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Archive for the ‘Feature article’ Category

Camp Meeting to Sell Great Auditorium to Taco Bell. Whilden: “The offer was just too generous to turn down.” Zoning could be a problem though.

Posted in Blogfinger News, Charles Layton, Feature article on April 1, 2012| 3 Comments »

Photo by Paul Goldfinger

By Charles Layton   (Reposted for April Fools Day 2018 but, because of Easter Sunday on April 1, this will appear on April 2,  from April 1, 2012 on Blogfinger.)

The hoax is a venerable journalistic tradition — such luminaries as Benjamin Franklin and Edgar Allen Poe indulged in hoaxes — but these days a good hoax, like a good man, is hard to find.

Not impossible though. Burger King once published a full-page ad in an April 1 edition of USA Today announcing the introduction of a “left-handed whopper.” A 1957 BBC news story announced that, thanks to a mild winter, European farmers were harvesting a record spaghetti crop. An April 1998 issue of a science newsletter contained an article claiming that the Alabama legislature had voted to change the value of pi from 3.14 to the “Biblical value” of 3.0.

The Taco Bell Corporation took out big newspaper ads in 1996 saying it had purchased the Liberty Bell and was renaming it the Taco Liberty Bell. (According to museumofhoaxes.com, hundreds of outraged citizens called the National Historic Park in Philadelphia to complain.)

Flying penguins

But these are not hoaxes in the true sense, they’re just jokes. Likewise the April 1, 2008 BBC story about a flock of flying penguins. The report, complete with video, explained that instead of enduring another long Antarctic winter these penguins had taken to the air, bound for the steamy jungles of South America.

Likewise the 1975 report by an Australian news program that the country was about to convert to “metric time” — 100 seconds to a minute, 100 minutes to an hour. Likewise the report by a New Zealand radio deejay who told listeners that a mile-wide swarm of wasps was headed for Auckland. He urged people to protect themselves by wearing their socks over their pant legs. Some did.

While being interviewed on BBC radio on April 1, 1976, the astronomer Patrick Moore said that a freakish, once-in-a-lifetime event was about to happen. Pluto was about to pass behind Jupiter, causing a temporary lessening of the Earth’s gravity. Moore said if people jumped in the air at exactly 9:47 a.m. they would feel a floating sensation. At the appointed time, the radio station started to receive phone calls from people who said they had felt the sensation. One woman said she and eleven friends had risen from their chairs and floated around the room. (I’m not sure who was kidding whom.)

But once upon a time a hoax was more than just a joke of the moment. In Denver, in June of 1899, four reporters for four different papers conspired to report what later came to be called the Great Wall of China hoax. The reporters were all desperate for news that day. While commiserating with one another at a hotel bar, they decided to just make up something. The story they concocted was that a certain American capitalist was on his way to China to tear down parts of the Great Wall and use the material for road paving. The story was picked up and republished in papers throughout the country.

I guess my favorite hoax story would be “The Great Moon Hoax,” which is also one of the oldest. Published in the New York Sun in 1835, it was a series of six articles, with elaborate illustrations, telling how a new, extremely powerful telescope had revealed life and civilization on the moon. The articles described fantastic animal forms — bison, goats, unicorns and tail-less beavers — and, the most spectacular of all, human-like creatures with bat-like wings. These discoveries were attributed to an actual astronomer of the day, Sir John Herschel.

Life on the moon. New York Sun, 1835.

It’s never been established for certain who authored this hoax, and I’m not sure The Sun ever retracted the story. But from what I’ve read, it seems that there might have been some satirical intent. A certain minister, Rev. Thomas Dick, had published popular writings around that time in which he calculated that the solar system contained many trillions of inhabitants, including approximately 4.2 billion creatures on the moon.

Sometimes a good hoax story will contain subtle clues confirming the fact that it’s a phony. In the April 1985 issue of Sports Illustrated the writer George Plimpton related that the Mets had signed a new pitcher, Sidd Finch, who could throw a baseball 168 miles per hour. The story said Finch had learned to perform this feat while studying with a Tibetan Lama.

The clue Plimpton left for his readers was in the sub-head of the article, which read; “He’s a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd’s deciding about yoga — and his future in baseball.”

If you extract the first letter from each of these words, they spell: Happy April Fools Day — Ah Fib.”

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Why kids don’t “drive their Chevy to the levee” anymore — Blogfinger Commentary

Posted in Blogfinger News, Charles Layton, Feature article on March 27, 2012| 4 Comments »

From the movie "American Graffiti"

By Charles Layton

The other day, The New York Times carried a front-page story that pretty much shattered my faith in the United States of America. Here is what it said: “Many young consumers today just do not care that much about cars.”

What? American youth don’t care about cars? Have they all gone off and joined The Taliban?

Apparently they have.

The Times story says General Motors is struggling to re-connect with young consumers. They’re hiring market consultants to help them figure out how to do this – how to replace the good old “American Graffiti” “Grease” “Rebel Without a Cause” “Miss American Pie” culture that had once placed slick, souped-up “rods” at the very center of teenage life.

