Many families share the tradition of vacationing at Ocean City, New Jersey for countless summers. Memories take place laughing on the boardwalk or playing on the beach.
Kids spend hours convinced they can dig a hole in the sand to China. Repeatedly they run to the ocean only to run away as soon as the waves are about to kiss the shoreline. When they turn into “big kids” and feel adventurous, they try to swim out past the crashing waves, but only to be called back by their mothers for going out too far.
Adventures of collecting seashells in little green buckets to compare with their cousins’ little pink buckets are always a must. Sometimes the seashells would start to move and the excited squeals of finding a sand crab could be heard from many umbrella spots over.
Parents wake up early to carry beach chairs, sand toys, and umbrellas to “their spot” on the beach. It would be the place that adults would sit all day and the place that children would run back and forth to all day. It never failed that at least once, a niece or nephew would run up to the wrong umbrella and chair set only to find someone else’s family.
Nights were spent on the boardwalk riding rides and winning prizes. Ice cream at Kohr’s Brothers was the way to end the night. Eager kids wait to be able to go to the saltwater taffy store with their moms to make sure they get all of the good flavors.
At the end of the night dads take children on their shoulders, as they fall asleep, to carry them back to the car. Their little sunburned faces press against dads’ shoulders as their sticky hands drape across his back.
Children return to the shore every summer a little taller and with a little more confidence to do things they could not do the summer before. Before families know it, the kids are all grown up and the family grows. Just when you thought you did not have to carry that sandy bag of beach toys, you thought wrong.
