Pam’s Pictorama Post: This scrappy little feline is issuing a warning – Back up! Cigar in mouth, claw paws and fixed stare, he chomps on a cigar which casts a reddish glow on his face, spewing a plume of smoke. His scratching paws show claws on the ground. He might be old and tatty but he can still fight a good fight. Although I think the admonishment means Get Back I think it also alludes to having your back up.
There is a small squiggle in the lower left corner and while I thought it was a spider or other insect, I now think it is someone’s way of signing their images. Google Images was not able to help me, however I now know that this was actually a woman’s suffrage image which I had not guessed. (I have a few suffragette items, which are frequently about cats, and a post about one is here.) It does make some sense now that I know it. It belongs to a series of cards featuring this tatty tom. This card was never used or mailed.
Votes for Women statue. Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.
Cards like this referred to the changing social role of women and aligning them with cat like characteristics. I look at Cookie and Blackie this morning and I am not quite sure what characteristics they are referring to – I may be missing the point. (Cookie has been pacing the apartment and meowing at us and Blackie is napping on the couch. Neither seems politically idealistic.) I am not so thick however, that I don’t understand that this is a flinty, tough kit who is ready to engage their claws on all comers. Me-ow!
From the same series but not in Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.
I think I chose today’s card because we are mid-summer here in NYC and I am at sixes and sevens. A thoughtful colleague asked what I had enjoyed most about summer so far and my first thought is how hot and wet it has been and I could hardly come up with a pleasant answer. Work has been busy (event in Sag Harbor a week ago) and other than the temperatures and the humidity it has not felt like summer at all. We are generally frayed and on edge here. My fur is standing on end!
Next week sees our month long move to the Jersey shore and some vacation. I am hoping to restore my equilibrium and my spirits with long evenings on the porch among the dahlias and the hummingbirds which come to snack in the evenings. I want to eat my homegrown Jersey tomatoes, local corn and peach ice cream, along with grilling some fish. I want to drink an iced drink and read on the deck with Kim also reading in a chair across from me. (We have a towering pile of books we are bringing!) August is designed to smooth our fur and get us ready for the coming fall ahead.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: In a better world I would be writing this from home on Saturday morning as usual. I do have some new acquisitions that I am looking forward to treating you to but it will have to wait until Sunday as I am on what is these days, a very rare business trip.
My days at Jazz and even the Met treated readers to a fair amount of travel. Some of it quite exotic and international. (Some of those posts can be found here and here.) However, my current gig fundraising for an animal hospital does not require must travel. However, today here I sit in the rain, in very slow moving midtown traffic, a passenger on a Jitney heading for East Hampton.
Book purchase.Illustration
I frequently say that into every New York fundraiser some time in East Hampton must fall. In today’s case it is an event tomorrow night. I am going out early and staying with a friend until Saturday.
Other purchase and illustration.
Growing up at the Jersey shore my relationship with Long Island beaches is a bit skeptical. While “beach traffic” was a thing of my childhood (we could walk to the beach but you still had to negotiate traffic for any of life’s needs in a car) it could not prepare me for the gridlock of Long Island. Cars line up in long rows for blocks and blocks at intersections. You find that traffic is always a major topic of conversation here – what route did you take and how was it. This year’s event is in downtown Sag Harbor so some lucky folks who live in that historic district will be able to walk.
1937 view of Peninsula House (aka P House) Sea Bright in 1937. It burned to the ground in 1986.
The east end of Long Island has always seemed like the glitzy cousin to my beloved Jersey shore. The old houses here are older and many have more gravitas than our beachside mansions along the ocean. Houses here were built right on the ocean while most of those in Monmouth County are on the other side of a seawall and thoroughfare. Some of those few that were waterside perhaps washed away – or otherwise lost to time like the Peninsula Hotel which used to perch seaside in Sea Bright.
Luxury brands abound here – the streets dotted with the designer clothes of the moment, Starbucks (of course) and the likes of Tiffany. In Jersey the wealth moved more to the riverside and the mansions line those more interior shores.
View from the lovely house I stayed at.
Still, I have never entirely understood the appeal of this location, now with traffic a good more than three hours from Manhattan when I can hop on a ferry at 34th street and arrive on the beach shores of Sandy Hook in 50 minutes.
Another view – with swans.
Work is what is more likely to draw me out here in the summer than leisure activity of my own – my garden in NJ beckons! It has been a few years since my last jaunt during my final summer at Jazz at Lincoln Center when I came out for one of the orchestra’s engagements and to visit supporters out here.
Geese outside my window Friday morning, gently honking.
Then like now I stay in the gorgeous home of a thoughtful friend who I met during my years at the Met. This year I perched in a lovely guest cottage on her property which overhangs the shores of Georgica Pond. It is a heart stoppingly beautiful view of this protect inlet, just a canoe ride around the bend from the open ocean. I woke to geese gently honking out the glass doors to the water. (I wrote about one other sojourn at her house here.)
Views from Long House.Amphitheater there with Ai Weiwei Sculptures Apple tree arbor.
