Sometimes the simplest things give life’s greatest pleasures. Summer in August of 1982 was much like any other in Wildwood, the days sultry and humid, the nights offering a breeze that blew off the ocean. Many of the old apartment houses that lined Bennett Avenue still had no air conditioning, so people sat on the porches in the evening to share the cool breeze and quiet conversation.
Ronald Reagan was in the White House proclaiming that morning had come to America and the sun was setting on the Soviet Empire, though none of us knew it yet. The sun also had set on the Phillies, who had won their first World Series two years earlier but had once again faded into mediocrity. If you had told anyone the team would win another pennant the very next season, they would have replied, "Yeah, and the Berlin Wall is going to collapse, too."
And me, I was sitting on the upstairs porch at my mother-in-law’s house as I had every August around this time for 15 years, listening to a ballgame.
My mother-in-law was holding court in the kitchen. The supper dishes had been put away and fresh coffee was perking on the stove, the splendid aroma coming right through the screen door and filling the night air. Her daughter — my wife — was engaged in some lively conversation that was punctuated by giggles and laughs from both sides. My mother-in-law mangled some of her words like Norm Crosby, often with the same comic effect.
Our kids were growing up too fast. My daughter was already 16 and I had assumed my role as the interrogator of prospective boyfriends. My son was 12 and had discovered there was nothing in the world he liked more than the New York Mets.
I’d sit on that back porch for hours, half listening to the ballgame and to the pleasant chatter in the kitchen, occasionally chipping in with a remark. They were lazy summer nights that were as magical as they were mundane. You could see the lights twinkling from Green’s Liquor Store and the flashes of summer lightning in the distant sky.
As the night wore on, our kids came home from a night on the boardwalk and joined the conversation in the kitchen. Tired families strolled slowly off the boardwalk and onto the avenue, pushing strollers and eating soft-serve.
Around 11 p.m., my mother-in-law said what she always said at that time: "I don’t know about you people, but I’m going to bed." Then she asked, as part of the ritual, whether my wife and I were going out, which we always answered in the affirmative. "Take the key," she said. (It was only recently that we had been given the privilege of being able to take the key; otherwise, the apartment door had always been left open for us when we returned.) We assured her that we would lock up when we returned. "We won’t be out too late, we’re only going for a snack," my wife would assure her, as if we were still dating rather than having been married 18 years.
By 1982, the Wildwood boardwalk held few interests for us. The one place where we had liked to go for a late-night snack had closed in recent years, the victim of a town that had lost any semblance of sophistication. So we walked deep into the Crest, hoping that one of the ice-cream places would still be serving sundaes at that time of night.
Walking late at night in the Crest was a way to get away from the hurly-burly of the crowds in the other end of town. The Crest late at night was quiet except for the sound of the surf. Little traffic. We were enveloped by the soft, velvet night and the sharp tang of the salt air. We spoke about my mother-in-law’s recovery from breast cancer. She also had adjusted as best as you can to life without her husband. Our families were well, the problems manageable, all of our friends were alive and Sinatra was still swinging. The future stretched out like an endless succession of August nights at the shore.
Back from our walk, we crept quietly into the house and up the steps to the old attic where we slept. On sometimes-muggy August nights without air conditioning, you couldn’t fall asleep in the attic until you were exhausted. We had finally replaced the old mattress so we no longer sank into the middle of the bed during the night. We heard the loud voices of teens talking outside and wondered why the hell they weren’t in bed yet. A car, like some leftover from American Graffiti, zoomed down the street, racing its motor and blaring rock music.
Finally, all was still. Tomorrow would no doubt be sunny, and my mother-in-law Rose would be greeting us at the breakfast table to ask us where we went last night.
Life is not a succession of warm August nights at the shore. That summer, 1982, would be the last time life would be so simple and beautiful. By the next season, Rose’s cancer had returned, making her last summer anything but easy. My father would die the year after her, and so would one of our best friends.
Life does go on, but sometimes it does so cruelly. Summer returned to our lives slowly and in a much different form.
All of us have that dividing line when we passed from youth, and it has nothing to do with the calendar. Mine was August 1982.
