The second of my grand adventures took me to a place where the waters of the Atlantic kiss the east coast. A tourist trap it may be deemed, but as a young child exploring life, this place was paradise. Located on a long strip of land just off Maryland's eastern edge, was the vacation hub known as Ocean City. A sprawling beach metropolis with a boardwalk that stretched for miles that draws crowds summer after summer.
My parents rented a beach house that had direct access to the beach. In my eyes it was huge. The living room was bigger than ours as was the kitchen set-up just off of it. It had a large deck that you could hang out on and stare at the dunes while listening to the sound of the crashing waves. It also had direct access to the beach so if we wanted, we could roll out of bed, throw on some swim trunks, and be by the water in mere minutes. But the best part in my eyes was cable television. A treasure trove of cartoons I couldn't watch back home were at my finger tips. But I wasn't on my first real vacation to watch cartoons. I had an ocean city to explore.
Mornings were for sleeping in and eating a decent breakfast, followed not long after by lunch. But once the sun was at it's peak, we had on our swim trunks and eagerly ran down the sand trails to the massive beach before us. The crashing waves had me in awe and I had no fear of them, unlike a certain raft ride at Hershey Park. I happily played along the edge, running to where the water retreated and then as soon as the next wave came barreling down, I fled back towards drier sand. I spent hours doing this, but once or twice, the waves bested me. I remember pausing during a run thinking I had time to examine the pebbles and shells before me. I underestimated my timing and saw a large wave barring down on me. I turned to run, but slipped and felt the force of all that water tackling my miniscule frame. As quickly as it came, the wave fled back to the ocean. I was a bit disoriented, but I finally knew what salt water tasted like.
I took a break from the ocean and joined my brother and sister in building sand castles. We had colorful, hard plastic, buckets and shovels specifically made for building sand castles. My mom showed us that we needed to make sure the sand was so our structure wouldn't crumble as we built it. Once we had what appeared to be a castle, we dug a moat around it and put some water inside to make it look realistic. My hope was that they would last while we were there, but I learned about this thing called "high tide" and how it is the ultimate castle crusher.
As the evening rolled in, there was still a lot to discover. We made our way to the seemingly infinite boardwalk. Crowds of people were there, exploring the shops, buying souvenirs, or just grabbing a bite to eat. We ourselves had to take care of our energy depleted beings so we stopped inside a small burger and shake shack. I remember the burger tasting really good and was impressed by the size of the steak fries. After our bellies were satisfied, we continued our boardwalk journey. Along the way we passed incredibly constructed sand sculptures mainly portraying the artist's thought of what Christ looked like. I marveled at how someone could make something so cool and detailed out of simple beach sand.
Souvenirs were a must and Pogs were all the rage in the 90s. Someone got this brilliant idea to put art on the cardboard caps that came under the lid of a popular Hawaiian juice called POG and manufactured them as a game. They were mainly meant to collect, but if you wanted to play, you and your friend would make a stack out of all the Pogs you were willing to risk. Then each of you would take turns with a heavy metal or plastic disc (called a slammer) slamming it on the pile. Any Pogs that flipped over were yours for the taking. Once half than more than half the stack had been won, the game was over. Both players kept all the Pogs they flipped and were returned their original ones that did not. So when we walked into a souvenir shop, I just had to have an Ocean City blue metallic slammer. That slab of metal became one of my most treasured possessions throughout my childhood until it mysteriously disappeared years later.
We continued on the boardwalk and my senses took over. The sea gulls squawked overhead looking for a likely victim to snatch food from. The lights and sounds from the shops and restaurants were well noted as they did their best to draw the vacationers in and separate them from the cash in their wallets. The scent of cotton candy, popcorn, burgers, fires, ice cream, and so many other delectable smells filled the evening air. I was so immersed in my surroundings that I did not realize we had made it to toy shop. My mom took a break on a nearby bench while my dad took us inside as we were supposed to get kites to fly for the weekend. For reasons beyond my current understanding, we did not end up getting them. Instead my Dad bought us each gumballs and whirly-gigs. A whirly-gig was a plastic rod connected to a large plastic circle. Attached to the plastic circle where multiple colored plastic propellers that spun as the rod was waved in the wind. We were elated and as we rejoined my mom, she asked where the kites were. My dad made a "shh" motion and mouthed something to her that I was not able to apprehend. I have my suspicions that either they were too pricey or they weren't kid appropriate. Either way I was content with whirly-gigs and gumballs.
