For family vacations, Father knew best

Last Updated on Tuesday, September 18, 2012 03:32 pm Written by Cindy Nevitt Friday, June 15, 2012 01:00 am

When people ask me why I live in Ocean City, I always give the same answer: I vacationed here as a child and thought it would be cool to grow up and live here.

While not a particularly original story, it’s true. It’s also an extremely abridged version of the story.

All these years, I’ve credited my mother with introducing us to Ocean City on our family vacations in the ’70s. After all, it was her cousin who owned a flophouse in the 600 block of Ocean Avenue, a multi-story monstrosity with fire-escape ladders zig-zagging around the exterior, one shared bathroom complete with claw-foot tub per floor, no air conditioning, no television or telephone service, and no privacy. It was mostly inhabited by lifeguards and waitresses who bicycled to their jobs, and, for one glorious week in August, us.

My mother was the force behind the vacation – choosing the destination, directing my father in driving the 50 miles from our home to the shore, and setting up the apartment once we arrived. While she unpacked the cereal boxes, loaves of bread and other non-perishables she had brought from home, a few of us walked the eight blocks to the nearest grocery store, pulling our cousins’ little red wagon behind us, to pick up the food stuffs she hadn’t been able to pack.

Because my mother was the stay-on-the-beach-all-day parent while my dad was the hide-indoors-at-the-movie-theater parent, it’s easy to overlook my father’s contributions to these family vacations. But without his paycheck – because he worked in a factory while my mother stayed at home raising five children – we wouldn’t have been able to afford even this most austere of vacations, and without his forbearance, we wouldn’t have come here at all.

Thinking about it 40 years later, I’m pretty much in awe. What kind of parent agrees to an annual vacation in a place he hates? My father, who sunburned easily, avoided the beach six out of the seven days we were here. On the one day he joined us on the beach, he would hammer the umbrella deep into the sand, crawl underneath, wrap his neck and his feet in towels, put on sunglasses and a hat, and swelter.

Luckily, none of us ever needed rescuing because Dad’s reaction time was severely hampered by all of his sun-avoidance maneuvers. He could barely get back in his cocoon without his ice cream melting all over him after we made our one allowed visit for the week to the bicycling ice cream vendor.

In the evening, we’d go to the boardwalk and walk. One night during the week we went to an amusement park. One night during the week our grandparents drove down and treated us to dinner. One night during the week we were allowed to spend our money. The other nights, we walked on the boardwalk. It was all we could afford to do.

My father, ever the jokester, would walk close to posted signs along the boardwalk and smack some of them hard with his hand, then, as the metal reverberated, grab his head, stagger around and moan, pretending he hadn’t seen the sign and had walked into it. We always laughed. This trick never got old. I think my father must have done that because he realized how tortuous it was for five kids to do nothing but walk on the boardwalk every night.

For the five of us kids, there were high points to every day. We’d play miniature golf in the morning; have BLT sandwiches back at the apartment at lunch; and play card games on the porch with our cousins when it rained.

For my father, there was a movie matinee each day. In the era of gargantuan theaters with massive screens, when George C. Scott chewed up the landscape as “Patton” and pirates swashbuckled their way through “Blackbeard,” Dad had four movie houses to visit on the Ocean City boardwalk alone.

For my mother, there were beds to make, dishes to wash, meals to cook and kids to supervise. Yet, she called this week a “vacation,” although the only difference between being at home and being in Ocean City was the amount of sand we dragged in on our feet.

After years of Ocean City vacations, my father expressed his preference for the mountains. We went to Lake George, N.Y., for a week, and rented a cabin on a hillside. I have few memories of that week other than hiking on the hill, and we never went again. In fact, that was the end of family vacations.

So, perhaps father doesn’t always know best, but he did when it came to giving his oldest child her grown-up ambition to live in Ocean City.

Thanks for that, Dad, and Happy Father’s Day.

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