Remembrance of Things Clams
My Years-Long Crash Course in the Wonder and Weirdness of Long Beach Island, NJ.
I once knew nothing about the geography and topography of New Jersey. I possessed the snobbish ignorance that many New Yorkers have about the state to the west (a snobbery my son has since inherited, though I am trying to shake him of it). When Mary Kate talked about the place where her parents lived, and indeed where she lived for years—some place called Long Beach Island—I only half listened. It was some town in Jersey, I thought, one of hundreds jammed up against one another, surrounded by freeways and factories.
Then one night we drove there. Bridge, highway, factories, traffic. Check. One hour passed. Ninety minutes. It grew dark. Where was this place?
We got off the New Jersey Parkway and headed east. Another bridge. Only they called it a causeway. It went on forever. Then we were there. Long Beach Island, which was actually a real island. It wasn’t a poetical, yet prosaic name dreamed up by realtors.
We turned left and drove 30 miles per hour for miles. Because we had to. The speed limit on LBI never breaks 35 during the high season. You feel this hard, because the island is, well, Long. 18 miles long. It takes a long time to get anywhere. And Mary Kate’s parents lived in Barnegat Light, the village at the northern tip of the barrier island.
As we drove and drove and never got there, I started to get a little panicky. The scenery was flat and surreal. I was familiar with coastal communities like Door County, Wisconsin, and Cape Cod, where the land was wooded and the roads winding. Long Beach Boulevard could have been a runway at a remote airport. What was this place? Was there only one road that ran the length of it? People lived here? This was New Jersey?