Years ago my Aunt Irma brought out a dusty artifact – the multi-decade date book that she kept from 1957 up until a few years before she died.
Although the date book was stamped “1957,” my aunt’s ingenuity and thrift allowed her to use the book for over 30 years. She simply noted the date of the event and penciled in the year. The book listed significant events – birthdays, weddings, funerals and graduations.
To my surprise, she also listed my family’s vacations to Wildwood, N.J. from the mid-1960s to the early 1990s. My aunt’s date book and pre-computer “database” were located in a spare bedroom that she had converted to a home office. Among its contents were road maps, vacation literature and hand-written routings to the Jersey Shore.
Her directions documented routing changes for the Pennsylvania Turnpike and the growth of my immediate family. Routings considered side trips along the way – visits to see my mom’s bachelor uncles in Maryland and Bicentennial-era stops in Philadelphia. There were routes that led to the Cape May-Lewes Ferry and others that included the Walt Whitman Bridge in Philadelphia.
In later years, after my parents built their house next door to my aunt, the route scheduling became a pre-vacation ritual. In the era of GPS and Google Maps, this ritual seems unnecessary, but this was the early 1970s. In retrospect, the ritual probably was less out of necessity and more about my aunt being vicariously involved in the planning of the trips.
My aunt’s collection of maps and routings (and alternate routings) serve as vacation time capsules. They reflected the changes in travel from northeastern Ohio to Wildwood. They documented the realignment of the Pennsylvania Turnpike in 1968. They included routing to our uncles’ farm in Maryland, and from the farm to the shore. Also included were reverse routings from Wildwood to Philadelphia to Ohio. Among the boxes were maps for the 1964 New York World’s Fair and random literature for Atlantic City casinos. Aunt Irma and Uncle Sam occasionally joined us in Wildwood, so there were brochures and letters from the Beach Waves, my aunt’s favorite motel on the shore.
Wildwood gets a lot of Midwest vacation traffic, but the distance influences travel planning and trip frequency. Friends in New Jersey and Philadelphia have the luxury of day trips, but travelers from western Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan typically make Wildwood an annual visit. The extra travel time allows for side trips along the way. Around the time of the U.S. Bicentennial, my family toured the Philadelphia Mint and Independence Hall. Because our annual side visit to the farm lasted from my childhood to early adolescence, I still have a distorted understanding of the time it takes to get to the shore.
Our family trips to Wildwood – as documented by my aunt’s date book – appear below. Some years include general memories, more than specific incidents, because I was so young. For clarity and interest, I’ve grouped the date book into specific eras.
My aunt’s date book serves as a parallel record of our Wildwood travels. Her travelogue also recorded the growth of my immediate family. Like most childhood memories, these trips provide snapshots of specific incidents, even if the exact year is not recalled. Although it’s nearly impossible to provide detailed information on individual trips, some broader themes emerge. My aunt’s original notes are in italics. My notations appear in brackets.
1964: June 13 (in Wildwood) [mom, dad, older brother and me].
1965: June 5 (in Wildwood) [mom, dad, older brother, baby brother! and me].
1966: June 9-16 (in Wildwood) [mom, dad, older brother, younger brother and me].
1967: Aug. 15 (P.M. to Wildwood) [We left late and my dad drove all night. The crew included my mom, dad, older brother, younger brother, a new baby sister! and me.].
1968: July 28 (to Wildwood) [same as 1967: the nuclear six].
The vacations between 1964 and 1966 include my family’s formative years. Like many shore-bound families, our vacations straddled multiple eras. In the early years, my parents transported bulky strollers and even a portable playpen. As our numbers increased, vehicles grew correspondingly larger. We evolved from a compact Volkswagen Beetle to a palatial Microbus that struggled up the hills of the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
Along with strollers, my mom also packed a train case – a portable pharmacy complete with motion-sickness pills, Solarcaine and a St. Christopher medal. During this era, the trunk also reflected the chronology of the trip. Besides luggage, my dad packed boxes (and coffee cans) filled with the cookies that my mother had baked for her bachelor uncles. The cookies were out of the way, but within easy reach. My dad worked like Mission Control. The cookies were like parts of a rocket that were shed during a space mission.
Since my dad was a teacher, summers were open. Consequently, we were all over the map with vacations. I remember June vacations in the early years, but we also visited the shore in July, August and September. Personally, I preferred the shore in peak season – not too early, not too late, but right in the middle.
We stayed at our great aunt’s cottage far from the hotel district, so our vacation rituals were different than most in the resort. Because my dad is a creature of habit, we developed routines that continued for decades. During childhood, we started the long-standing tradition of parking on E. Aster Road (across from the Pan Am, an upscale mid-century modern hotel with a spinning globe sign) during daytime trips to the beach.
Our nighttime boardwalk visits were more challenging. It took years to perfect strategic parking for the boardwalk. Finding the sweet spot took time and experimentation. We couldn’t be too high or too low on the boardwalk. We needed to be near age-appropriate attractions. And our needs changed as our family evolved.
The boardwalk ramp for the child-centric Casino Arcade was an important early entry point. The age-appropriate rides were all lights and movement. Even the gentle slope of the entrance was designed to accommodate little legs. Although we almost never went on the Casino Arcade rides, I remember this now-lost portal with great affection. Would we head north or south? My parents usually deliberated for a moment at the edge of the boardwalk. For the kids, it didn’t matter. We were bursting with excitement.
1973: June 12 (to Wildwood) [same as 1967: the nuclear six].
1974: July 16 (to Maryland, later to Wildwood) [same as 1967: the nuclear six].
1975: July 10 to Maryland, later to Wildwood. [same as 1967: the nuclear six].
This era reflected our growing independence as children. We could now all ride the same rides, despite an eight-year gap from youngest to oldest. The iconic Wipe Out – a giant Fiberglas sliding board – was a watershed ride. Initially, the three boys raced down the slick blue-and-white lanes. When our sister – the youngest – finally joined us, there was unarticulated joy on my mom and dad’s faces. It was also the heyday of AM radio, which paralleled the growing independence of the children. As the songs of summer blasted from boardwalk shops, automobiles and transistor radios, music became a way to bookmark our trips to Wildwood.
1978: July 31 (to Wildwood) [Sketchy details here. The kids are older and start driving separately. Some miss vacations altogether. My older brother, a recent high-school graduate, didn’t travel with us in 1978.].
1983: Aug. 31 (to Wildwood).
The late 1970s and early 80s were a transitional time. The kids often drove to the shore separately. Work, college and adult responsibilities led to missed vacations, but someone always returned to Ohio with tightly wrapped hoagies and fudge from the boardwalk.
1986: June 29 [to Wildwood for 2 weeks].
1990: Ella and Biff [mom and dad] to Wildwood on Sept. 17.
1991: Sept. 2-9 Wildwood [The last trip with my nuclear family. My mom died later that year.]. Besides my older brother’s wedding that fall, it was the last time all of us traveled anywhere as a family.
[2007: Labor Day weekend. I visited Wildwood for the first time since my mom died. Although many of the classic motels were gone, the water was warm and the weather was beautiful.
A few years later, all four siblings managed to meet on the boardwalk for one night. I became the uncle who bought ice cream for everyone – just like our uncles had done before me.
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