My Beach Sister – the summer of 1976 in OCNJ

Relive the summer of 1976 in Ocean City, New Jersey by Christine Gillies

IN THE EARLY SUMMER OF 1976, so many exciting things were happening in my world.
The city of Philadelphia was getting ready for its bicentennial birthday bash. We were learning a lot about that in school and Elton John’s blockbuster song “Philadelphia Freedom” was all over the radio air ways. The Flyers hockey team had recently won the Stanley Cup for a second time, and in my own little world, I had turned 10 that past April and was finally permitted to have my ears pierced and had two tiny gold posts in my earlobes to show for it.
But the best news by far that year, was learning that my cousins owned a rental house in Ocean City, NJ and that my parents rented one of the third-floor apartments for an entire month.
My Dad would be driving us down, staying the weekend to help get us set up and then returning home, to work during the week. He would be joining us only on the weekends, which suited him just fine since he was not a fan of the beach.
We left at 10pm on a Friday night, the weekend after school let out for the summer. We left that late in order to avoid the shore traffic.
Getting into the car and driving down the freeway into the night, at a time when we were normally going to bed was very exciting. The drive was a little over two hours and we didn’t stop once. My dad’s elevator music played on the radio. My little brother and I had our pillows and blankets in the back seat so we could sleep on the way down, but there would be no sleeping at a time like this for me.
The first leg of the journey was just an ordinary ride, but once we reached the Atlantic City expressway, I noticed other cars jammed packed with luggage, beach paraphernalia, half asleep kids and bikes tied the backs of the cars, wheels spinning in the wind. Other travelers of the shore point midnight express!
There is nothing more exciting than when you begin to see signs for shore points and each time we stopped at a toll booth, that familiar ocean scent would become stronger. When I saw the sign for the Great Egg Harbor, I knew we were almost there. Harbors are where boats are docked, so it just made sense.
Finally, a little after midnight, we crossed a large bridge over the bay and entered Ocean City, it was all lit up. We drove a few blocks and pulled into the sandy lot of our home for the next 30 days.
3113 Central Avenue was a pale yellow, three story, six-unit rental building. It was just one street away from the beach, and although we couldn’t see the beach right then, we could

hear the waves in the dark.
Each of us grabbed our bags out of the trunk and began walking up three flights of sandy steps. The stairs were steep with one small landing at the second-floor level and the railings were covered in ocean mist and were slippery.
Dad unlocked the screen door and we entered a small living room with a scratchy, rust-colored sofa, a chair, coffee and end tables and an old Formica kitchen table set. A small kitchen was off to the right.
As you left the kitchen area, there was a long narrow hallway which led to the bathroom, a bedroom with two twin beds, which my brother and I shared and another bedroom with a full bed which my parents took. It was late, so after a quick look around, we got into our pajamas and hit the sack.
In the morning, the first thing we did, as strange as it was to do so, was unpack our clothes and put them into the chest of drawers in the room. I brought my diary, a tennis racket, a new tube of Spalding tennis balls and my cute stationery, so that I could write to my friends while I was gone and tell them the news of my 10-year-old life at the beach.

Read the rest of the story in the May 2020 Ocean City Magazine here. Flip to page 40.