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There was a time when Wildwood, N.J. was a little slice of heaven for the working class. It was a place where a man could take his family to get away from the heat and grime of the city. Bennett Avenue was a typical street, lined with clean, simple apartment houses. In the days before an ugly oceanfront condominium was built, you could feel the gentle ocean breeze bringing the scent of salt and sea life and suntan lotion on Bennett Avenue. You could breathe it in as you sat on the porch outside of the R&T Apartments — standing for Rose and Tony.
Chances are, if you walked down the street on any given day on a summer afternoon, you would see a woman sitting on the porch at the R&T. She was a big-bonedwoman with thick, powerful wrists. She had a gold tooth and a twinkle in her eye.
This was Rose — the one who put the “R” in the R&T. Rose might look as if she were just relaxing. She might even be shouting a greeting to Jeanette across the street or Wanda next door. But as she chats, her eyes are focused on the street. Rose has an empty apartment and she is looking for customers. She can spot one a block away.
The women run these apartment houses. Their men are busy working in the city and come down only on weekends. Once the men retire, they are smart enough to stay out of the way of these ladies, so you might see them tinkering in the garden. That’s where you will find Tony out back at the shed fixing the ancient lawn mower. This might be one of the earliest signs of encroaching feminism, although Rose would have never thought of herself as some kind of pioneer for women’s rights. She just knew what she did best and made sure Tony didn’t intrude on her territory.
The apartments had cooking facilities. Working class families couldn’t afford to eat out, other than grabbing a slice of pizza at Mack’s. The apartments were not air-conditioned, unless you consider that breeze I mentioned earlier; was natural air-conditioning. Air-conditioning at the Shore was considered a needless luxury by the folks who ran these apartment houses.
Rose liked to say all you had to do to keep cool was just open the kitchen window. In the later years when the hated condominium building went up, the little breeze never visited Bennett Avenue anymore. Rose would still hopefully open the window, but not much air came through, and she would mutter something under her breath about how that big, ugly building on the beach ruined everything.
During those years, many Canadians came to Wildwood to vacation. Rose liked to rent to Canadians because they never had company drop in on them. If a renter didn’t get company, it meant there was less cooking and running the water, all of which added to Rose’s utility bills.
Like the other apartment houses, the R&T ran on the slimmest of profit margins, so Rose had to be watchful. Some years, it was enough if you were able to meet all of your expenses. Rose ran the place with the ruthlessness of an auditor.
Rose operated on a complex formula of pricing that no one in the family, not even Tony, understood. Her rental price depended on her estimation of factors such as whether the prospective renter would run the shower too long, use the stove too much, play loud music, the vacancy rate in the area, the unemployment rate and other assorted and sundry mystical factors.
It must be said that Rose had her rules. When you washed off your feet after a day at the beach, you dare not let a drop get on the cement. A non-renting guest was charged 25 cents to use the shower; that rule was applied even to a visiting priest (much to his surprise). All the chairs on the porch and on the back lawn had to be brought inside for the night, including the lawn umbrella. If you weren’t inclined to drink Tony’s homemade wine, the only non-alcoholic drink ever served was grape juice diluted with water. Rose held on to the loaf of bread during dinner, and she was the only one authorized to slice you an extra piece.
Rose kept a careful ledger in which she recorded the identity and date of each rental, as well as the price charged. There also was a space in the ledger where if the family turned out to be more trouble than they were worth, she placed an “X” next to their name. If you were unlucky enough to get an “X” beside your name, you had about as much chance of renting one of her apartments next season as you had of getting a front row table to see Sinatra at Skinny’s 500 Club in A.C.
One infamous weekend, Rose rented to two attractive young women accompanied by an older man who identified himself as “Uncle Bill.” He paid for his “nieces” and left. Rose heard him re-enter the apartment late at night. She lay in wait the rest of the night and caught Uncle Bill trying to sneak out of the apartment. Rose lectured him on the morality of sharing a bed with his “nieces,” told him that she didn’t run “that kind of place,” and then proceeded to charge Uncle Bill for a full night’s rent.
Needless to say, Uncle Bill and his nieces earned an “X” next to their names.
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