The weather here, like the weather everywhere in the area, has been lousy. Overcast and drizzly days, far cooler here than the humidity of the city which we have been subjected to. (I always vacation in August as over time I have decided that July tends to just have bad weather.) So,although I did get a short walk on the beach I never made it into the pool nor was I able to sit outsie with a book or thihs laptop and enjoy the world going by.
However, in a yard filled with water fowl, birdfeeders, a glory of bunnies and chipmunks there was always something going on. It reminded me so nicely of the river view from the house I grew up in where there was always something to watch or look at in the yard.
Also, the last time I visited here my mom was still alive. I remember sending her many photos of the views here and my fingers still itched to be able to do it.
Images from the Ark at the Church in Sag Harbor.
This weekend’s destination was an exhibition of animal sculptures and a reception celebrating the animal hospital I work for. The building housing it, an exhibition space called The Church, which was once originally – a church that is. Philosophically I believe that Hamptons events consist almost entirely of people who live in greater Manhattan and who you could see there for less cost in time and money. (In other words, this feels unnecessary from a fundraising perspective.)
Aside from the event, my host took me to Long House gardens – the estate of Jack Larsen – where we took a wonderful long walk through the landscape, stumbling on sculpture nestled among the plantings. Having once worked for the Central Park I have some sense of the scope that the care of such seemingly casual plantings need. It was a day closed technically closed to the public and the staff was out enforce to take advantage of the weather between fits of spitting rain, broken by short periods of intense sunny heat.
Main drag in East Hampton taken while waiting for the bookstore to open. The one in Sag Harbor is the good one though!
I will report quite a bookstore discovery in Sag Harbor. I had gone to a satisfactory bookstore in East Hampton earlier in the visit where I was intrigued by a volume or two. However, Sag Harbor Books (info here) appears to have consumed a used bookstore we went in search of and the end result is a combination of books old and new for sale, just a block up from the water. I had limited time there but grabbed these two volumes and will give them a try. If you find yourself in this area make the trip to see it. Ignore the first editions and cases with huge prices and head to the carefully tended and curated shelves of more generic offerings. (There was a strong evidence of westerns and cowboy options. Kim is a fan but his reading so voracious and longstanding that I hesitate to buy for him. He is getting a t-shirt on this trip which is an odd choice, but I saw a color I liked and I grabbed it at a general store.)
General store in East Hampton where I purchased a t-shirt for Kim and some very over priced hair ties.
As I finish this I am on the Jitney this Saturday morning. It will be afternoon by the time it reaches you all and those regular readers may be wondering where I have wandered off to. I won’t get back to Manhattan until 12:30 and will need to get settled with photos and all before sharing this. However, I promise a rare treat in terms of a cat item tomorrow so stay tuned.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today’s postcard, celebrating a local summer spot where I grew up in New Jersey, seems like a fitting Memorial Day holiday kick-off card. I purchased it at the postcard show bonanza of a few months ago with the intention of framing it for the house in NJ where I am gathering a few early cards of local spots I love.
This one was mailed on August 8, 1923 from Atlantic Highlands at 11 AM. It was mailed to Mr. Robert Del Paso, 44 Est 98th Street, New York. Written on the back is a brief note, Best regards to you and your sister from Dorothy and Eugene.
The view shown here is the one that you now see from the ferry when it pulls in. It looks nothing like this now, a small public beach is at the landing and some low condos not far beyond. Boats dock nearby and restaurants and small businesses dot the edge of the water along with some houses, although you don’t see those right in this spot either, as it is largely in the shadow of a much larger bridge.
The approach to Atlantic Highlands via ferry from 2021.
The first time I took the ferry into Atlantic Highlands, the sense memory of that spot was amazing. On the occasions I would go sailing with my dad or on the creaking wooden fishing boat of my grandfather, the Imp, we would head first under one bridge and then the other and to the bay or ocean. The sense of history smacked me hard being on that spot of the water again.
I have touched on this Jersey shore enclave before, not long ago in a post about Bahr’s Restaurant which can be found here. I opined on the thoughts I had about living there at one time, and the history of that restaurant where I had what turned out to be a last birthday dinner with my sister, a few decades past now.
Atlantic Highlands, and it’s kissin’ cousin Highlands, abut the area of the shore I grew up in. (Highlands is the hamlet slightly further into the river side, Atlantic Highlands faces out toward the ocean and beyond.) However, while Sea Bright, a spit of land that adjoins it, was an almost daily destination, the Highlands while hard by, somehow were the route less taken. I believe that this was probably largely due to beach traffic and while being almost within shouting distance as the crow flies it was rarely the shortest way to go anywhere from Memorial Day through Labor Day.
The parking lot for the ferry, next to the small public beach and some condos.
Once I hit high school we made it part of our route when traffic died down late in the evening. We ate lobster rolls and drank beer at shacks at the edge of the river at the junction where the bay joins the river and the ocean. Also on our route was a movie theater that showed films recently fallen out of circulation for an admission of $1.00. Beyond that, expensive restaurants that hugged the shore and gave a view as far as Manhattan on a clear day and those were beyond our means.