We made one more stop before heading back to our beach house. That stop was a brightly lit candy store. My dad purchased a large mixed bag of swedish fish candy. My mouth drooled at the colorful bag of gummy fish. But when weren't allowed to have any until we got back (probably to avoid sticky fingers). Upon arriving back at the beach house, Sarah, Tim, and I watched excitedly as Dad divided a handful out amongst us. I'm pretty sure this was the moment where my love for swedish fish was born.
The next day, before we set out, my parent's called me into their room and had something to give me. There on the bed, still in it's package, was a child's film camera. I went nuts. Now for those of you born after 2007, you may not be familiar with nor have ever seen a standard film camera. Basically you had to purchase a roll of film and insert it into the back of the camera. Then, once you closed the film door, you turned a knob to wind the film into place, usually determined by a clicking sound. At this point, you could not open that film door again until you had wound the film back into the film roll, otherwise the light that hit the film sheet would expose it and ruin it. In order to take a picture, you'd close one eye and use the other to look through the viewfinder. Whatever you saw through that finder was your best guess of what was going to appear on that picture. Once you saw what you wanted, you pushed the shutter button to take the picture. Then you'd have to wind the film knob until it clicked to go to a blank spot in the film. In order to get your pictures, once the film was used up, you'd have to wind it back into the roll. Then you'd take the roll to Walmart or a drug store. You'd fill out a special envelope, put the film roll inside, and drop it in a box/slot. Then you'd have to wait 3-7 days for an employee to develop the film. And this was the scary side of this technology was one, you didn't know for sure how the pictures were going to turn out and two, at least one stranger saw every photo you took. I always wondered how much fun the film developers had seen thousands of strangers photos from the best moments in life to the raunchy ones. Being a young child and not quite understanding the limitations of a film camera, I was so excited to be able to take pictures that I used up my entire roll of film trying to take pictures of kites flying over the dunes. Needless to say, when the pictures were developed, you could barely see the kites. So from that trip I was left with a bunch of pictures of timothy grass covering the dunes. Life lesson learned.
Rain came down most of the day that day which ruined our beach plans. My parent's pivoted and took us to indoor mini-golf for the afternoon. We played at least two courses. Dad took Sarah and I the first round while my mom watched Tim. The only thing I remember from that course was that it was dinosaur themed and Sarah had a frightening moment. One of the holes required you to go through a semi-dark cave. Half-way through it was a crevice. As we were playing the hole, we had to pass by the crevice. We knew something was up, but Sarah was too little yo notice what was going on. When she got close, a large green mechanical dinosaur popped out of the crevice and made a roaring sound that scared her half to death. She ran back to my dad in a panic and refused to finish that hole.
The second course was an undersea course with large sea creatures everywhere and blue-colored greens. Mom was with Sarah and I this time while Dad watched Tim. The most memorable hole on this course was one with a life-sized mechanical diver. You had to hit the ball up a hill towards the diver into a large hole. Once you got the ball in the large hole, it funneled the ball into a pipe that lined up directly with the main hole. The catch was that the diver moved up and down to try to block your ball from the big hole. Four year old me had a moment I won't ever forget. I stared that dastardly diver down, aimed my shot, and when it felt right, let her rip. I watched intently as that tiny ball soared up the hill, barely clearing the diver's legs, swirl around in the big hole, and let out an ecstatic "whoop!" when the ball came through the pipe into the main hole for a hole-in-one. I was the best and you couldn't tell me otherwise. My mom was not so fortunate, however. Her first and possibly second shot ended up being blocked by the diver's antics much to her disdain and my amusement.
We finished the round and headed back to find my dad and Tim. But what we found instead was my dad looking for Tim. My dad turned his head for a second and Tim disappeared. Before panic mode could kick in, he looked over towards the arcade games and saw movement behind one of them. He went to take a look and there was Tim, hanging out behind it. I'm going to preface future chapters by saying this would not be the last time Tim, and my other siblings for that matter, would pull scary disappearing acts.
My memory of this trip ends here. I feel like we were here longer than a weekend, but I cannot recall if that was the case. Thankfully this would not be my only visit here as we would return in the summer of 1996. And this concludes my two epic summer adventures of 1995.
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