(Notice: Anyone younger than 55 can stop reading this article now, because the rest of it is a geezer rant.)

In my day, we cruised aimlessly up and down the streets in Corvettes and Thunderbirds, slouched low behind the wheel, dressed in our chino pants, white t-shirts and windbreaker jackets. Or we daydreamed about doing that if, as was mostly the case, our families couldn’t afford such cool cars. Cruising around aimlessly, in whatever kind of car, was the meaning of life. It was heaven.

We boys hung around the Diary Queen in packs, arguing about fluid drive and twin carburetors and Smithy’s mufflers. Most of us didn’t know what the heck we were talking about — I sure didn’t — but so what? Occasionally we’d raise the hood of someone’s car and poke around. It was simple in there, not like the mishmash of unidentifiable components jammed under the hoods of today’s cars. Our cars just had an engine, a battery, a radiator and some hoses. You could drop a softball in there and it would fall right through and land on the ground.

Our entire social life was centered on the car. You picked up your date in the car and you drove off to the high school dance — the “hop.” Do today’s youth even dance? Do they have dates? I don’t think so. They just text message one another and email the occasional lewd photo. You don’t need a car for that. But where, I wonder, do they go when they want to have clumsy, fumbling, irresponsible romantic interludes? In our cars was where we did that.

These days, the Times reports, young people aren’t just indifferent to cars; they have actively negative feelings toward them. Cars hurt the environment. They give you asthma. Parking is a hassle. Gas is expensive. A market consultant told the Times that young people consider a car “a giant bummer. Think about your dashboard. It’s filled with nothing but bad news.”

In 1998, 64 percent of potential drivers under the age of 20 had drivers’ licenses; in 2008 only 46 percent did. In a survey, 3,000 consumers born between 1981 and 2000 were asked to name their favorites of 31 product brands. Not one car brand made it into the top 10. The most popular brands were companies like Nike and Google.

Cars used to be all about speed — zero to 60 in X seconds. Nike is about walking. Google is about just sitting still for hours on end.

Here, for old time’s sake, is some music by Bo Diddley:

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Meet the New Owner of Ocean Grove Hardware

Posted in Blogfinger News, Feature article, Ocean Grove news, tagged on March 26, 2012| 5 Comments »

Bob Eastin behind the counter. He'd wanted to own the hardware store since he was a teenager.

By Mary Walton

You’ve seen the sign. Now meet the man.

But truth to tell, Bob Eastin, the new owner of Ocean Grove Hardware, is scarcely a stranger to many of us. He’s been working in the store since he was 14. He’s now 37, so figure it out. These days Eastin spends most of the work day overseeing the repairs and minor renovations that constitute the store’s side business. But we found him behind the counter with a bagel and coffee on Sunday morning, where he holds down the fort from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Raised in the Grove, Eastin said he was introduced to the hardware store at an early age by his grandfather, who had a construction business in town. His father, a transplanted Coloradan who married an Ocean Grove girl, also was a regular customer.

Back then the owner was Howard Smith Jr., who had inherited the business from Howard Smith Sr. According to the “verbal history” handed down to Eastin, the business was founded in 1923 as Angles & Smith. At the time it was a combination hardware store and plumbers’ supply.

When Eastin was little, he said, “Smith always promised me a job.” But he wasn’t hired until Joyce Flood and Dick Gennone bought the store. When they sold it to Dave Gilliland, “I came with the store.” He yearned to buy it then, “but I was only 17 or 18 at the time.”

Eastin worked there after school and summers while a student at Neptune High School and then at Rutgers University, where he picked up a degree in psychology. As Eastin was weighing his options post graduation, Gilliland offered him a job as manager, and he took it. Gilliland recently told Blogfinger that had Eastin not been waiting in the wings, he would have hesitated to sell. And the former owner will continue to work there, when he isn’t traveling or playing golf.

A psychology major running a hardware store? Like a psychologist, “I solve problems,” Eastin joked. But there’s truth in it. “I like puzzles. Everybody who comes into the store has a problem and we like to be able to solve them.” In addition to “the problem solving aspect,” Eastin added, “I also like the small-town America of it.”

As if on cue, a regular customer enters with a request. “Can I owe you for some radio batteries till Friday when I get a check? Is that OK?”

“Sure,” Eastin said. After the man left, Eastin said he’s never waited longer than two weeks for payment. “He pays every time.” That man isn’t the only one to run a tab. “We have somewhere between 150 and 200 house accounts.” A house account is a convenience for customers. As any homeowner knows, it’s the rare task that doesn’t require an emergency trip to the hardware store for a screw or glue or the right drill bit. Having an account allows someone to dispatch a kid or helper to pick up the needed item and put it on the tab.

Another Sunday customer, Mark Minnis, wanted some paint for a bench he had found on the street and stripped. After consulting with Eastin, he settled on Hodley Red. But how much? Advised Eastin, “If you’re going to need more than two quarts — economically buy the gallon.” With matching tasks in mind, Minnis bought the gallon.

