I love Lucy

by Paul Kandarian

I love surprises when I travel. And a 65x60x18-foot elephant that was built in the 19th century weighing about 90 tons which is listed as the 12th-tallest statue in the entire country definitely qualifies as a surprise.

Oh, and for the record, her name is Lucy. Rumor has it Lucy was once a bordello. You go, big girl, you go! We had the occasion to be in Margate, New Jersey to see this wonder, an added, lovely benefit to having dinner nextdoor at Ventura's Greenhouse, all of it smack dab on the Jersey Shore where, thankfully, we did not run across any annoying made-for-TV creatures named The Situation or Snooki. We were in the area (Longport, in particular) for a memorial of a family member who died last year but thanks to Covid, the memorial was long delayed. It wasn’t a sad thing. He was an older, quite accomplished, and very curmudgeonly guy and the accolades and funny stories about his positives and negatives were rather enlightening. It was handled the way these things should be handled: with a bunch of food, booze, and laughs. Anyway, having never been to the area, just mocking it from afar with my usual New England snark, I found it to be captivating, even enchanting at times. That mostly includes where we stayed, in Ocean City, home of a truly tacky and iconic boardwalk in a town that has banned booze since it was founded in 1879 by four Methodists who would not at all be pleased that despite no liquor being sold there, consumption is another thing completely; the city in 2017 was named "The Drunkest City in New Jersey" by USA Today. I don't know what sounds Methodists make when rolling in their graves, but I'm sure the crashing waves from the nearby Atlantic Ocean would drown them out anyway. The boardwalk is as wonderfully cheesy and animated as classic boardwalks get, harkening to a time when tacky was the norm and people ate it up with a spoon, or a waffle cone, or a stick through an apple, or whatever they were in the mood for. And speaking of a true test of keeping gross food down, there is also a massive roller coaster named Gale Force situated right by public restrooms, a handy touch if things get a little, shall we say, soiled on your ride. This thing is a beast, with a G-force of four and a drop angle of 100 degrees. I’m not sure what that means but I’m sure it’s not good with a full belly of boardwalk grub. Places like this are an absolute Mecca for people-watching; on this day, someone was getting married and another guy walked by with a hooded falcon on his arm. It's the best thing possible to sit there with an ice cream cone from Shriver's Gelato, doling out frozen gobs of gooey goodness since 1898, and watch the world walk/ saunter/jog/bike/stroll/ swagger/rollerblade and generally perambulate by. We also stayed in one of the coolest B&Bs ever, the spectacularly renovated Scarborough Inn, said to be the oldest in the city, lorded over by a guy with perhaps the coolest name ever, Sne Avichal, who bills himself as "Innkeeper, Architect, Friend of Dogs." This sprawling, exceptionally well-appointed place has tiny rooms and loads of old-fashioned stuff scattered about the wrap-around porch and sun-streaked lobby/seating area, like a classic mantletop typewriter with a page in it and one line on it - "All work and no play makes Sne a dull boy" – a delightfully self-indulgent twist on a line from a classic horror film that will give those recognizing it a marvelous ripple of cinematic goosebumps. Walk down these narrow, gorgeous hallways after seeing that and you'll just want to go "Redrum! Redrum! Redrum!" in ever-increasing volume in the voice of one possessed by demons as you seek out creepy long-dead identically dressed twin girls. When you go to places you’ve never been before, it is best to do so with eyes and imagination wide open to drink in everything new because it is all new and chances are you won’t be back again, so just enjoy the learn of it all. And the best part of the whole trip for me is that it wasn't work, for a change. There were no lines to memorize, no character to play, except that of a for-real wide-eyed tourist in an area I knew absolutely nothing about, hungrily devouring every amazing surprise along the way. The biggest of which by far (even by elephant standards) was both literally and figuratively Lucy, all six stories of pachyderm popularity that she is.