JustC ... here's one for JustU ... .

zipperzap · June 04, 2007 15:20

quote:JustC:

Zipper,....what you know about the eastern shore???? You from around here?? Always nice to meet a "shore boy".

Well, as strange as it may seem to many here ... yes, in a way, I was a Shore (pronounced Shuure, in the Philadelphian dialect) Boy - some Chesapeake (mostly around Deleware and Maryland), with some of my cousins, but mostly at the Southern Jersey Shore with my Poppum.

My mother's family has lived in the Philadelphia area since 1652. We (they) used to have summer homes in South Jersey - Cape May, Stone Harbor, Alavon and Ocean City, NJ. Some of my cousins also had (have) a couple of summer houses around Atlantic City, as well.

My grandfather was a WWI Vet who was told in 1947 that his heart was getting weaker and he needed to live in a hospital residential 'home.' He had always been an avid outdoorsman - mostly a bird hunter (pheasants, ducks and geese) and fisherman, crabber, clammer and the idea of living a long life of an invalid horrified him. He refused to talk about it.

Long story short, he approached a few of his old hunting pals - my parents called them 'The Hermits' and they welcomed him/built a small house on pilings, over their marsh, down near Barnegat Light, in Shipbottom. There he lived happily for ten years with his faithful retrievers Don and Katy (he raised/trained pointers) and used his 14' inboard flat-bottomed marsh boat daily during most of the year.

I used to go down and live with him for a few weeks each summer - and yes, we crabbed (I can still remember the taste of those big blueclaws, steamed), fished for flounder and sea bass whenever the desire for a fish dinner arose, and, oh yes, clammed in the salt marshes around the inner barrier islands, there.

My Poppum taught me to hunt and fish when I was just a small boy - he was my hero. Many a night, by the flicker of a smelly old kerosene lamp, he would tell his first born grandson stories of 'over there' - stories of the Hun and the Battle of the Forest of Arden and stories of his grandfather and his grand uncles during the Civil War, Gettysburg, Seven Pines (Fair Oaks), Antietam and others. The details have long since evaporated in memory but I can still see his face in the lamplight. He dictated them to my mother, for the family history, so I still have those details, thank God.

In 1957 he called us (my mother) - in San Diego - and told her that he was dying of a heart attack and what he wanted to be done with his stuff, where keys were, who was to get the dogs, etc. He told her not to fret, that it wasn't bad but he'd be long dead before she flew out. She quickly hung up and called the State Troopers - and he was gone by the time they got there. The dogs wouldn't allow anyone in the little one roomed house where his body lay, until some of his hermit friends came over and told the German Shorthair Retrievers it was OK!

All of my Eastern family members are gone now. I miss him, perhaps, the most, in a way, because he was so much fun to be with ... even after 50 years, I can still hear his laugh and see his smile and the very light blue eyes that were always so friendly and happy.

Good memories, all!

Time to wash my face before Gale or the kids see me like this.

JustC ... here's one for JustU ... .

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