a beach front house just across the street from John’s house.  We were now living side by side with the folks we’d been watching for the last 4 summers!  3 bedrooms meant that the twins had their own room as did Billy and two bathrooms plus a real indoor shower meant that life was much more comfortable for us.  Just being able to take the path over the dunes to the beach also meant that it was a lot easier for us to bring all the junk that three little kids need from the house to the beach.  It also meant that when we had to travel back to retrieve the one or two items that we always seemed to have forgotten, that wasn’t such a big deal anymore either.  It was an idilic 3 weeks at the beach and all the kids loved it.  

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Krissi and Kenny on the OC Beach their first summer

As usual our days were spent at the beach and most meals were home cooked.  There were occasional nights along the boardwalk pushing twins and sometimes carrying Billy.  There was a lot of Dad standing outside stores on the boardwalk, because getting 3 little kids in a store was not easy.  There also was the night we felt sorry for ourselves as we waited in line, trying to get into Mack and Manco’s pizza with the twins in a double stroller.  Our attitude was changed greatly through when a woman came out pushing triplets in a Triple stroller!  

The first taste all three of our kids had of beach life happened in Ocean City, NJ.  It was a great introduction, and it was a continuation of my summers in Ocean City to the next generation.  While Ocean City would be a part of these three kids’ lives every summer growing up, sadly, after the summer of 1987, our visits would change and it would be a number of years before we’d get back to this kind of an Ocean City visit, so the summer of 1987 is really the end of part two of our saga of the D’Elia Family and our love of Ocean City, NJ!

To Be Continued