Eastin advises customer Mark Minnis on a paint purchase. Photos by Mary Walton

Many people know Eastin as the “outside man,” who has run the store’s repair shop since 1998. But they may not know that he expanded it from a part-time operation to one with four full-time employees and a 1400 square foot woodworking shop in Asbury Park that turns out custom rails, gingerbread and wood screen doors.

For customers worried that Ocean Grove hardware might become a mini Home Depot, Eastin promised there will be no radical changes. The repair shop on the west side will be moved upstairs, where Carol Gilliland had an antiques shop. That will allow for some expansion on the first floor. And he has a couple ideas that he won’t disclose before talking to township officials. Even the stained and tattered red carpet will likely stay in place through the busy summer months, since renovations are best left to December through February.

In the meantime, it will be business as usual. Sales are brisk for the store’s highly rated Benjamin Moore paint. The first batch of new bicycles has arrived for summer rentals. Keys are the store’s biggest sellers in terms of volume. Even on a slow day, “We make 20 or 25 keys.”

Eastin is married to the former Elizabeth Cartwright, and they have two sons, Garrett, 9, and Thomas, 5. “Garrett has been in helping,” Eastin said. “He likes it. He thinks it’s exciting.”

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The Broken Window Theory in Ocean Grove

Posted in Feature article, tagged , on March 22, 2012| 13 Comments »

From the Atlantic Magazine, March, 1982, introducing the classic article on the “broken window theory.”

By Paul Goldfinger, M.D., Editor @Blogfinger

We have received an alert from the Neighborhood Watch: Spring is upon us, and the usual petty crimes of theft and vandalism will soon be increasing. Over the last year, Blogfinger has documented the problem of crime in Ocean Grove. Usually we are troubled by “small” events such as  bike thefts, stolen lawn and porch items, broken car windows, damage to empty houses, etc. But sometimes there are issues that are more ominous such as muggings in broad daylight and house invasions with the people home or not.

Although Ocean Grove’s crime rates are relatively low compared to some other communities, this hasn’t reassured a lot of our residents. This town has a certain personality: it’s a quaint and historic place where one feels a sense of neighborliness, safety, and old fashioned values. Of course, the reality is that our fantasies can be quickly smashed when bad things happen here.

Over the last year we have documented the concerns of Grovers regarding these matters. Interestingly, some individuals thought that the police and the citizens were being overzealous in their pursuit of these small time crooks, while others thought the opposite.  Some readers thought that our articles about endless bike thefts, car break-ins, etc. would give the town a bad name and make people needlessly paranoid. Others felt that some of these felons were victims of the recession, so we needed to have compassion.

All of this reminds me of the “broken window theory” in the field of criminology. This is the idea that small crimes and civil disorder, if unchecked, can lead to bigger crimes and worse anti-social behavior in communities.  The plan is that you fix the problems when they are small in order to prevent major crimes from happening later.  It is this theory that was used in the 1990’s to help bring order in the New York Transit System by Transit Police Chief Wm. Bratton (1990) and the great work of Mayor Giuliani and his Police Chief Howard Safir (1997). It has shown promise in other, usually urban, places.

Here is a small part of the classic article on this subject by George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson, in the Atlantic Magazine, March, 1982, entitled “Broken Windows: The police and neighborhood safety.” *

“Social psychologists and police officers tend to agree that if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken. This is as true in nice neighborhoods as in rundown ones. Window-breaking does not necessarily occur on a large scale because some areas are inhabited by determined window-breakers whereas others are populated by window-lovers; rather, one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing. (It has always been fun.)”

The core of this idea for us  is that our community needs to put on a “game face” and make it clear that we will not tolerate litter, pan handling, public disorder, small crimes, graffiti and other antisocial behavior because we don’t want one broken window to result in all the rest being broken.

We need to continue to work with the Neptune Township Police Department to aggressively signal that we want an environment in Ocean Grove where we will not allow small issues to grow into big problems.

Link to the Atlantic Magazine article

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Library Poll Concluded—surprising result.

Posted in Blogfinger Poll, Feature article, tagged , , on March 15, 2012| 1 Comment »

Reading to dogs at the Neptune Library. Photo by Mary Walton

By Paul Goldfinger, MD, editor @Blogfinger

Mary Walton, literary editor @ Blogfinger, posted an article on March 7  (Library article link) which described how the Neptune Township Library has had to ration services even though demand has gone up. She described the  budget cuts and significant cost cutting that have occurred. Mary reported that classes were eliminated, personnel downsized, hours reduced, and fewer books were being purchased. The library doesn’t even belong to the county system, thus limiting the availability of  borrowed books.

We ran a poll  (Blogfinger library poll ) which asked if people were satisfied with the services at the Neptune Township Public Library.

71 votes were obtained, and remarkably, despite the cutbacks, 66% said “yes”, 23% said “no” and 8% were unsure.

Isn’t it interesting that most Ocean Grovers who voted are still happy with the current Neptune Library despite its drawbacks and significant cutbacks? Why do you suppose that is?  Perhaps the yes vote would have been 90% last year; we don’t have that information.

