Down the Shore

By Eleanor Lippman

Two things always governed what my family did: financial and lack of imagination.

So, when it came to vacations, the only out of town location my family ever considered was Atlantic City, New Jersey, or as we in Philadelphia called it, “Down the shore”.

The financial part determined whether we even saw Atlantic City during the summer or whether we actually vacationed in Atlantic City and how long we stayed.

Preparing for a down the shore vacation, my father would empty out his delivery truck, moving its contents to the basement of our house, and we would pile in, three and eventually four children, two adults, and all of the paraphernalia needed for a beach stay. After unloading and settling us in at our temporary vacation house, he would return to Philadelphia to work. If our stay included a full weekend or two, he would join us late Saturday morning and on Sunday afternoon, he’d leave to go back home. He’d spend the two half days bravely sitting with us on the beach under an umbrella with several towels covering his legs completely. You see, my father, with his corn flower blue eyes, had skin the color of milk, skin that was so sensitive to the sun, any exposure would lead to misery. With one exception. My father drove his delivery truck with the driver’s side window down and his left arm resting half outside and half inside ready to signal his turning directions at all times. By the end of summer, the skin on his left arm was nut brown from his fingers to where his sleeve ended with a white band permanently there under his wrist watch. That arm never feared the rays of the sun. His right arm was always milky white.

During one of our beach summers, when we probably rented a place for two or three weeks, my father showed up briefly during the weekends as usual and on the day of our departure with the truck emptied out, he was ready to haul us back to Philadelphia. When he arrived to take us home, he had a big surprise, but, we had to guess what it was. No clues other than “something new”. All during the packing and loading the truck we pestered him with guesses. All during the ride home there were more, millions of ideas of ‘what was new’. We’d yell out a new guess and watch him grin and shake his head no.

We reached home and still hadn’t figured it out. After unloading our beach things and loading up the truck with my dad’s merchandise and still flinging guesses at him, my mother called us into the kitchen for dinner. I was probably about eight years old at the time and I remember my very last idea for what was new. As I stood in the doorway to the kitchen, I was certain the answer was “a new toaster”. Who knows what prompted that thought, but it was the best I could do.

I’ll never forget his big reveal. As his four children gathered around him, he was ready to tell. The answer: he had shaved off his bushy mustache. To this day, I still don’t know if my mother had guessed correctly.