It’s a Shore Thing

by William D. Trego

It occurred sometime in early February. It was when the weather turned, briefly, with the temperature rising to almost 60 degrees up from the winter’s deep freeze. It was then that I began to think again of pleasant warm days and balmy cool nights by the ocean in Spring Lake.

There always seems to be such a brief thaw in mid-winter, a thaw which is always quite welcome and a thaw which provides an encouraging glimpse of what surely is to come. Perhaps it is Nature’s way of leading us ahead, providing us with hope — hope and belief in the prescience and veracity of the natural clues and markers we see all around us. Mother Nature has never let us down, has she? And why would she? So, with the knowledge that warmer weather is inevitably approaching, the mind begins to wander and thoughts of expeditions and adventure begin to infuse our daydreams. I’ve covered a lot of ground over the years, from mountains, to farms, to lakes and to the deep woods, but inexplicably, I seem always to return to the coast by the Atlantic Ocean, a familiar place I know so well, a place I knew as a child growing up in the ’50s.

In those years, my summer life centered on a small cottage in Stone Harbor, which then was a sleepy little town of other mostly small cottages. There were no upscale modern homes you see today in virtually any shore town — and it seems that Stone Harbor now may lead the charge in this respect — with many of these new structures just overwhelming in scale and fit and finish. I think of the folly of building a finely-joined house, similar to crafting a piece of fine furniture, only to leave it exposed out on the beach to be pounded and corroded by the harsh elements; I am intimately all too familiar with the caustic effect of the sea. And back then, in the ’50s, other than the many small cottages such as ours, there were about a dozen or so massive, cedar-shaked, 19th-century Victorian homes that are now, by and large, upscale inns or bed & breakfasts. They were just too rambling and expensive to maintain as homesteads. But, for the most part, Stone Harbor was a circumspect, understated town of summering pilgrims from Philadelphia’s Main Line, all just trying to stay cool as quietly and as elegantly as possible.

And “small” accurately describes the size of our lone bathroom. Hinny Youngman’s, “The room was so small I had to go out to the hall to change my mind,” gurgles up in my thoughts. But the little cottage had a disproportionately large fireplace, and just as in our home in Merion, my job along with my brothers was to split wood, and to start and tend to the spring and fall daily fires making sure there were no lapses or mishaps. We took this job very seriously; and my father was no fool — he knew how to employ his sons. The smell of wood smoke mixing with the heavy salt air of the sea was intoxicating, and while smoking a cigar sitting by the fire contemplating his beloved Philadelphia Phillies, my father understood the reasons he had sons: to ease his days and to think about all the hard work his father had him perform a generation before, the symmetry of paternal command. We were happy and energetic conscripted labor, and had absolutely no complaints.

But these days I spend my time in Spring Lake at my family’s oceanfront “cottage” with a magnificent, beautifully tiled pool. There are 10 full bathrooms in this house and life here is considerably different than it was 50 years ago. Aside from all the obvious aspects, shore houses (this one in particular) are increasingly about escape to luxury. They are about getting underway, getting away, getting out of Dodge; precisely from what to what is an open question. But let’s face it, hell or high tide, we all simply have to get away, and get away on a regular basis — I certainly do. NJC

William D. Trego is a writer and the publisher of fly-fishing books at Meadow Run Press in Far Hills.