As summer approaches, I am reminded of my family vacations in Wildwood, NJ as a child and the wonderful memories that go with it. My parents and I started going to Wildwood when I was 2 1/2 years old until I was 19. We stayed at the same motel, during the same week every year (I am the product of two creatures of habit). The motel room was nothing fancy, with two double beds, a kitchette and a bathroom..but to me it was paradise.
Certain sounds and smells can instantly take us back to moments of our lives. A window air conditioner humming through the night, mini powdered donuts, a young newsboy, early in the morning, calling out "Philadelphia Inquirer", and the smell of Coppertone suntan lotion all remind me of Wildwood. As I got older those smells and sounds turned into hearing the waves crash at night while you sit on a bench by the beach, the rough feel of a concrete sidewalk on your bare feet and the smell of pizza and funnel cake on the boardwalk. To this day, all these years later, any one of these sites, sounds or smells transport me immediately to that place in south Jersey.
As we grow older we yearn for the simple days we had as children. Our worries were as small our hands reaching for that boardwalk ice cream cone. The world now, both my own and the one in general, is much more complicated. I long for the days when my biggest concern was how many times we would go to the boardwalk in that vacation week or what rides I could convince my Dad to go on with me (I was and am a lover of roller coasters - my Dad not so much). I had some of the very best times of my life during those 17 summers. When we started going I was a baby; when we stopped I was on the brink of adulthood.
All these years later, most of Wildwood has changed. Gone are the small motels, which have been replaced by high rise condominium. Like everything else in the world - what was is a distant memory. People who remember the Wildwood of yesteryear have tried to restore it; but you can't turn back the sunrise (to quote one of my cousin's songs). Luckily, I have the pictures, the friends who were also there to reminisce with and the memories locked away in recesses of my mind, ready to call up whenever I long for the happy times of my childhood. Bobby Rydell sang in best in 1963.......
Oh baby, every day's a holiday and every night is a Saturday night Oh those Wildwood days, wild, wild Wildwood days
And then those party lights wild, wild Wildwood nights.
Say baby you'll be mine (Wildwood days) 'cause it's kissin' time (Wildwood days)"
Wildwood Days by Bobby Rydell (1963)
