Picture of the Day

Today's picture of the day comes from Claudine M. Jalajas. What great kid sunglasses! And I love the flower detail on the bathing suit.

Bonus: This picture comes with a story!

"It was a green Ford Galaxy 500 Fast Back. My mother, a French Canadian, had fallen in love with the Jersey shore. Each day in the summer she would pack up my brother and I in her green bullet for the hour or more ride to Long Branch beach. My mother’s long blonde hair would be pulled back in a French twist held back with only one large decorative comb. She wore a navy blue two-piece under her blouse and shorts. According to my mother the best shoes to wear to the beach were Dr. Scholl’s wooden sandals—they kept your feet cool and the sand never stuck to the soles. Her toes matched her fingernail and lip color—frosted ice pink.

I sat in the back with my brother. The heat was so strong we rarely had the energy to fight or quibble over who was sitting too close to the center dividing line. No air conditioning back then so both windows were completely open and the thundering wind would deafen us which probably also prevented our habitual fights. My most vivid memories of the drive were of the long lines at the tollbooths and smelling the exhaust from all those cars. Too short to see the oncoming road so instead I listened to the gentle “tha thud” as we traveled across cracks in the highway and watched the wind tug and pull at my mother’s hair, desperate to release it from it’s comb.

This is a picture of me in 1970, aged 2, at Long Branch beach. While I no longer live in NJ, I live on Long Island and refuse to put a pool in my yard. I take my children to the beach on a regular basis—desperate to have them experience what I did. Making friends for the day with strangers, digging deep holes with your bare hands, the fun of finding sand crabs, jumping in waves, sand in your lunch, and the feeling of utter fatigue on the ride home. THAT is a good childhood memory..."

Do you have any retro Jersey Shore pictures you'd like to share? Send them my way at jenmiller27 [at] gmail [dot] com.