Wish you were here

In case you didn't know, I grew up going to the Jersey shore and I still make an effort to take my kids there in the summertime. I want them to be feeling their inner Jersey girls, at least once in a while. Last night I realized I hadn't been taking them enough. Hopefully it's not too late to rectify that.

It was my turn to read bedtime stories to the five-year-old; per usual, she chose a book (The Zabajaba Jungle by William Steig) and I chose a book (Flotsam by David Wiesner). Per usual, she initially regarded my choice with skepticism, but when I explained to her that this was a sentimental choice, that this magical, wordless picture book was set in Long Beach Island, vacation mecca of my childhood and the same "down the shore" she'd visited a number of times, she relented. She loves LBI, of course. To the uninitiated it probably doesn't seem like much—a skinny, flat strip of sand in the Atlantic. Eighteen miles of laughing gulls and mole crabs and tartar sauce and ice cream parlors and cute lifeguards and the clink-clink of sailboats in the marina at night. Old Barney, big and benevolent like all old-school lighthouses, and some of the best heels-over-head, rough-and-tumbling, sand-in-every-orofice body-surfing around. Even Lindsay, who'd mutter darkly about Galveston or South Padre vs. LBI when I first forced him to go some 20-odd years ago, feels the love.

After we read Flotsam (naturally she loved that too), I told my daughter that Superstorm Sandy had wreaked some serious havoc on our beloved Jersey shore and I wasn't sure how LBI had fared. I did know that the Seaside Heights roller coaster and log flume had been washed out to sea, and that various boardwalks were in shambles. She looked confused. What's a boardwalk?

Omigod, have we never taken her to a boardwalk? Is it too late?

I am no fan of Governor Chris Christie but something he said at one of his many press conferences this week made me a little verklempt. He said that the boardwalks would be rebuilt but to folks of a certain age, they'd never be the same. He's so right. I guess I'm of that certain age. When did I get to be a certain age?

I realize that if you're not from NJ, you think that the Jersey shore is Jersey Shore. I've never watched the show; that might be what it's like now (or, well, that might've been what it was like a few days ago), but that's not how I see it. I see it as it's depicted on these vintage postcards (scored, mind you, at an antiques mall here in San Antonio): LBI was Eden (a mostly treeless Eden, but Eden nonetheless), and the boardwalks of Seaside Heights and Wildwood were a beckoning Babylon. My brother and I had to beg my parents to take us to that "honky-tonk" as they disparagingly referred to it, and that honky-tonk never disappointed. Please rebuild, Jersey. It won't be the same, but I've got some young Texans who need to feel the boardwalk beneath their feet.

Finnish Fridays: Sauna postcard

Ah, if I had a nickel for every sauna postcard I've received par avion... This one was sent by my parents when they were in the motherland back in October 1993, if I'm reading the postmark correctly. Anyway. What can I say? The sauna is a beautiful thing. Let your birch branches and your freak flags fly, people, and have a nice weekend.

Just like I pictured it

This Big Time Operator—and here I always thought BTO stood for Bachman Turner Overdrive—is headed off to the big city at the crack of dawn tomorrow morning for a whirlwind wedding weekend. Woo-hoo—look at me, such the big time operator! You ain't seen nothing yet! As Bachman Turner Overdrive would say. All blogging activity will likely be suspended, unless New York City has suddenly become very boring and attending the nuptials of my only brother to one of my BFFs turns out to be a snorefest.

(Two great things about vintage postcards: learning new slang, and marveling that there was ever a time when you could just write a person's name and citystate and the postcard would arrive at its intended destination. Odessa's population hovers around 100,000-don't think Mrs. W.M. Brady would've gotten this card had it been sent today.)

Oh, and speaking of cards, did everyone catch Cindy Sherman's freaky-cool find in the Times Styles section a week or two ago? Check it out.

Postcards from the edge

I live in what I consider to be a prime estate sale neighborhood: mostly ranch houses built in the 1950s and ’60s, lots of retired military folks (military = well-traveled = interesting estate sale fodder) and doctors (already discussed what makes their sales generally worth hitting). If I didn't live here already, I would totally stalk my own hood. So when a sale crops up, I tend to get irrationally territorial—like, who do you people think you are coming to my turf, trying to buy my neighbors' stuff? I haven't called the cops on the estate salers who park in the street (you are so busted! no one is allowed to park in the street here!) but I've been sorely tempted.

Like at this sale, at a ranch house set way back from the road, tantalizingly obscured by a grove of oaks—how many times have I jogged past it, biked past it, walked the dog past it and wondered what treasure lies within?

Well, I got a pretty good haul, including a box of San Antonio postcards. Oversized and rounded at the edges, with saturated colors and brightly colored borders, they were printed in McAllen, TX, by James Hanshaw Postcards. Not sure when but I'm going to guess the ’70s. (I might just be saying that because this image of La Villita is reminding me of the famous chase scene in The French Connection.) James would have benefited from the services of a proofreader but doesn't that just make the idea of San Antonio—7th largest city in the U.S., number one tourist destination in TX, simultaneously disrespected and embraced for its core lameness—as the city that "spans the centurys [sic]" all the more endearing?

I don't know what I'm going to do with all these cards exactly (a feeling I often experience post-sale); if you'd like me to mail you one while we still have a postal service, lemme know.