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Schatzie Has , Valid Claim c z To The Editor- 2 I am inspired to write this letter by the Nov 28 Herald Lantern article. Mental Lifesaver Hits Beach." £ As long as the Lordly people in Trenton have so much t money to pass out to victims of the Great Flood of March i 1984 I rise to state that to apply all of the $23,000 alloted to [ Cape May County to "people" only is discriminatory, and contrary to Canine Public Policy i You see. while 1 had no structural damage to my house. i and except for the garden timbei s which were piled up like Jack Straws. I do have cause for making a claim 1 I have a little miniature dachshund named Schatlie. who 1 stands four inches at the shoulder and weighs six pounds. < and as a result of the aforementioned flood, she has suf ; fered a severe trauma, directly resulting from the flood I During the time that the waters were hip deep in the street. 1 had to carry Schatzie across the street and half i way up the block to find a small grassy plot of land which | was not inundated Ever since then. I have had to carry her back to the same spot three times a day ■ As a direct cause of the mental shock which she suffered. I had to take her to the Vet and put her on antibiotics for three -weeks, and then she suffered the final indignity by having 13 teeth extracted 1 think that Schatzie has a valid claim to the entire $23,000 allottment. not only because she has been dispossessed of 13 teeth, but also because she has been deprived of her normal stooling and urinary habitat, and is on the verge of a complete nervous breakdown I am. therefore, asking Messrs Roy and Jordan to send me the check first, and then 1 will make the formal application FOWLER H STRATTON JR Avalon Letters Welcome The Herald and Lantern welcome letters to the editor on matters of public interest. Originals, not copies, are requested. W riters must sign name, address and phone number

Field Trip to 'Armpit'

The Editor: * 1 am one of the founders of the newly organized Grouchy Old Folks Club of Sea Isle City. At one of our meetings this past summer we were trying to decide on a place to go for First Annual Field Trip Many suggestions were made and the members finally agreed that the best idea was for trip to experience the nightlife here at the shore in the summertime It was given to me to arrange the whole thing I suggested. and we all agreed, that we should all go home and take a nap from 2 o'clock Friday afternoon until 10 o'clock Saturday night This. 1 reasoned, would prepare us for a possibly exhausting evening Or. Saturday evening I phoned all of the members to see if they were ready None of them thought they could make it They all had the salne excuse - too sleepy DISAPPOINTED but undaunted. Mother and I decided carry through the project on our own. I looked in the Wildwood Yellow Page; under Nightclubs. Electric and soon realized that I did not know one from the other, anyway, so we picked the first one in the alphabetical and headed for it On arriving at the "ARMPIT" we were promptly turned down for a Senior Citizens Discount ( make a note of that, gang! >, but paid our way in anyway. We were shown to what turned out to be the worst table in the place in front of the electrical bandstand I ordered a double martini for Mother, and for myself a double vodka with a muscatel wine chaser, which is. in my opinion, a good drink to stay with for a long evening The electrical band, whose name was "Excrement." was in the middle of a sort of overture of wire fumbling •hat caused all kinds of audio groans, squeaks, voices growling "testing" and muffled oaths. Meanwhile, their electrical drummer was erecting a veritable foothill of drums I counted 32 drums It turned out during the evening that he only beat on one of them — I guess he was sav ing the rest FINALLY. "Excrement" launched into their first song (which they repeated all night long, probably by popular request I I have never been able to decipher the lyrics to rock and roll songs very well, but I think the words in the verse had to do with tansporting a wringer washer upstream in a kayak with a broken heart However, the verse is unimpdPtanl in electrical music — it only leads up to the repeating refrain In this song the words to the RR were Baby, awm gonna gitcha gwonboom" Babeee' awm gonna gitcha gwonboom' And now to the dance floor First of all. to parents and grandparents of these young people — stop worrying All is innocence Outside of some rather unseemly bodily con

tortions, nothing untoward happens. They were dancing about three feet from each other and screaming out their place of origin over the roar of Excrement. One of the partners would scream out Norristown, and the other would reply Doylettown ! . gitcha gwonboom Conshohokin ! Torresdale El Stop! Baby, awm gonna - Bob Gegnas, and so on. Later, after many double martinis and vodka muscatels, everything came to a startling halt The lights went out. Excrement stopped on "gitcha" The building shuddered to a stop I said "Mother. Excrement has blown out all of the electric facilities in the area We may never be able to see anything at night again! " 'BUT I WAS WRONG. It was only closing time. Mother and I headed for the exit and we were caught up in a tidal wave of humanity that carried us a half block down the street and beached us in the parking lot of an outdoor sandwich shop "Boy, was that parking lot fun I joined right in — lurching and cursing, and occasionally throwing back my head and baying at the moon. Mother had to give me a good smack to bring me out of it. She then ordered me to go and get a couple of sandwiches to take home. I lurched up to the counter Most of the kids were ordering Quesaseburgers However. I opted for two Giant Belly Grippe rs and carried them to our car (slowly, because of the weight ) On arriving in our neighborhood. I asked Mother if she would like to ride up and down Central Avenue and scream for awhile, but she said she was too tuckered out. so we ate our Giant Belly Grippers and called it a night. Our First Annual Field Trip has been duly reported. TOM PORCH Sea Isle City Bazaar Success To The Editor Thanks to a very caring community, the Cape May Rescue Squad Auxiliary's Christmas Bazaar was a huge success We especially appreciate Shirley and Charles McBride for an oak rocker they donated II found a new home with a happy antique collector. From ail of us. our heartfelt thanks to all. and warmest wishes for a "Happy Holiday " OLGA SPEAR Cape May Rescue Squad Auxiliary

Don't Miss Sunny? St. Martin v ~m -a w 'w -m • -a ~a m t ~W •

Turned on tyy Pelicans, Coladas, Nudists?

