There's Only One Place They Call Me One of Their Own

This summer, instead of renting a house near Myrtle Beach, my family decided to make use of our family’s shore house in New Jersey. My Carolina friends often ask me what the beaches in New Jersey are like and so, throughout our week, I found myself making mental lists.

Down the Shore



--Everything’s all right (couldn’t pass up a Springsteen reference, sorry).
--Boardwalks offer an evening activity. Rides, unique foods, all the t-shirts and beach stuff you might want to buy. Southern friends, think State Fair meets Wings/Waves/Eagles.



--Phillies shirts outnumber Carolina shirts 500:1.
--You pay for lots of things: parking your car, a pass to get on the beach, tolls on bridges and highways.
--Seagulls prowl the beaches relentlessly in search of discarded Cheetos. What they cannot find, they will steal from your unsuspecting hand.
--It’s crowded. New Jersey is the most densely populated state, and when you add in the vacationing Philadelphians, New Yorkers, and Canadians, it gets a little tight.
--You’re only 90 minutes away from Philadelphia, so you can get a decent cheesesteak or a water ice. You can also drive up to the city and catch a Phillies game.



--For me, it will always be a second home. The house my grandfather built all those years ago is not a beach-front palace, it’s not even air-conditioned. Inside its walls are many happy memories from childhood and young adulthood. The people in New Jersey are familiar, I know their culture, and I can speak with their accent. When I am down the shore, I have favorite places to go—a state park, a beach where I like to run, a pizza place I can’t refuse, a roadside stand that sells Jersey peaches.

At the Beach
--There’s plenty of room. Running on Carolina beaches is wonderful, low tide means lots of wide, flat sand for the exercise enthusiast.
--We can walk to the beach from wherever we rent. In New Jersey, we drive to the beach. If you forget something in Carolina, no big deal, you walk back and get it.
--There’s less hustle and bustle. Our Carolina beach vacations are opportunities for us to play the Wii, put together jigsaw puzzles, solve crosswords and read piles of books.
--The houses are bigger and renter-friendly.
--Seagulls go about their business peacefully. I have not known them to steal Pringles from my hand.
--If there was a famine, I still would not stop by the side of the road for a sandhill peach.
--Two words: outlet shopping!
--We are still finding favorite places to eat and visit. Even after several trips, it remains unfamiliar. We rely on websites and coupon books to recommend restaurants. We join the throngs at Broadway at the Beach because we haven’t figured out what else there is to do on a Tuesday night.

I’ve loved the beach for my entire life. If it’s got sand and salt water, odds are I will be happy there. But, I must confess a preference for the shores of New Jersey. If I spent the next 30 summers in the Myrtle Beach area, I would probably learn my way around and develop attachments to restaurants and parks. To be honest, I’m not sure I want to. It’s like Reese Witherspoon says in Sweet Home Alabama, “The truth is, I gave my heart away a long time ago, my whole heart, and I never really got it back.”