Maybe we need to re-frame the issue, and for those who use the Neptune Library regularly, let’s tell librarian Marian Bauman specifically what you like and what you don’t like about our library. Take a look at their web site  to find out about their current services and programs.

LINK:     Neptune Township Public Library

—Paul Goldfinger, editor @Blogfinger

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Seaside Park Man Mistaken for Neptune Woman — “Nobody will clear it up but it’s obviously wrong.”

Posted in Blogfinger News, Charles Layton, Feature article, tagged on February 27, 2012| 9 Comments »

By Charles Layton

At the end of every Neptune Township Committee meeting, members of the public are invited to come to the podium and ask questions or make comments on any subject they choose.

People complain about taxes, or accuse the Township of poor management, or ask for help with standing water or some other problem in their neighborhood. The Committee members have pretty much heard it all, many times over.

But on Monday night a man named George Matreyek of Seaside Park, NJ, took everyone by surprise. He told the Committee he had once been, at various times, a mayor, a committeeman and a member of the zoning and planning boards in Andover Township. “So I’ve been in your position,” he said, “and I’m hoping you can help me.”

After his retirement, Matreyek told the Committee, he and his wife moved to northeastern Pennsylvania where he took a part-time job at an outdoor store selling firearms and ammunition. Anyone who takes such a job must submit to a routine background check, and when Matreyek’s report came back “it said I was a convicted felon.” It also said he had served a year in prison for his alleged crime — assaulting a Neptune Township police officer.

So in December, Matreyek lost his job.

He says he’s absolutely certain he was never convicted of any felony, let alone served time in any prison. “He’s been in my bed for all that time,” his wife, Barbara, told me out in the hallway after the meeting.

Matreyek told me he and his wife have established that the crime in question was committed on June 26, 1998, that the perpetrator was a woman, not a man, and that she was convicted in Manasquan Superior Court. However, he said, through some typo or other form of bureaucratic foulup, Matreyek’s Social Security number was attached to the woman’s name. This misinformation has spread across federal, state and local databases far and wide, and officials have refused to take responsibility for correcting the mixup, he said. In the eyes of the government, at all levels, he remains a criminal and an ex-con.

Barbara Matreyek said one of the first phone calls she made, trying to clear things up, was to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The woman on the other end of the line, she said, told her, “Well, you don’t really know your husband that well. Men can tell you anything.”

Neither the ATF, the FBI nor the U.S. Justice Department has been willing to take their problem seriously, they told me.

The bum rap has been humiliating. It has damaged his reputation. People “think of him now as a convicted criminal,” his wife said.

“Nobody will clear it up but its obviously wrong,” he said. “I don’t know the name of the woman. Don’t know her age. Nothing.” Officials have denied them that information, he said, for privacy reasons.

In his speech before the Township Committee, Matreyek said that because the object of the assault 14 years ago had been a Neptune policeman, he hoped Neptune could get to the bottom of things “and get it corrected on down the line, and on up the line.”

The Committee said they would try.

Matreyek told me, though, that no matter what happens now he doubts he can get his job back. “They had to hire someone else,” he said.

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THE ELUSIVE CHEEP: A Tale For Our Times

Posted in Blogfinger News, Feature article on February 22, 2012| 6 Comments »

By Mary Walton

“Cheep…”

I was standing in the living room when I heard the sound.

Then it came again. “Cheep.”

I waited for the sound to go away.

It did not go away. Sixty seconds later, “cheep.”

I first thought the telephone battery had gone dead. I picked up the phone. Dial tone.

“Cheep.”

All right. It wasn’t the telephone battery, it must be the smoke alarm. I wrestled the ladder up from the basement, positioned it just outside the kitchen, took the alarm down, opened it up and removed the battery. Then I waited.

“Cheep.”

I did likewise with the smoke alarm in the basement stairwell, with the same result. “Cheep.” Next, I took the ladder up to the second floor and went through the process again. Again, I waited.

“Cheep.” Sixty seconds went by. “Cheep.” Sixty seconds. “Cheep.”

I removed the batteries from the three TV remotes. I knew better. Double As don’t audibly complain when they go bad. I don’t even know what all the remotes do. But ours don’t cheep. The high-pitched sound persisted. It was making me nuts.

Could it be a baby bird? Nah. Baby birds don’t cheep every 60 seconds like clockwork. My grandson had been visiting two days earlier. Had he left behind an electronic device — one that cheeped? But he brought only a cell phone with him, and I knew he had left with it. I checked my own cell. Nada.

I tried to interest my husband, Charles, in the problem. He was in his second-floor office. He couldn’t hear the cheeping. Nor did he seem to care. “I’m not going downstairs until this is fixed,” I told him. That would make dinner a challenge. He came down and listened. “I think it’s the smoke alarm,” he said. He went back to his office.

Friends, I actually took down the alarm and dismantled it all over again. To no avail. “Cheep.” We ate in silence, except, of course, for the cheep. Afterward the TV mercifully drowned out the sound.

