The New Year is here. It’s 1995 and it’s great to be alive. I’ve been thinking of what I should write for the New Year’s Jottings. I went back to the prior years and learned I only referred to the new year in 1994—in 1993 I seemed to have jumped in in March. The theme of ’94 was and still is: Thank God for giving me so much in the past year and the optimism to face the new one with minimum apprehension. The month of January in ’94 was my “operation” month and fortunately only good memories remain—the bad are buried hopefully never to rise again.
A modest poll of the Jottings recipients, sometime readers, indicate they would like more reminiscing and less current events. We will try to satisfy both readers and recipients in the ’95 editions.
By way of a trip down memory lane, I recall an incident at the end of my campaign in 1966 for State Legislature. A friend of mine, Joe Gerngross, was the President of the St. Joe’s Father’s Club. St. Joseph’s was a parish in Cheltenham, Montgomery County, and incidentally, not in the District I was seeking to represent. But, as I said, he was a friend, and a friend in need. He needed a speaker for his meeting night in November and it happened to be the night before the election. “Would I be that speaker?” asked Joe.
Well, since there was little I, or anyone else could really accomplish on the last night, I agreed. He then advised that there would also be another speaker, a Republican, to give his party’s view. We were going to talk about the respective platforms of the gubernatorial candidates. The Republicans were represented by the incumbent, Shaeffer, and our candidate was Milton Shapp. The gentleman Joe asked to speak for the Republicans was James Cavanaugh, today a Judge on the Superior Court of Pennsylvania. I knew Jim as a member of the brood of Cavanaughs who used to summer in Sea Isle City. I also knew he was a good plaintiff’s lawyer and had run for political office in the Northeast in several prior elections. He was not a candidate in this one.
The Father’s Club of St. Joseph’s had about 50 members present on that historic evening. Joe was the Master of Ceremonies. He introduced us both and then gave me the opportunity to speak first. I offered condolences of a tongue in cheek nature in that it was regrettable that they could not vote for me, since all of them lived outside of the district. I did note that the speakers were on an even keel in that they couldn’t vote for Jim either. Then I expanded on the virtues of our candidate and his program for progress. But as I now recall some nearly 30 years later, I can’t for the life of me think of one outstanding proposal Miltie had, but I’m sure there were many in 1966. I spoke for about 10 to 15 minutes and then rested, assured all would vote for Shapp the following day. It was then Mr. Cavanaugh’s turn.
He began rather formally with a nod to the Chairman and his friends, and then the bomb was dropped! He said “I have been waiting for this opportunity, throughout this campaign of Mr. McSorley’s, to expose a secret—not that Tom Gola needs it to win by—but that secret is this!”
“Mr. McSorley, as a young man, sneaked into Braca’s Pier Theater in Sea Isle City. He did so by going hand over hand on the sewer pipe under the theater to a hole in the bathroom floor. By the way, the pipe went out over the ocean water. He did this on several occasions and I can prove it, since I did it with him!”
The room exploded! I was at first a bit puzzled and then, as he disclosed his startling revelation, I broke into laughter. I later, of course, properly acknowledged that I had sinned and asked to be forgiven.
I had forgotten those daring episodes of getting into Braca’s or that Jim had ever been a party to them. But then I remembered and recalled we often did it several times in one week, even if we had seen the show, just for the sport of it—not just trying to avoid the probable 10- or 15-cent admission charge.
Over the years after the “expose” whenever Jim and I met we would laugh about that evening and recall the days of summer and Sea Isle by the Sea.
I had many happy days in the land of tomatoes and crabs. The bushel baskets of both were a Friday regular and sometimes we even provided the crabs. We would go out in the flat bottom rowboat into the coves and marshes of our inland waterways and lay traps. We would also use lines with fish tied to them (croakers I think) over the side of the boat, slowly lifting the line when we got a nibble and then netting the nibbling crustacean. This was done from early morning until lunch time, but sometimes we even took lunch. I’ll never forget those warm tomato sandwiches. They were made before we left and the sun had usually made them very tepid. We never had any coolers, so the juice or soda matched the temperature of the tomatoes. An early example of Paul’s ability to eat almost anything when he was hungry—called appetite.
Later, Sea Isle was visited to run the beach run and in 1976 it began on the boardwalk (concrete walk now) in front of the old homestead at 11-45th Street.
On New Year’s Day we had Dan, Marge, Jerry, Betty, and Bill and Bunny King as dinner guests. I recalled with Bill joining in the runs at Sea Isle, but particularly the one I chronicled here before of Bill getting 10th place runner was assaulted by a group of passing junkies. The jury is still out on whether Bill had anything to do with their actions. His reputation for competitiveness belied his denials. I also reminded him at the dinner of his record of runs in—which appeared one clipping completely edged by the author in “black” like a memorial card for the dead. It was the one race in 20 plus years in which I beat him! Now there’s competitiveness.
Reminder for the New Year—someone once said, “Husbands are like fires, they go out if left unattended!” (Applies equally to “wives”).