As I set about perusing Bethany Beach’s entertainment calendar this week, and considering the official kick-off this weekend to the 2007 summer season, I began to wax nostalgic about all the things I came to love about this place as a child who visited for a couple weeks during most summers.
Some of these things — many of them, in fact — are still around, and are so much the stuff of memories that nearly a decade ago I found myself drawn back here to live full-time.
Those bandstand concerts were something my grandmother deeply enjoyed as she shared the beach experience with her grandchildren, the same as she had with her sons.
There are many more grandparents sharing that experience with their grandchildren these days, and as crowded as the boardwalk sometimes becomes, I can’t begrudge them that. My own parents are among them now, and it’s a special experience that I would not want my son to grow up without.
Kudos to the town and to Entertainment Coordinator Gloria Farrar for bringing in a stellar lineup of entertainers in many varied styles so that most people can pick a night or two each week to offset life in the Quiet Resorts with some lively song and dance.
And kudos also to all of those who have worked so hard to finally bring replenishment to a shoreline that year by year has been increasingly at risk of being lost. I remember sitting on the sand in the days when there was little need to stake a claim for some personal space. I hope that day is coming back with a wider stretch of sand, even in downtown Bethany Beach.
Berries, crabcakes and a pick-up truck
Going back to those childhood memories, I also remember going berry-picking a few times, early on a weekday morning, before it got too hot.
The back roads that I know very well as a full-time resident were, back then, a tangled maze of which we kids never got a full perspective. You just recognized a few landmarks and knew that eventually the family member behind the wheel would get you there. It always seemed to take an hour, even if it was just 15 minutes.
I know now that where we went for blueberries was in or near Frankford, and I know that McGee was the name on the tiny slip of yellowed paper that someone had tacked to the back of a door in our rented beach house, as a suggestion for some off-beach fun. Back then, it was all an exciting blur of new experience. But I remember quite clearly picking baskets and baskets of the fresh strawberries that were — and still are — one of my favorite foods.
I also remember being very confused the first time we went blueberry picking and I discovered that the berries weren’t solid blue — or even purple — inside. My grandmother quickly cleared up that confusion, by baking the fresh berries into a pie that was decidedly purple, thanks to those beautiful dark skins. It was the first time I’d ever seen someone bake a fresh fruit pie, I think.
The last two summers, I’ve renewed this family tradition, going strawberry picking in June and blueberry picking mid-summer. I’m curious about — and slightly leery of — the first time my son takes in these adventures on his own two feet. I’m not sure this mom’s up to chasing a toddler through the strawberry fields.
Another produce-related memory of my beach time was the jingling of the farmer’s bell as he let my mother and grandmother, and all the residents — permanent and temporary — of South Bethany know that he had fresh corn, tomatoes and cantaloupes to sell them off the back of his pick-up truck.
I remember the cantaloupes were usually served for the next day’s breakfast. The tomatoes — fried with a cornmeal coating — and the corn, on the cob, were often served up with a meal of crabcakes.
There, too, is a beach memory of days of old. We always looked for a day with a wind from the west, when we could expect to get flies coming in to harass us on the beach. Instead, we headed inland, at close to the crack of dawn, or so it seemed. How many consecutive left turns was it from South Bethany to the Camp Barnes sign before we hit that final right into the Assawoman Wildlife Refuge?
There was that winding sandy path through the heavily shaded woods, passing the “landings” that were all so whimsically named — Strawberry Landing, Sassafras Landing — until we emerged from the trees at Mulberry Landing and set up shop at the middle of the dock. No, no crab pots for us — it was string and chicken necks and heavy weights with a net.
I learned early on to recognize the feel of a crab biting on a piece of chicken across 10 feet of twine. And I learned almost as quickly to reel it in slowly — but not too slowly — so that the master netter that is my dad could swipe quickly down on the unsuspecting crab and, hopefully, dump him in a bucket before he became entangled so much that it required pliers to pry him loose.
Back at the house — likely with a couple dozen of his sizable compatriots — it was Mom’s turn to take over, as we finagled them into the pot to cook. I’ll never forget the time one managed to slip out as the lid went on and dove for cover under the refrigerator. It was easier getting him out of the water than out from under a large appliance.
As much as Dad’s forte was netting blue crabs, Mom’s was picking every single infinitesimal bit of shell out of the resulting meat. Even today, she hand-picks store-bought crab to make sure no one gets a speck of shell in their crabcake.
Add those exquisitely simple crabcakes — no filler, except a couple saltines to bind them — to the fresh tomatoes and corn, and we’d have a dinner that was a quintessentially Delaware shore as the sea breeze the wafted over us as we at them on the screened porch with the waves pounding in the background.
Fun in Funland and a trip to Trimper’s
In its first weeks of operation for 2007 is Rehoboth Beach’s Funland amusement park, which my parents — rightly, I think — found both closer to our temporary home base and more appropriate of an environment than some other venues for their young children to visit for a night or two of off-the-charts fun during our annual vacation.