Atlantic Highlands, as shown in this postcard, attaches to Sandy Hook beach (and now state park) via the bay. Not only has this quaint wooden bridge been replaced, but the concrete one of my childhood (which seemed plenty big at the time, bigger than its Sea Bright counterpart which required a draw bridge function for the passing parade of boats) was replaced very recently by a true behemoth of a bridge.
Moby’s lobster shack on the water.
The one in Sea Bright is also under reconstruction and I gather will no longer be the draw bridge of my childhood – it’s opening hourly in the summer was how we timed our days in the summer in order to avoid it and the traffic back-up it would cause. I had a boyfriend in high school who had a summer job working the bridge which was a great gig and the retirement job of numerous fishermen. I don’t know how, in retrospect, Ed got that job but many envied him it. I am sorry to say I never visited the tiny shack mid-bridge that was the man cave you stayed in if you worked the bridge.
The theater is evidently still there.
I’m also sorry to have to say that one of the people I spent the most hours with in Atlantic Highlands is gone now. A long former boyfriend, I had fallen out of touch with Sam Lutz, and found out via local connections that he died a few years ago.
I suspect I will eventually return to writing about this area. For some reason it lives in my memory in a way other places do not. However, for now, this rosy sun setting over the Highlands hills is a good place to leave Pictorama for the holiday weekend as I head out there shortly.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today is a bit of a day in the life of post, back to toys tomorrow! As ongoing readers know, a few weeks ago Kim and I packed kitties and a few bags and headed to our house at the Jersey shore for a few weeks. With a new job I don’t have a lot of vacation so I am commuting these first weeks.
My new digs for work are way over on York Avenue and 62nd – an ideal daily commute from our New York apartment and I walk to and from most days. Occasionally I hop on a slow moving bus that wanders up and down York – and then oddly meanders across 57th Street.
Over the river heading to NYC just as the sun is coming up.
I am paying for my being a hop, skip and a jump from work with more than a month of a Jersey commute which is an hour and twenty minute train ride, with another twenty to thirty minutes on the subway and walking on the other end. It is a bit of a shock to the system – being at the mercy of the NJ transit system and back in the clutches of the Q train daily.
On the other hand, as I write this from my deck this Saturday morning I just saw a hummingbird take a long, long drink from a flowering tree and that is part of my summer reward. As I write, I am perched on my deck in full view of some ripening peppers and tomatoes. Cicadas buzz in the background.
My commuter mug, a great gift, but it did turn on my earlier this week.
It may be worth it but there is a cost for my slice of paradise! Our morning, always an early start, is even earlier. Cats (so many cats!) need to be fed, litterboxes cleaned and Blackie needs his shot. Kim tackles much of it but there’s a mad flurry of activity for a bit. The train ride in is an easy one and I get on early so always have a seat. As long as I don’t have an early appointment to make me crazy if the train has a hiccup, it is generally a time for some extra work or reading.
Sunrise on the way into the city – sort of the dividing point where it becomes more urban.
A friend christened my commute with a travel mug for my coffee, which I now fill religiously and think of her as I drink my piping hot coffee on the train. However, the other day in my enthusiasm I filled it too high and the steam popped the top. When I threw my bag onto my shoulder to run out the door hot coffee streamed down my back! Ouch and a pause to change my top layer (and put some soap on it so it wouldn’t stain!) and I was out the door. My back smarted all the way to work and I couldn’t take my jacket off as my tank had a coffee stain on the back! I have learned my lesson and I both allow to cool and don’t fill quite so ambitiously.
Heading into Red Bank station, we slow through these woods and then over the river. I love this few minutes coming home.
This route to and from the city is a well worn one of course and I have been traveling it on and off since reaching adulthood. It was the first and last leg on my trips to and from college for the holidays. Eventually it was the trip I took to visit my folks once I was living in New York, and ultimately to my dad in hospice during his long illness. Aside from the time of the pandemic (I have written about my time taking the ferry here) and just beyond when I indulged in a car to and from my increasingly lengthy visits to mom during her illness, the train was my main conveyance here and back. (I wrote about those trips with a lovely comfort dog, Cash, here.)
Where the view turns urban as we approached NYC the other morning.
The trip on the Jersey side starts out with water and woods. A third or more of the way there, houses start to emerged and are closer together, over some marshland (my mom used to talk about the wildlife in those marshes!) and then it becomes increasingly urban. Before you know it you are in Elizabeth and Newark and then the City is in sight before a ride through a tunnel (used to terrify me as a kid, these tunnels) where my ears pop, and then into Penn Station on the other side.
Mom always talked about the birds and other wildlife in these marshes.
Of course the trip back is the same in reverse going back. Getting to the train is always more stressful in the evening and I struggle with the discipline to get out of the office with enough time to do the reverse path to the train. It is generally boarding when I get there (unless delayed) and I hop on in the nick of time. The evening by necessity is more work filled as I have left things I can deal with on the train for that time and it is largely work time.
Weather permitting a quickly assembled dinner can be had on the deck – twinkling lights on and Radio Dismuke (more about that here) playing popular standards of the 20’s and 30’s. Tempting to stay up, but an early to bed with the early to rise to commute on the horizon again!
