Fall Reflections
L
ike many people, I watched on TV in early September as fire destroyed much of the Boardwalk at Seaside Heights and Seaside Park in New Jersey. Beyond the tragedy of this, the fire happening so soon after the rebuild from Sandy, it did cause me to think of my youth. I grew up in suburban New Jersey, in Millburn, and Page 14
September 27, 2013
until I was 16 and moved to eastern Long Island, that was all I knew about summer resorts. My high school buddies and I would go down “the shore” looking for a good time during those years. But that was only in the summer. We’d never go down there in the offseason. It was, way back then, why I so fell in love with the eastern end of Long Island when we moved
here. The East End was indeed a summer resort. But when the summer people left, it was not only that we had the place to ourselves, but that we had a place of extraordinary beauty to ourselves. In all the offseasons, but particularly in the fall, when the memories were still strong about all those who had left after Labor Day, there was this wonderful exhilaration you felt, not from the Dan’s Papers Fall Preview