The next morning Charles determined that the cheeping was coming from the basement and that its source was the FIOS box at the foot of the stairs. “Great,” I said. Never mind that I had already put my ear to the FIOS box and heard nothing. I wanted to be wrong. He called FIOS. They remotely disconnected the service.

“Cheep.”

He called FIOS back. They reconnected the service. We turned on the TV, and the computer, and checked the phone to make sure everything was working.

I revisited the possibility of a baby bird.

Now we were both on the case … and in the basement. With each cheep, we changed direction, as if playing Blind Man’s Bluff. Playing along with us, the cheep itself seemed to move. We easily spent half an hour bouncing from one subterranean section to another.

I began moving boxes. Dust flew up. “We really need to clean the basement,” I said.

Then I peered over a chest-high partition to a space behind some metal shelves, where I saw that some stuff had fallen to the floor. There was a jug I hadn’t been able to locate several months ago. And there, too, I spied a small red light. Loud and clear, louder and clearer than at any previous point in time, I heard a friendly “Cheep,” as if to say, “Hey, I’ve been waiting for you.” It was a vintage smoke alarm whose presence had outlived the memory of how it had come to be there.

I held it up victoriously. Before I removed the battery, it gave one final cheep.

The rest was silence.

The culprit. (Mary Walton photo)

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Hanging Out At Ocean Grove’s Famous “Wisdom Bench” — Stick Around And You Might Learn a Few Things

Posted in Blogfinger News, Feature article, tagged on February 10, 2012|

Wisdom Bench regulars (from left) Joseph Ruggiero, Joseph Lopez, Dominick Lordi, Anabel “Cuba” Mendez and (standing) Greg Sassone. Photos by Mary Walton. 2012.

By Mary Walton.    Staff.  Blogfinger.net. 2012

 

You know the place. The wooden bench along the south side of the Camp Meeting Association’s beach office. You’ve seen the guys countless times: a group of seasoned regulars palavering there even in the coldest weather.

They call it The Wisdom Bench.

“That’s Aristotle, that’s Socrates,” says Dave Mitchell with a wave toward the end where Jerry Roman, 73, and Joseph Ruggiero, 89, are seated on cushions from home. And then there’s Mitchell himself, a youngster at 59. “And I’m Confucius.”

“More like confused,” chimes in one of the other wise guys.

Joseph Lopez, 87, says the gathering originated just after World War II at a spot farther south where the gazebo now stands on the border with Bradley Beach. There was a coffee shop there. When it was torn down, they drifted north.

“He’s part Indian,” volunteers one of his buddies. Lopez confirms it. His grandfather was in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, he says. “He did standing-on-a-horse riding tricks. My grandmother was a basket weaver.”

Stick around and you might learn a few things. “We owe our railroads to the Chinese,” says one guy. “And the Irish,” says another. Whereupon a short debate ensues over which ethnicity contributed more to the building of the nation’s railroads.

Someone might sing a portion of a song from the 1930s. Another might identify the artist who made it popular. Mitchell asks advice for a crick in his neck. “Advil,” comes the answer.

Consider this snippet of conversation:

“I had a French car called a Simca.”

“Remember the Mercury Capri?”

“It was made by Ford in Germany.”

“A Citroën — I saw one in town.”

“It was a French car but they went broke.”

“I saw a stretch Checker cab the other day.”

“They were great cars. Big roomy things.”

“Same guy who did the Volkswagen did the Porsche.”

“America had a lot of good cars that went by the wayside.”

In this fashion the conversation rambles for hours. Tom Fuller, 65, who bicycles to the bench, says they often cover the news of the day, even straying onto the treacherous terrain of politics “until it gets too crazy. Then we go back to the weather. You know. We try to keep it positive.”

You might have the impression that women aren’t welcome. Au contraire. Women can sometimes be found on the bench. Says Mitchell, “We’re even in favor of letting them vote.”

From their perch they have seen whales and dolphins, and the occasional osprey, as well as a beached seal and the ensuing rescue attempt. Passers-by stop to chat. Part-time Grover Bob Hogan strolls by with a puppy on a leash. One benchwarmer asks the pup’s name.

“Watson.”

“Watson!” they chorus, delighted.

Next comes the obligatory line: “Elementary, my dear Watson.”

The other day a young woman arrived and passed out cookies. Today Mitchell produces a jar of mixed nuts and doles them out. The guys hold out their caps. Two have caps that say Navy, another NRA.

Here’s a surprise: not all or even most are Grovers. Ruggiero comes from Bradley Beach. Mitchell cycles up from Avon. Dominick Lordi, 69, drives from Shark River Hills. He’d like to live closer to the bench, but “my wife wouldn’t let me move to Ocean Grove because there are no parking places. She’s a nurse and she didn’t want to come home late at night and not be able to park.”

Roman comes all the way from Manasquan. “Where do you sit in Manasquan?” he asks, then answers his own question. “You don’t sit in Manasquan.”

Trading wisdom, Dave Mitchell (left) and Tom Fuller

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The Blogfinger Grammarian: Listen up, y’all!