Pam’s Pictorama Post: The suitcases are largely packed, art supplies for weighing in massively in a Fresh Direct bag – what did we do before Fresh Direct bags? I have moved everything imaginable in them. For those of you who don’t have Fresh Direct, they are super large reusable bags with handles which our food is delivered in. The company will take them back or you can stockpile them for moves to you summer house, move your office and more.
Kim’s bag of art supplies, carefully prepacked.
The cats are looking at us suspiciously. They duly noted that the suitcase after last week’s trip to San Diego never went back down to the basement. Something is clearly afoot! No one has gone near the carriers but we will need to grab them fast in the morning if we don’t want to have to dig them out from under our bed. I will them to become used to this twice a year ritual now but they are resisting it. Cookie will undoubtedly spend the entire vacation under a chair again, hissing at us. (We continue to try to deploy new ways of dealing with it and I will report back on those efforts.)
It looked like so much in NYC and seems like next to nothing here in NJ!
This year things are different than last. I have less vacation time earned at my new job so I will spend more of my time commuting, some remote days and then some vacation at the end. I am reminded of how different work is, having a new job is an adjustment still in month six.
Much of my staff is new and haven’t accrued much vacation and I worry that when the busy season of fall hits we will all get exhausted. We are all still getting used to each other and the team is still emerging and finding itself. We are told our offices will move, maybe as early as October. We are somewhat camped out in our current space (leaks! mice!) so we are looking forward to it, despite the fact it will come at a busy time.
The bounty of cherry tomatoes and a couple of tiny strawberries.
My new commute takes me way over to the East side of Manhattan – handy for a girl who lives on York Avenue most of the year, but adding time onto the commute from New Jersey. I am eyeing the ferry which would leave me on First and 35th just to shoot up to 62nd and York and cuts the trip to 50 minutes. On the other side the commute is a bit longer home and I have to decide if it is worth it. The ferry is, without question, a more pleasant way to travel!
Oh the cucumbers…
I am looking most forward to time in my garden however, and evenings out on the deck. That has become real summer for me. Reports of my cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers come from a friend daily. Cucumbers in particular seem very happy, with their prickly strange nascent bounty – pickle size bits! My cucumbers have grown lavishly and would cheerfully take over the world given time. I gave them small trellises to climb which they covered immediately and kept going. We eat a lot of cucumbers so I am good with this, at least in theory.
First year this dahlia bloomed – was given to me in memory of my mom.
The cherry tomatoes had spit out a few specimens on my last trip but are quite laden now. The larger tomatoes had not yet yielded fruit. The strawberries in their pots appear happy, but a bit slow. Perhaps they too need a trellis and a spot in the yard next year. There is a tiny grapevine which has taken hold and I am hoping that it will winter and return for further growth next year.
This grapevine is rather impressive. Has grown a lot in the few weeks since I was last here.
Mom always had grapes and strawberries growing wild across fences in the backyard growing up – we never harvested them much and they were really there for the wildlife. I take that attitude with my blueberry bushes which are laden with berries and disappear in the twinkling of an eye. These days the birds, bunnies and chipmunks and I are locked in a race to see who gets what. of the other produce I am sorry to say I am less generous than my mother was.
The deck last summer.
Few things restore me better than an evening on my deck with twinkling fairy lights and some music playing. It makes all the effort of moving us there worthwhile. Time slows which these days is magical.
However, as I write this, the front door area in this small apartment is laden with packages and cats are giving us a sideways look. They know! Shortly I will do a final clearing of the fridge and throughout and we will hit the road. With any luck I will send a sign off from the other side!
******
We arrived, relatively without incident. Cash, my favorite car dog friend, was displeased with cats in his car, but he remained at a reasonable distance in the front seat. Just looking at Jeff occasionally and asking Why? (I have written previously about Jeff and Cash here.)
Cash looking at Jeff and asking, Why are these cats in our car?
Cookie and Blackie have disappeared into the house, under something somewhere. B will likely come out when he hears us in the bedroom later, not sure about C. We are trying something different and giving her a room to herself, Kim’s studio, upstairs.
Rainy day here so I only have rainy pictures of the garden. Alas, hoping it clears for us this evening!
Pam’s Pictorama Post: One of my favorite new hobbies is purchasing bits of local memorabilia to decorate the New Jersey house. Having grown up in the area I have always found local history interesting and I am having fun finding ways to celebrate and embrace it as well as my own history there. Along those lines I picked up this postcard recently with the intention of framing it for the house there. This is a bit of a long summer and childhood post so settle in if it appeals. I guess I am kicking off summer officially today.
In a parallel universe I think I bought a tiny wooden house in Highlands on the water and live there. In that world I either live with and/or disregard the constant flooding of the area and I have no idea what I do for a living. There was a moment in this world where I gave serious consideration to such a purchase for a weekend house (affordably due to the aforementioned flooding), but my ever practical minded mother talked me out of it. I lived through enough flooding to hear her talking sense about it. Nonetheless, my heart does remain with the idea of a few rooms in a wooden house, just a few minutes walk from the river and ten or so minutes over the bridge to Sandy Hook beach.
