August 7, 2021

Good morning everyone, today is Saturday, August 7, 2021, this will be my last balcony posting fro m the beautiful town of Cape May ending a beautiful vacation. The pictures I posted were to be the formal beach portrait for 2021, as you can see the shirts were.blue linen and Marylou a beautiful blue dress, as you can see the portrait never materialized, at the time Rocco was so silly as boys are at that age, Dario was dancing around like Saturday Night Fever, Marylou was no where to be found and I look like a statue of Mussolini. So these are the remnants of the planned photo.

As we pack the car this morning, the words of Frank Visco will sound in my head ‘ Tomorrow is Labor Day’ his way of saying vacation is over now we go back to reality. We would get so angry at that remark 50 years ago but it has merit now. We do have to resume normal life or we would not enjoy vacation.

However, I am not going home empty handed, I found a place near the harbor that sells crabs and they clean them too, so this morning I am picking them up for crab gravy tomorrow. I also went to Flalangers, supposedly the inventor of Salt Water Taffy in the late 1880’s, to buy fudge mandatory purchase at the beach. I’m not a fan of taffy never liked it that much.

While at Flalangers, they had vintage post cards of their store in Atlantic City so of course I could not miss the opportunity to browse through them. At a time Atlantic City was the jewel of New Jersey and the entire East Coast. A vacation there was a trip of a lifetime for most, with its grand hotels, the boardwalk, the Steel Pier with the diving horse the steeplechase and top entertainers vied to play there. Race track, some of the finest restaurants in the country, later Miss America. I’ve mentioned this before they had an entire store for Planters Peanuts actually nuts of all kinds. This is where I learned a the lesson of my life never to make fun of a person different then yourself, I can still feel that slap. If you wanted it you could find it in Atlantic City. Each year my parents went for a convention there on their return promised we would go for a week, but one thing the brought home was a box of Almond Macaroons from Fralangers, I loved them so yesterday I bought myself 2 , god knows I cold eat the box, they were good but not as good as 60 years ago but then again nothing is. My mother always wanted to stay at the Traymore Hotel because during the war they closed and turned it into a rehab, R & R for injured soldiers, her being an Army nurse this meant something to her. Now Atlantic City offers gambling and in many ways revitalized itself but never to its original grandeur.

So the next time we speak I will be porch side once again with my coffee. So enjoy a wonderful day and remember only we have the ability to make ourselves happy so let’s do it. Til Tomorrow.