Yep, a pre-casino Atlantic City was the destination for us quite a few summers.
And it would be the very last place I would vacation with my parents.
The bloom had fallen off the summer trip rose two years prior. Whereas we used to always travel with another family or two, our penultimate family vacation was to Cooperstown, New York. Just me and my parents. A quasi-miserable time was had by all.
After that disaster in Central New York, I highly doubted the three of us would ever attempt this again. And the very next summer, we did not. We did what people call now a "staycation." Everybody stayed away from each other. And it worked.
By the next summer, I was embedded in baseball, the Mets, and my friends "up the block." We all had a wonderful nightly routine. After dinner, we'd play a baseball game at our local vacant lot. When darkness set in, we'd head home in time to get dessert from Coot the Good Humor Man. Then, we'd sit around on somebody's front steps to discuss yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
It was glorious.
And, then my mother presented me with a bombshell straight out of Pearl Harbor.
"We're all going to Atlantic City next week."
We who? And you can't be fucking serious??? Or whatever my profane version of that question was back in the day.
Yep, we were trying it again. Dad was off. Mom was off. And, whether I liked it or not, I was going to be off from my hard days playing/watching baseball and goofing off.
This time around, though, it wouldn't just be us. My parents, at least, would have some diversions. My mom's longtime friend, Rose, and her second husband Adam, who was old enough to be the same guy from the Bible. Rose worked as the cashier at the Quick Way Meat Market on 241st Street in the Bronx, so I saw her every time we did shopping there. The four of them liked each other, but I wouldn't necessarily equate them to the Ricardos and the Mertzes.
But we were going to travel with them. And, since Rose and Adam didn't have a car, we would be making that four hour drive together.
I tried to put up an argument to stay home with my grandmother. She could easily feed me as I maintained my daily and exciting schedule of nothingness. But, as usual, I lost.
So, on the fateful day of our departure, in the back seat was me, poor and old Adam sitting on the hump, and Rose.
The latter had to be at least 250 pounds.
I spent the entire ride wedged into the car ashtray on the side. I think you can still see the mark on my right thigh.
Somewhere around Newark, New Jersey, my mother called out from the roomy front seat.
"Who wants fruit?"
There was no room for it in the back seat. Nevertheless, Rose grabbed about seven or eight plums. Adam grabbed a peach. I rubbed my leg to restore some circulation.
Kill me now.
Once we arrived in Atlantic City, things got no better. In fact, the torture chamber that was the back seat of a Buick was suddenly more inviting.
We had made reservations at a stately old hotel that my parents had stayed at on an Atlantic City trip before I was born. In the years that passed, I had grown but the hotel had gone in the opposite direction. It was run down and shabby.
And, to my mom's absolute disgust, there was no air conditioning. I asked if it had AC when they had been previously.
"We didn't notice."
Oh, never mind. And that's already way too much information.
But, amidst the humid air blowing in from the ocean, we hunkered down for what was supposed to be the next week. I actually buried myself into my required summer reading for school. Homework in July was certainly better than what I was facing now.
Quickly, it became apparent that, on a seaside vacation, the four adults had little in common. My folks were no longer beach people. In fact, my dad never was. But, Rose and Adam loved to swim in the ocean. And, decked out in bathing attire, I couldn't wait for them to go into the water and stay there. Adam was one of those old timers who wore trunks that had perhaps no more than two or three stitches of actual fabric. Zero was left to the imagination or my horror. Meanwhile, Rose was no Esther Williams either. She needed plenty of material to cover up and barely did so at that. I wanted to run and hide.
We did the usual Atlantic City business. While Shamu and her nudist husband cavorted in the water, we paced up and down the Boardwalk. It was all the same, but something seemed different. My folks and I didn't see to have any energy for fun.
At nights, after Rose had washed the sand out of her and Adam's navels, we would dine out. Again, it was all very familiar. But incredibly unfamiliar at the same time.
Eventually, my mother succumbed to the heat of our two-bedroom oven and wound up with a migraine. So, to let her sleep it off, my father took me to the very movie theater you see in the photo above where "Bye Bye Birdie" is playing and, almost inexplicably, Bobby Rydell's name is on the marquee instead of Ann Margret's. Huh?
Anyway, on our visit there, it was "The Odd Couple." Playing to a packed house of laughing hyenas who likely had air conditioning in their hotel rooms. My dad roared at Felix and Oscar. It would be the next-to-last time I would ever go to the movies with my father. And certainly the last time I would hear him laugh out loud in a theater.
When we got back to the hotel, Mom was better and asked how the movie was. Dad said he loved it but alluded to some "raw" jokes that might have gone over my head.
Um, I'm right here and I got all the gags just fine. But, it was an interesting moment for me. My father still considering me a child, even though I felt I wasn't.
The next morning, my mother was done. The lack of air conditioning was too much to bear.
"Let's move up to Asbury Park."
Huh?
Rose and Adam didn't care as long as there was salt water nearby. My father simply didn't want to argue the point with my mother. And, as for me, could it be any more boring than this?
Have you ever been to Asbury Park? It was!
I couldn't wait to get back into that pressure cooker of a back seat for a ride back to my friends, my Mets, and my dog. I decided right then and there that I was officially too old and independent to go on vacation with my parents ever again.
Well, I never verbalized the words, but they must have transmitted upward to the parental units.
Because my family never went on a summer vacation after that.
Dinner last night: Grilled bratwurst.
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