Back in the early days when Bahr’s was still a rooming house and bait and tackle shop.
When I was very young, we had a house – one sold by Sears and Roebuck – on the nearby spit of land in Sea Bright we call the North Beach. I adored that house and did consider making it my home when my parents sold it in my early 20’s. My earliest summer memories are there, with beach access across the (incredibly busy) street and clubs with pools where I would ultimately learn to swim. In recent years, the bridge between the two, Sea Bright and Highlands, has been remade from a simple old fashioned one (up from the glorified foot bridge that would have existed at the time of this postcard) to a very high, super highway version which I guess you can walk over, but seems a bit threatening.
Anyway, Highlands and its kissin’ cousin tucked nearby, Atlantic Highlands, were always there as part of my childhood. It has an interesting mix of real estate, multimillion dollar homes on the steep hilly incline overlooking the water (mom and dad would speculate on how terrible winter driveways and roads they must have) and down to the small, wooden homes near the shoreline. For those of you who followed my nascent ferry adventures to and fro Manhattan, this is where the ferry leaves you, or conversely picks you up. As a child we mostly drove through it as a way of avoiding round trip beach traffic to Sea Bright or a to get out on the highway.
Nearby ferry landing.
One of the fixtures of Highlands is Bahr’s Landing restaurant. It is currently billed as the oldest restaurant in New Jersey, dating back to its earliest incarnation as a seasonal houseboat chowder and boarding house for those working the waterfront in 1917. Boats were rented and on the off season the family went back to their necktie business in Newark.
Eventually the business took off sufficiently in the 40’s to become year round and, according to the article I found, the original houseboat established the existing building today. Oddly, I only learned recently that the family is one I know – I went all through school (kindergarten through high school) with the current generation owner, Jay Cosgrove. Yay Jay!
Undated photo from their site but maybe not too far off from when this postcard was made.
In an unconscious way, Bahr’s played out through my childhood, young adulthood and has come back for me in middle age. As a small child I remember off-season celebratory birthdays there – as year round residents my parents preferred it in any season but summer when the local traffic would increase ten fold overnight. I could be wrong, but they may have introduced oyster crackers into my life which I adored as a child.
Postcard not in my collection shows rickety original bridge between Highlands and Sea Bright to Sandy Hook beach.
As teenagers and on summers home from college we didn’t care and braved the traffic cheerfully. The restaurant proper was too expensive however and we were instead content (very content indeed) to sit next door on benches near the water for services outside until late in the evening, eating lobster rolls and juicy fried clams. There was a movie theater a few blocks away which showed second run and old films for 99 cents and so a reasonably affordable date night was established.
I had not been inside the restaurant for many years when my sister Loren suggested it for a birthday lunch one year, shortly before she died and we celebrated our childhood there. Bittersweet, it was my first and last time there for a number of years as I thought going back would make me sad.
Bars from the water side in an undated photo.
However, in my mother’s final year or so we ordered in food a fair amount and I figured out Doordash from there on a few occasions which we enjoyed. I did it weekly or so until they could no longer find drivers. Mom was a vegan, but there were a few vegetable dishes she liked and everything we ordered from there was delicious and a wonderful change of pace.
In the subsequent year since mom died, a good friend and I have taken it up again as our occasional treat. We generally go at lunchtime during the week, occasionally dinner, when even the summer traffic is more bearable, taking an inland route which spares us some tussle.
Yup, the mug I purchased full of the chowder and some of those oyster crackers from my childhood shown here.
I wish I had copies of the old photos the interior of Bahr’s is decorated with – some go back to the days of it as a houseboat, renting rooms. Others show fishing in the immediate area – I always take time to study them. There was also a time when it had an early life as a ferry stop for cruise ships that would head down to the South from New York City. Ancient majolica oyster plates fill another vitrine. A small gift shop is at the front, near the bar and the oldest part of the building. I recently purchased chowder size mugs, one for the house in NJ and one for 86 Street.
This is the bar area where for some reason I have never eaten. I think we favor the water views. I always like to go and look at the photos and art in it though when I can.
The fare at Bahr’s is the absolute top shelf of what you expect and want from a local seafood restaurant, perched right over the water. Plates groan with ultra fresh local scallops, clams, oysters, lobster and various other kinds of fish. I remain partial to a warm lobster roll which has come to define this item to me, simply lobster chunks with butter on a traditional roll, served with homemade potato chips if I feel decadent. Homemade biscuits are served for starters – this is not diet dining. My friend Suzanne remains largely devoted to a plate of scallops and vegetables. We both occasionally go off script however and in this way I discovered their “original recipe” spicy clam chowder which is stupendous! I am a fan and have begun buying a container for the freezer in NJ each time I go and it makes for a very happy meal subsequently.
Recent image from the parking lot at Bahr’s.