Posted in Blogfinger News, Charles Layton, Feature article, tagged on February 7, 2012| 12 Comments »

Y'all

All y'all

You

By Charles Layton

The plural form of I is we. The plural of he/she/it is they. But the plural form of you is just you.

Spanish changes usted to ustedes to make it plural. Most other European languages also have a separate plural form for “you.” But not English. We’re deprived.

When I joined the Army I’d never been north of the Texas-Oklahoma border, so I’d never heard anyone say youse before. When I got to basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, a sergeant got on the company squawk box and bellowed, “I want youse to listen up!” This sounded so ignorant to me that I burst out laughing.

But I shouldn’t have. The sergeant was from Yankeeland, where some people said youse for the very legitimate purpose of specifying the plural. I should have understood that, coming from a part of the country where people said y’all 60 or 80 times a day.

In spite of all formal teachings to the contrary, we-uns in the South have always had this perfectly good, time-tested second-person plural pronoun, and we’ve put it to good use. Regardless of what some people think, y’all is correctly used only as a plural. I agree with the Urban Dictionary when it says, “Only an absolute idiot would use y’all as a singular pronoun.” In the South, when an individual customer enters a hardware store or diner or tractor dealership or bail bond agency, the clerk or hostess or salesperson or bondsman says, “Can I help you?” Not “Can I help y’all.”

Some Yankees get mixed up about this because they’ve heard Southerners say “all of y’all” or “all y’all” or “all a’ y’all,” as if y’all were the singular and all y’all the plural. But that’s wrong. Let me explain.

In my high school, the cheerleaders would exhort us at pep rallies: “ALL Y’ALL YELL!” Which was correct usage. One would not say “all y’all” when addressing two or three people. In that situation, the proper term is “y’all,” the simple plural. “All y’all” is the all-inclusive plural. It comes into play when the group being addressed is so large that one would want to spread one’s arms as a gesture of inclusivity. However, say you’re addressing five people, two of whom are going to the rodeo and three of whom are staying home. You’d say, “Y’all are going” addressing the two “and y’all are staying” addressing the other three. Only if all five were going would you say, “All y’all are going.”

So, you see, Southerners have evolved the usage of this friendly little pronoun to a highly nuanced state of sophistication. The North has nothing to compete with it. Northerners might say “you guys” in one of the above situations — or “youse guys” — but then the masculine guys is forced to apply to people of both sexes. Y’all, being gender neutral, avoids that awkwardness. Plus, y’all has an elegant, easy-to-use possessive form: “That’s none of y’all’s business.” “Where is y’all’s ammunition?” (The possessive of youse is pretty clumsy by comparison.)

Up here in Yankeeland, I almost never use the word y’all (or its more dignified and stately variant, you all), because up here y’all are so confused about it. But last month, when I was in Florida, I found myself reverting to y’all a time or two. And I have to say, it felt comfortable, like meeting a very close friend after a period of separation.

English once had a solid distinction between singular and plural forms. Thou was singular and you plural. But, for some reason, thou dropped out of usage except in formal public prayer and in Amish country. So then you occupied the singular position, doing double duty. When y’all came along, you gave up its original plural spot (in the South, that is) and became just singular. E pluribus unum.

In Yankeeland, you still plays a double role, and an ambiguous one. It doesn’t seem quite right.

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Ocean Grove CMA Application For Transfer of Leasehold

Posted in Feature article, tagged on January 19, 2012| 26 Comments »

By Paul Goldfinger

There used to be a required Camp Meeting interview for those who wished to buy a house in the Grove. In the beginning, this was used as a “filtering” device to screen out those who were considered undesirable. But, about 14 years ago, the interviews were discontinued. It probably  had become just a formality even before that, because the federal fair housing act was passed in 1968. Neptune Township took over governance in 1980.

When Ocean Grove was founded, it was to be an enclave of the Holiness Movement of  the Methodist Church.  The CMA owned the land from the start and they own the land today.  They could practice discrimination legally in the remote past, but that process began to erode early, as other Christians were eventually allowed in, including Roman Catholics.  Somewhere along the line, Jews began to purchase in the Grove.  And now, as far as can be seen, anyone can buy a home here.

But a somewhat strange practice has continued. When you want to buy a house in town, you need to fill out a special form for the CMA. It is an Application for Transfer of Leasehold.  You must fill out the form, sign it and attach a check for a non-refundable $200.00 recording fee.  If the CMA approves your application, you will be allowed to lease the land under your house.  But if they don’t approve you, can they send you packing?

It wouldn’t be fair for us to conclude that the form shouldn’t exist, because the CMA does own the land, and they have the right to screen prospective leasers.  But this form is rather peculiar. Since the CMA cannot discriminate according to religion, race, gender, etc what then is the  point of the form? Do they actually turn people down because of the form, and if so, what would compel them to do so?

The form is pretty interesting because it has some questions that will raise eyebrows, especially if you just showed up from Manhattan and you know next to nothing about the town’s history or about the CMA.   With the two page form, they also hand you three pages, single spaced, of rules and regulations  which mostly contain reasonable rules such as “camping and open fires prohibited on the beach.”  The rules also prohibit alcohol, marijuana or mind altering drugs in public places, no “indecent exposure” in public places, no one permitted on the beach on Sunday morning,  and other similar restrictions.  But it is the questions under “individual responses” on page two which have a tendency to attract attention.