Today, I inevitably contrast Funland with the amusements on the Ocean City boardwalk, which even then were bigger, noisier, more crowded and even further off the charts — not to mention a hefty drive from the Delaware beach towns during the summer.
These days, I’ve found it possible to enjoy both, with a greater tolerance myself for long drives in moderate to heavy traffic and for reasonable crowds. But I still find them to be two very different experiences.
Funland harkens back to those childhood years for me, and even for my parents, since it was known as the Sport Center when the Dentino family owned it even prior to becoming Funland with the Fasnachts in 1961.
I remember clearly riding on the boat ride there, around in circles with the water just below the boat and a bell to ring as we went. I know I must have been small when I developed my love of that ride, because my adult eyes think even my toddler won’t have long to enjoy it.
The pre-teen me remembers discovering the trick to taking out the targets at the shooting gallery. I was never big on guns, but the challenge of hitting a target has always appealed to me.
The rest of the games were simple enough for kids but not so much that the adults didn’t — and don’t — join in. Whether my mother got lost in playing skeeball or I sat determinedly trying to win a horse race where I inevitably seemed to end up in second, we found something for everyone. The rides were and are the same, with lots for the tiniest tots and some gems for the teens and adults.
My favorite overall still has to be the haunted house. It was only later I discovered this was a classic “dark ride” that is worshiped by many lovers of the genre as it remains one of the few that has continually been maintained to keep it basically as it was all those years ago, rather than being scrapped in favor of newer or scarier rides.
All of these things appear in one form or another at Trimper’s in Ocean City, but for me Funland has a smaller, quainter, more nostalgic feel that I think is one part personal history and another part indication of the quieter, more family-oriented life of the Delaware resorts compared to their southern neighbor.
That didn’t stop me from being very sad to again hear rumors that this summer might be the last for Trimper’s. Just as we are introducing my godchildren to antique carousel animals, child-sized roller coasters and the subtle differences between Funland and its larger compatriot, this news comes. It’s yet another potential casualty of the area’s growth and rampant development.
And just as I hope that we’ll still be picking blueberries and eating fresh local corn here in 50 years, 100 years or more, I hope my grandchildren will be able to play at both Funland and Trimper’s. I hope Ocean City officials and the Trimper family can find a way to keep the historic amusement park in place for those generations to come. I have a hard time envisioning the town without it.
Times are a-changing, but some still the same
That’s just one of the things that I remember so fondly now that could change, or already has.
Along with the farmer ringing his customers out for fresh ’loupes and the ice cream man bringing in kids like the Pied Piper — both something Bethany Beach officials have decided is a part of the past best left there — the voice of the Bethany Beach Volunteer Fire Company’s bingo announcers has also been silenced.
The firefighters made that call themselves some years ago, deciding that their time was better spent on other forms of fundraising. But I remember with great warmth the loudspeaker announcements coming from a truck on a summer’s evening, proclaiming that it was bingo night, as my parents prepared for one of the few adults-only outings they had while we were on vacation. I kind of wish I’d had a chance to be grown up enough to go myself before that was gone.
I also miss the old dock at Mulberry Landing, which was replaced some years ago with a floating metal dock that makes me seasick and overly concerned that someone will end up in the water. We also noticed a decrease in crab catches since it went in. I think all that old wood must have been crab heaven. But the spot is still hard to beat for a trip out to the bay or a scenic photo.
A moment of nostalgia also for dinners out at the old, gone many times over, Topside restaurant, which got us dressed up for one night out of our vacation and mouths watering for Crab Norfolk and a Mile High Ice Cream Pie to share all around — if we kids were really good.
The shooting gallery at Funland hasn’t been the same for years — a casualty of changing times in a way that I hope the haunted house and boat ride will never be. Never again, I suspect, will I aim at a miscellaneous bit of “junk” and end up with a player piano providing a honky-tonk tune.
The generation of mini-golf courses that I remember as a regular outing for myself, my father and sister has long since passed away. But at least one course — if a new-generation one — has revived that favorite pastime in Bethany Beach. Here’s hoping it’s the first of a rebirth for the business.
The same goes for the birth of the Bethany Beach Farmers’ Market on July 1. It’s not a farmer with a pick-up truck and a bell right in front of your house, but fresh local produce from generational farms can’t be beat.
I’ll offer a bit of nostalgia as well for times of less traffic and smaller crowds. But I think we have to accept that a lot of the things we remember about this place from when we were young, or at least younger, are what have continued to bring people here in larger and larger numbers, and many of them to decide to live here full-time, as I did.
The challenge here is to remember the best of what we have had and to preserve it, to be willing — even eager — to share our fond memories and current loves with those who haven’t made their own yet and to grow wisely so that we can all continue to enjoy this place and eat fresh food from its land and waters.
For many of us, the summer season is the start of headaches we’ll anticipate losing again in the fall or a headlong rush that won’t abate until October. But for me, it’s also a time to remember and to again enjoy all of the things that I love about this place and its history — my history in it. We’re lucky to be able to have it each and every summer, all summer long.
And then, there too is the future I hope that my own son will have here, and his own future memories of summers spent at the beach.