The postcard I have acquired appears to most likely be from the 40’s given what I know and that it is a linen postcard – those were produced in the 30’s and 40’s. As you can see from my recent photo, not much as changed, down to the neon sign which must flash to boats like a beacon. That is Sandy Hook, now a state park, across from it on a tiny spit of land with the ocean beyond. Seen today the immediate surrounding area is a busy dock, as shown in my photos, and Moby’s, the affordably cousin they also own, next door. If you sit outside near the water and the docks, fat seagulls rule while ducks and geese placidly come and go. There is a parking lot where it is just sand here.
Verso of card.
On the back in very neat pencil print it says, The air is wonderful here on river. There are five children here & they have such a good time. Hope everything is well with you. Love Marg. It is addressed to: Mrs. M. Martin, PO Box #137, Gibbstown, New Jersey without a stamp so maybe it went in an envelope or just was never sent. On the back of the card, printed at the top it says, Bahr’s Seafood Restaurant Highlands NJ. Lobster and Fish Dinners. The “Half Moon” Bar and Cocktail Lounge, Charter and Deep Sea Boats for Hire. Est. 1917 – Highland 3-1245.
So Bahr’s has earned its place to be enshrined at our New Jersey residence. With any luck, some old photos will show up to join it and I look forward to treating you to a bit more of that local lore.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: As I start this I sit in a train tunnel to NYC from NJ with an absurdly loud snoring generating from the seat in front of me. This man needs help I think.
The great summer experiment of 2023 got off to a rocky start (see the cats not eating post here) and although it has improved (cats have resumed eating and now are focused on fighting with the NJ cats) we are still in somewhat dubious turf, especially when it comes to developing my commuter chops.
Local honey. I run past here frequently and am tempted but how to get the honey home?
Last week, after a debilitating trip in for a breakfast appointment which was stymied by an express train that went local, I made it to Penn station in the nick of time to hop on. My commuter skills have been acquired painfully. I hopped on a train one evening in the nick of time only to discover that you cannot buy a ticket with a credit card on the train.
Anya and her double decker cat stroller.
To pay cash you pay a hefty fee so the conductor left me to try to put the app on my phone but it went into a repeating ring of spinney ball Hell, perhaps because the internet signal was coming and going. Much to my surprise, a very nice gentleman who was sitting next to me spontaneously bought my ticket for me which was lovely of him.
Then there was that Friday when the line I take stopped working and I hopped the ferry instead. A nice ride for me but miserable traffic for the friend who picked me up.
Historic house in Red Bank turned restaurant.
I am slowly returning to running here in Jersey. I lost the habit here toward the end of my mom’s illness when mornings were busy times. I got out and turned toward Red Bank the other day. I had a look at the summer set up – the main drag is closed to car traffic and created a pedestrian path and eating area.
Fig tree awaiting trnasplanting.
Post pandemic the town has suffered a loss of retail like many other places. Restaurants have done best in the rebirth thus far. There is a Tiffany – it is a wealthy area after all. I think of how we used to say that Tiffany set up in the beach communities to salve the conscience of the guilty husbands coming from Manhattan for the weekend, leaving their summer seasonal mistresses in New York. This year I have a taste of being the husband but I can assure Kim (and cats) that they have nothing to fear from my evenings alone in Manhattan – hence no trips to Tiffany.
Local Tiffany’s for those last minute gifts…
For all of the trouble settling in and getting settled, we are now and we are having good days here. The cats are eating on their own. Blackie has annexed a bedroom next to ours and now has two rooms firmly in paw. (Approximately the size of our apartment in Manhattan ironically.) He is finally appearing to enjoy himself some. Cookie has decided that most of her days will be spent behind Kim’s chair, less pioneering spirit in her. Thus far the New Jersey cats seem to take them with a grain of salt.
Lunch and dinner is mostly consumed on our deck off the kitchen where we can survey the beauty of the garden. A fig tree is the most recent acquisition, purchased with two figs on it and several more already peeking out. Tomato and pepper plants are producing now and the herbs are in full cry. A jasmine plant acquired a few months back has its first bloom although my vision of evenings heady with the smell of jasmine may have to wait for another year.
Ferry was crowded last Friday when train went down.
I have strung fairy lights around the deck and added solar ones in both the front and back which also pop on as it gets dark. A portable speaker and my phone are all we need to play some music. Hummingbirds make a sunset appearance at some flowering trees. As dark falls and the lights twinkle on, tiny bats swoop in to feast on the mosquitoes – which have been feasting on me. Fireflies blink (do the bats eat them too?) and I think that yes, this is summer at its best and at last.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: By the time you read this I will be heading to Denver for a conference having left at the crack of dawn. However, I leave this summery post in my place. Today’s ice cream post is a bookend of sorts to last week’s running in the heat. One advantage of running through the summer is it allows for the consumption of a certain amount of ice cream.
Long time Pictorama readers (and well, anyone who knows me) are aware that I have a serious soft spot for ice cream. In my world ice cream has no calories and if ice cream is available it should be eaten. Therefore, I generally do not keep it in the house, although this seems to have only a marginal impact on my consumption.
Ryan’s homemade ice cream. Hard to beat!