Here is the actual form—page two:

In discussing the matter with real estate lawyers in town, I found out that none of them object to the form . They say that the CMA never turns down anyone and that the form is no longer part of the real estate contract.  One attorney had a client who wanted to get out of his contract, so he went to the CMA and gave the wrong answers to every question and even threatened to go on the beach every Sunday morning, and they still approved him.  One of the lawyers called the form a “historical oddity.”

Some people refuse to answer certain questions, but they still get approved. So what’s the point?

I asked a high official in the CMA that question. He paused and then said, “Remember that song in Fiddler on the Roof… about tradition?”  Then he smiled and walked away.

Well, miracle of miracles, he likes the music of the shtetl—So here’s the cast of the original Broadway show.   It is in keeping with a tradition of the Camp Meeting—music was always part of it.

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Road Trip

Posted in Feature article, tagged on January 18, 2012| 4 Comments »

By Kathy Arlt, Contributing Writer  @Blogfinger

Two summers ago I took a road trip across the US. (Not, however, on a bicycle.) One of the places I visited was Sequoia National Park in California. The attraction there, of course, are the magnificent Sequoias growing 6,000 feet above sea level on the western side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Here is what I saw:

In 1877 the idea of a “road trip” wasn’t so much as a glimmer in anyone’s eye. Land travel was limited to horses or railroads, both of which could take a casual traveler only so far. The first transcontinental railroad line had been established only eight years earlier, in 1869, and a second route wouldn’t open until 1882. And travel to the West was dangerous. There were train and stage coach robbers along the route, and US troops and settlers were still battling with native Americans. (“Custer’s Last Stand” was just the year before, in 1876.) 1877 editions of the Asbury Park Journal regularly reported “Indian uprisings” in various western states and territories. On top of that, cross-country travel was expensive. A one-way ticket between New York and San Francisco would’ve cost more than $2,500 in today’s dollars.

So, since many people couldn’t—or wouldn’t—travel to see California’s magnificent trees, enterprising entrepreneurs brought the trees to them. On June 16, 1877, the Ocean Grove Record, carried this announcement.

Naming giant trees after generals and statesmen was common in the 1800s, and many stands of Sequoias and Redwoods in California carry the same name, so it’s hard to say exactly where the “Daniel Webster” came from. More than likely, though, given its dimensions, it was a coastal Redwood. (Sequoias tend to be shorter and wider.) Unfortunately I couldn’t find a photograph of the tree’s exhibition, but the sight might have resembled this illustration from The Wonders of the Yosemite Valley, and of California, by Samuel Kneeland (1872).

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Food For Thought — The Book Clubs of Ocean Grove

Posted in Blogfinger News, Feature article, Ocean Grove news, tagged on January 10, 2012| 7 Comments »

Book club members (l to r) Caren Chesler, Lyndell O'Hara, Eileen Kean and Vicki LaBella. "We excel at food," says club founder Joyce Klein. Photos by Mary Walton

By Mary Walton, literary editor @ Blogfinger

When I moved to Ocean Grove from Philadelphia thirteen years ago, I knew no one in town but my husband and our real estate agent. I had left behind a close-knit book club in Philadelphia. Feeling bereft, I learned of a book club in the Grove. Not taking new members, I was told.

And that was how I came to start the Ocean Grove Book Club with the help of Evie Senchak, who has since moved away. We currently have 16 members and we have read 171 books. That other group having disbanded, we are, as near as I can tell, the oldest and largest book club in town. We meet over dessert in members’ houses, and at the end of each meeting we give that month’s book selection a rating from one to five.

But ours is far from the only club in town. There are four others. Wait! This just in. Pat Betty, owner of the Tranquil Garden Tea Room on Main Avenue, has just this week recruited 10 readers for a fifth group that will meet the second Wednesday of each month.

Ten years ago Joyce Klein was in what was then the Daily Grind with a friend. They fell into conversation with two other Grovers, and a book club was born that today has nine members. The first Tuesday of every month, except Election Day, will find them gathered at a member’s house for dinner and a discussion. The club has no name and no rules. Members don’t even have to read the book, though the majority at least give it a try.

“We may not read the book,” says Joyce, “but we excel at food.”

I can testify to that. I attended their January session in Caren Chesler’s cozy Mt. Hermon home filled with vintage furniture and artifacts. Nibbling hors d’oeuvres, members chose ten books for the coming year. The potluck supper that followed featured Caren’s perfectly sculpted rounds of eggplant parmesan along with a salad, garlic bread and two cakes: a chocolate Bundt cake and a frosted Frosty the Snowman.

I volunteered to come for dinner every month.

Ocean Grove homes tend to have small living rooms. Even when a dozen or more from our large club turn out, we manage to fit. But some book clubs choose to limit their size for convenience and intimacy. With seven members, “We’re like a family,” says Valerie Trembly, who founded “Belles, Books & Candles” going on four years ago.

