Down the Shore

by Eleanor Lippman

Two things governed the decisions my family made: financial issues and lack of imagination.

The Atlantic City boardwalk taken during a visit when I was an adult

So, when it came to family 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”.

Financials determined whether we even saw Atlantic City during the summer or whether we were lucky enough to actually vacation there and how long we stayed.

To prepare for an actual 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 into the truck sitting on suitcases and holding on to beach paraphernalia and other much needed supplies, three and eventually four children, two adults, everything needed for our stay. After unloading and settling us in at our temporary lodging, my dad would return to Philadelphia to work. If our stay included a full weekend or two, he would arrive in his delivery truck on Saturday after his morning run and on Sunday afternoon, he would return to our empty house in Philadelphia. He’d spend his two half days bravely sitting on the beach with us under an umbrella with several bath 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 manually signal his turn direction. By the end of summer, the skin on his left arm was nut brown from his finger tips to where his sleeve ended with a white band of protected skin under his wrist watch. That arm never feared the rays of the sun. His right arm was always milky white.

My parents on the beach. Notice my dad’s very tanned left arm. I cannot tell from this photo whether he still had his bushy mustache.

During one of our summer vacations, when we rented a beach house for two or three weeks, my father showed up on weekends as was his usual practice, and on the final day, with his truck emptied out, he was ready to haul us and our gear 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 hear him laugh and watch him shake his head no.

We reached home, wife and four children, and still had not guessed what was new. After unloading our things and reloading 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 sitting on the shelf across the room: “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.