My taste preferences are eclective – I am not an ice cream snob in the least – however, if you say salted caramel my ears will perk up. But I like a soft serve cone, a bowl of strawberry from a local creamery or something more exotic at a restaurant making their own all equally.
I appear to have inherited my love of ice cream from my father and his affection for it was documented in a very popular post which can be found here. Dad was always up for a trip to the local Dairy Queen and usually had a container or two tucked into the freezer, especially in his advancing years. He went from being a plain chocolate guy to having a distinct preference for exotic flavors with bits of candy bar or cookie. I started as a vanilla girl and now like, well, more or less all of it.
The New Jersey version of my habit is largely centered around trips to Ryan’s whose homemade ice cream I only discovered several years ago. Their strawberry is epic and when the peaches ripen the peach is just heaven. Although if time does not permit a trip out to Ryan’s I might talk my friend Suzanne into a much closer trip to Carvel. When dad was alive Father’s Day and his birthday were often celebrated with a Carvel, Fudgie the Whale of a Cake. Jolly blue icing bits in the one I remember and yummy chocolate crumbly bits.
Fudgie the Whale. I remember some of the piping as blue though…
For many years there was a Carvel near me here in Manhattan, on the corner of 85th and First Avenue, although sadly there is a Starbucks there now. I would stop in for the occasional cone, but they were too far from the office to grab a party cake there. (I did used to bring ice cream to the office at the Met sometimes, but needed to buy it closer – ice cream sandwiches did surprisingly well for delivery, re-freezing and consumption. I would also occasionally grab one or two other people and go across the street where a Mr. Softee is resident for the summer and buy dripping ice cream treats for whoever was knocking around the office on a summer afternoon.)
Mr. Softee on the corner of 86th and Lex.
Unlike people who might find the Mr. Softee tune (generally Pop Goes the Weasel) or tinkling bells annoying, it fills me only with joy. Having grown up in a wealthy suburb it was unusual for him to make his way to us and we generally drove to the Dairy Queen for ice cream, but I hear it not infrequently in the city.
Lots of interesting options although I seem to be pretty stuck on my usual these days. I used to occasionally like the ice cream bars with a coating of chocolate and nutty bits and a chocolate core.
Soft serve ice cream is still sold in the Rumson spot where Dairy Queen (DQ) was, although it has been renamed Crazees. I have not had the pleasure of trying them. In high school I yearned for a job at Dairy Queen which seemed like the pinnacle of cool. Sadly it was a much sought after job and I lacked the connections it seemed. Instead I had to settle for working at a pizza place serving my second favorite food – and consuming large quantities of it.
Still the same barn shaped building but no longer the telltale red and white. Rumson, NJ.
However, this summer has been the summer of Mr. Softee. The extreme heat and humidity and a calorie margin of error that 7 miles of running 4-5 times a week gives me has allowed me to develop the habit of grabbing Kim on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon in search of the ice cream man. A classic vanilla wafer cone with chocolate sprinkles is just right for each of us although on the hottest days you need to eat it with a certain alacrity.
Colorful and somewhat whacky options on the side of the truck.
I understand the while Mr. Softee isn’t suffering from a lack of consumer interest, the rising prices of ice cream and condiments as well as gasoline has made it a difficult living. I can only offer each one I encounter my enthusiastic summer support.
Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Today’s photo is one I couldn’t resist despite the price. It was one of my purchases on the Brimfield attempt at an online sale. Even with the seller coming down in price it was a bit dear. It is a tiny photo, about 4″x5″ which has the tell tale signs of a life spent in a photo album, indicated when you look at the corners carefully. It is an early photo, on brittle paper, somewhat lacking in detail with a flat cloudless sky. There are no notations on the back, perhaps because everyone knows this is Lucy, the Margate Elephant, residing in the town of that name located near Atlantic City, NJ.
Starting with a brief review of Lucy’s pretty fascinating history; this photo actually shows Lucy in her early incarnation – she was substantially renovated in 1970, a face lift which changed her appearance, and she required further significant repair after being struck by lightening, blackening her tusks, not many years ago. She survived Hurricane Sandy unscathed however which is remarkable considering the damage around her.
Lucy was originally constructed in 1881, by a man named James Lafferty who acquired a patent to make or sell animal shaped buildings for the duration of 17 years according to Wikipedia. Despite having tusks, an indication of a boy elephant, she was nonetheless dubbed Lucy at the dawn of the 20th Century. Sadly Lafferty died broke in 1898, forced to sell Lucy years earlier.
Lucy was originally constructed as an observation deck for this area south of the then thriving Atlantic City, but later did time serving in turn as restaurant, business office, cottage and tavern. She is 65 feet high and weighs about 90 tons, constructed with wood and iron bars, 22 windows are scattered throughout the structure. Although marketed as a hotel, the building nearby served that purpose, until March of this year when, in spite of her federal landmark status, the old girl became an Airbnb rental by the night.
Sadly the offer seems to have commenced via a listing on the rather fateful dates of March 17, 18 and 19, 2020 (assuming Wikipedia is correct), less than a week before New York’s stay at home order began due to the Corona virus and dampening tourism in both states, needless to say. While I assume that put the kibosh on it, but perhaps some lucky folks have done their shelter in place there.
