The Essential Shore

ROLL DOWN THE CAR WINDOWS
By Carrie Denny
When you ease back on the gas after stopping at the Great Egg toll, you can smell it through your open sunroof. Rolling your windows down, you fill your lungs with it — the bay, the tide, the marsh, the muck, the salt air, even the little fiddler crabs with their one big claw, scurrying from the water’s edge back into the marsh as if they didn’t know the water was going to lap up and get them. And by the time you exhale, the past week’s, month’s or winter’s worth of stress and aggravation simply goes away.

GET STUCK IN SHORE TRAFFIC
By Amy Strauss
Try as they might, the John Butterworths and Bob Kellys of this world can’t save us from Shore traffic. You’ve sat in it. You know which routes to avoid — and when. But you won’t, because you want to get down there as badly and as quickly as we do, and all of us get off work and check into rental properties and stay late to watch the fireworks at the same times and places (and even if we didn’t, we’d still get stuck at those damn Egg Harbor tolls, E-ZPass notwithstanding). Truth is, if you drive, you suffer. At least we’re right there with you.

BURY DAD
By Tom McGrath
Note to prospective fathers who have not yet had the pleasure: Do not look sternly on your children for wanting to reverse the natural order of things and, temporarily at least, reign mightily over you. Do not be angry with them for kicking sand in your face and screeching in your ear as they giggle and laugh and scream, “Mommy, Mommy, look what we did to Daddy!” Do not be harsh with them, even though your chest will feel heavy and your arms will be paralyzed and you will swear to the heavens that you are, in fact, having a myocardial infarction. No, loathe your children only because you will never, ever, ever get the sand out of your bathing suit.

READ ON THE BEACH
By Timothy Haas
Let’s see. I’ve squared the edges of the Neat Sheet and installed a shoe at each corner to keep it from heading aloft. I’ve got the rainbow-striped chair dug in at an angle slightly oblique to the surf, to keep the wind from riffling the pages. Now, for the book bag: Hmmm. The last three New Yorkers? Master and Commander? The Proper Study of Mankind? Wodehouse: A Life? Why do I continue to delude myself like this? Every year, my best literary intentions give way to the kids, the kite, and my secret summertime need to simply do nothing. Even if it’s just for the day. Atlantic Books in Beach Haven, Cape May, Ocean City, Somers Point, Stone Harbor and Wildwood; atlanticbooks.us.