Valerie is a retired school teacher and she runs BB&C with a firm hand. Members, she says, must live in the Grove. “Nobody wants to drive anywhere,” (meaning past the gates) and also “We like to porch hop.” And members are asked not to attend if they haven’t read the book. “It’s a book club,” Valerie says. “It’s not just a night out.”

Charter member Carol Gilliland, also a retired teacher, agrees that it’s imperative to finish the book. “That’s the purpose of reading. If you didn’t finish it because you didn’t like the subject matter, well, that’s what we’re talking about.”

Reading is a solitary pursuit. So what is the appeal of discussing a book en masse?

“Different people’s insights,” says Valerie. And also, “People get so busy they don’t have time to read as much as they should. A book club keeps you on track.”

Last summer Jeanne Arpert, who had just moved from Glen Rock to become a full time Grover, rounded up some fellow readers. A reading specialist in Little Silver, she felt that “I needed to bring a book club to my life.” Most of the initial members were summer people, but some come back for winter meetings, including a devotee from Nyack. “If you host, you pick the book and you lead the meeting,” says Jeanne.

Just when I thought I had located all the Ocean Grove clubs, the Neptune Library steered me to one founded at Asbury Manor by Marian McKillop. A retired school librarian, Marian told me she had organized perhaps 10 or 12 book clubs over the years. Last September she invited some Asbury Manor residents to form a group. They read a book a month but meet weekly to discuss it.

Most book clubs are composed of women, and those in Ocean Grove are no exception. Perhaps there are some all-male or mixed-gender groups out there, or simply others that I missed. If so, please let Blogfinger know. At the moment, Asbury Manor is the only one I located that boasts a male. Just one, says Marian. But of course the home has “only six or seven men.”

Voting: Margaret Cate, Freddi Castle and Judi Isaksen of the Ocean Grove Book Club

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Where to Walk, Shop and Eat at Christmas Time: Main Avenue or Cookman Avenue or Both?

Posted in Feature article, tagged , , , on December 16, 2011| 12 Comments »

Three Main Avenue shops in OG: (left to right) OG Hardware, Gingerbreads and Organic Style. Photos by P. Goldfinger on Wednesday, December 14, 2011

By Eileen and Paul Goldfinger.   Dec. 2011.

We went exploring to check out the shopping scene on Cookman Avenue in Asbury Park versus the shops on Main Avenue in Ocean Grove. We discovered that many of the businesses in Asbury Park are closed during the week. In addition, the selection of stores along Cookman Avenue was surprisingly limited as far as shopping is concerned. They have galleries, antique shops, home furnishings stores, exercise equipment and some personal accessory stores, but they have nothing to compare to most of the unique shops in the Grove.

The diversity of shopping choices on Main Avenue is much more compelling for the average shopper looking for clothes, gifts, flowers/plants, Victoriana and costume jewelry.

In addition, on a sunny Wednesday morning in December,  2011, the atmosphere and charm of old-fashioned Ocean Grove is far and away a more enjoyable experience. Ocean Grove feels like a small town, while AP seems more urban and trendy. Although there aren’t a lot of people in the Grove at 11 a.m, there is enough pleasant hustle and bustle to make a visitor feel at home: you see folks walking, shopping, having snacks at cafes, stopping to chat, people watching, and doing their activities of daily living — such as going to the post office, the banks, the dentist, the baker, or even the lawyer.

Cookman Avenue feels depressing on the same winter morning. It barely seems to have a pulse. You don’t get the idea that it is a place where people actually live. Undoubtedly things pick up there on the weekends, especially in nice weather, but we are focusing on Christmas shopping in December.

However, as far as restaurants are concerned, the “Asbury connection” is becoming “the destination place”  for fine dining. They have a wide array of serious restaurants and a wine shop. OG cannot compete in that arena, although we do have some noteworthy casual eateries, restaurants and food stores.

Also, Cookman Avenue will soon have a new movie theater, and they continue to add new shops. You can, even now, have a dinner/movie experience there (The Showplace on Cookman is a fine art-house cinema). And they have a quality pizza place (Asbury Pie) that stays open until 2-3 a.m. on weekends, and they deliver to Ocean Grove, even late at night. Asbury Pie also sells by the slice and they offer big Italian hot dogs with peppers, onions and potatoes. (Hey Ma, grab the Pepcid!)

AP restaurants, 3 in a row on Cookman: (r to l) Brick Wall Tavern, Toast, and Ivan & Andy’s Steak House

So, after checking out both scenes, we conclude that what we have are two distinct districts — an apples and oranges situation; but please note that you can’t get apples or oranges on either Cookman or Main. We really need a good food store in Ocean Grove.

(r) Site of new movie house on Cookman. To the left are new shops and condos.

 

Shopping at the OG Flower and Gift Shop

MUSIC. Now here’s something you can actually do in the Grove on a wintry December Wednesday morning (from the Broadway musical “The Most Happy Fella” 1956) :

 

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