One can just about make out what must have been the hotel, behind Lucy’s back, left flank in this photo. My guess is this picture was taken off-season, no tourists teeming around her and the wooden skeletal frames of booths of some kind below her have a distinctly out of season look.
I have always wanted to visit Lucy and somehow have never managed it. Despite growing up a Jersey girl, I have only made one or two trips to Atlantic City and few of its environs, over my life. It was a good hour and a half to two hours from where I grew up, probably less as the crow flies, but also with train service that only takes you so close. We lived in a beach community so there was little reason to pursue another. As I may have said before, because my father’s job as a news cameraman required peripatetic worldwide travel, and therefore our summers were spent at home enjoying the very local beach. Family vacations of any kind were almost unheard of and I was spared the sparring and whining so often described by folks my age when reflecting on such family trips.
As we hit mid-summer I am frequently side-swiped by a desire for the endless beach days of my childhood and this year the quarantine and subsequent ambivalence about travel, let alone crowds, have exacerbated it. The traffic and discomfort are long forgotten and a string of fresh mornings with the sun glinting off the water remain, tantalizing. As a non-driver (Kim does not drive either – we are a non-driving couple) it isn’t as easy as jumping in a car and heading there.
Still, a visit to Lucy remains on my eventual to-do list, although I do not dare to dream of something as wildly entertaining as spending the night within. (The idea that she was indeed home to someone at one time fascinates me and I like to imagine that. The incarnation as a tavern appeals as well.) Lucy is an enduring bit of Jersey lore and I will look forward to paying homage to her in person one day.
Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Today’s post comes again from the magic box of photos from Tom Conroy, stored on my desk, and which I am now exploring more fully during these continued quarantine days. I chose this one because it made me think of the early drive-in’s of my childhood – a summer source of great delight, although not as old as this beauty.
Carpenter’s Sandwiches clearly had a vast menu. A close look shows that in addition to a myriad variety of bbq, they offered bean chili, burgers, beer and stein churned buttermilk. Located at 6285 West Sunset Boulevard, other photos of its unusual architecture are available online. An early automotive blogger has documented it with six publicity photos, those attributed to the libraries at USC. My photo seems to have come first from the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce (at 5520 Sunset Boulevard – there’s an enormous Target there now) and then a movie still archive in Santa Fe, New Mexico – stamps from both are on the back.
My photo could have been taken at the same time, but appears to show another side of the building. Sandwiches ranged from the high end, sirloin at twenty-five cents, to the low end of fifteen cents. (That blog post, mentioned above, with six additional photos of Carpenter’s can be found here.) My side of the building seems to feature the desserts and coconut custard, french apple and berry pie were all on offer. I like the snappy uniforms of the carhop attendants. It had a sharp, come hither look at night as well.
While I cannot find the ultimate date of demise of Carpenter’s it is easily traced as far as the early 1940’s. Founded by Harry B. Carpenter and his brother Charles, they continued to build their venues with distinctive architecture and a later version is shown below.
My own memories of ancient drive-ins is fairly foggy. There was a Stewart’s in a neighboring town, Atlantic Highlands, which seemed to feature the root beer brand and, visited only occasionally, seemed exotic at the time. Although originally a west cost chain, a quick search says that thirty such ones still existed in New Jersey in 2019. I have better memories of an early Dairy Queen which served burgers. It was located in Long Branch, New Jersey and near my grandmother’s house so it was a more frequent stop. It merged in my mind with MacDonald’s which was a slightly later entry but eventually took over more or less entirely.
Diary Queen eventually became a mostly ice cream only franchise near us and the one in my hometown was the very frequent scene of post-dinner visits with dad. (You could easily talk him into it – visits usually resulted in a vanilla cone with chocolate sprinkles for me – although a rare chocolate dip, or rainbow sprinkles could sneak in and an even more rare vanilla sundae with strawberry glop would lure me in. Dad was generally a chocolate cone man, as was my sister Loren. Edward, I can’t remember what you or mom ordered. I think mom often took a pass.) There was a time when a job at Dairy Queen would have been a pinnacle of a certain kind of success for me. I never achieved it, sad to say. My job as a short order cook and sub sandwich assembler at a pizza establishment was as close as I came.
This Crazees ice cream is on the site of and in the original building of the old Dairy Queen in Rumson, New Jersey where I grew up.
As we make our first cautious moves into post-quarantine life here in New York City we are embracing eating outside – spontaneous evening cocktail strolls seem to quietly have taken hold, and I find myself fighting hard to resist the siren beckon of the Mr. Softee truck (Pop-Goes-the-Weasel playing over and over) in our neighborhood, late in the evenings. A bit further out, a variety of new drive-ins are springing up – I have read about films in diner parking lots, old drive-ins taking on new life. (Perhaps a live jazz show in at a drive-in? Could happen.) For now, on the cusp of this particular summer, we are in the middle of our first phase of getting back to life, not as it was but as it will be.
Pam's Pictorama 