BvJoe Zelnik I made two mistakes on my recent vacation I picked St s Martin And 1 went * Not until the plane's landing gear was retracted did our • tour guide announce that the island had experienced a ! hurricane two weeks earlier, reducing many beaches My beach, it turned out. was about as wide as Earl 1 Ostrander s moustache I had left a county where beach erosion is a principal problem to relax in a country suffer- * ing beach erosion The lour guide also suggested that we might not want to rent cars because the roads and local drivers were so bad 1 And be .very careful walking out of the airport, she added, because it was under construction A CAB DRIVER told me the airport and road should be completed by March or April A private source told me the job has been going on for seven years

The roads defy description, so 1 won't describe them My hotel was "a beautiful new property with a lovelysea view." I was in a hillside building with no sea view Italso had no electrical outlets in the bathroom Shaving with an electric razor while standing over a table lamp. I resembled Willie Nelson The hotel also boasted "a large freshwater swimming pool with a swim-up bar, " As long as you had $3 a drink IN LINE AT the front desk one morning. I heard a guest complain that he couldn't get the water to stay in his tub The guest behind him complained that he couldn't get water to leave his tub They rejected my suggestion that they exchange rooms It rained three of the seven days. Two weeks earlier. I was told, the "sunny island" went 12 consecutive days without seeing the sun. The bartender (there's not much to do in San Martin on rainy days but drink ) and I agreed that only God could stop rain. We could not agree on whether only God could make rain. The route to the Ostrander Moustache Beach was a 10-minute walk along a muddy path. The same path to civilization at night was frequently unlighted. "Short." a maintenance mafi explained one night. The suspense — would one be sucked into a bottomless hole7 — was heightened by two wild dogs that barked ferociously nearby It was too dark to see if they were foaming at the mouth. The electricity itself only went off three times ; taking with it the pumps that provide the water, of course. PHYSICAL FITNESS nuts were freaking "out. With neither a long stretch of beach nor a safe road to jog on. they would be running in place at the bars, spilling pina coladas on their Nikes. I rode cabs not so much to go anywhere ( there were only two places to go: Philipsburg and Marigot), but to hear the radio. The rooms had neither TV, radio, nor phone. On the cab radio, the principal ad was for vacations in Miami. It was not hard to imagine the natives of St. Martin selling their goats to raise the money for a week of the good litf in Miami. The countryside and the dilapidated homes on those hilly. bumpy rides around the 37 -square-mile island reminded me of visiting my grandmother in the hill towns of western Pennsylvania 40 years ago THE TOUR GUIDE assured me that. inside those hovels the natives were happy and overwhelmed with material possessions. They may have been happy at home, but many were surly at work. It is true that TV antennas protruded from their houses, and not from the $125-a-day ( in

season) hotel But most porches also held ancient wringer-washers. The happy natives followed a local custom of abandoning ca^s wherever they happened to die. including on roads. In back yards, the jungle had grown over the autos and they looked like huge planters 9 Ever the reporter. I asked about two of my favorite topics, septic systems and solid waste Lacking an MUA, everyone on St. Martin has his own septic solution, adjacent to the turquoise Caribbean And the garbage is being used to fill a huge salt pond, which will soon be a huge landfill, right alongside Philipsburg. At a party, I sat beside a lady who said Aruba was wonderful. I told her Cancun was great We shook our heads Sl\ MARTIN DID HAVE a Radio Shack, a Star of the Sea Catholic Church, and a True Value Hardware (but no Jim Fishhi") What did it have that I could not have found in South Jersey? Pelicans and nude bathing. And I probably could locate them if I tried. Could I recommend St. Martin to anyone? Yes. Keeping in mind the state of the roads, a wheel alignment mechanic could be a millionaire in a few months, compared to the year or two it takes in Cape May County . Is there anything we can learn from the island? First, they use no flagmen at highway construction projects, letting oncoming drivers brazen it out. This could save the DOT hundreds of thousands of dollars Second, their tactic for insect bites is to deny the existence of bugs. Visitors to Cape May County are always cursing sand flies or mosquitoes or green heads. But if the bug that bit you is nameless, he's also blameless and soon forgotten. The county could abolish the Mosquito Commission and use the helicopters to compete with banner airplanes. FORTY-EIGHT HOURS before we were to leave, the tour guide told us that, instead of departing at 5 p.m. and arriving home at 9, we would leave at 11 p.-rn. and arrive home at 3 a.m. I later learned that the guide knew this all along, but kept it to herself, requiring us to make last minute, long-distance ($14 a minute) phone calls to convince friends to come to the Philadelphia airport at 3 : 30 in the morning. In fairness to the guide, she did repeat over and over the procedures to be followed if luggage were lost. She was right. They lost mine on the way home. Although I am not Polish, I talked to a travel agent after returning from my vacation instead of before. "We don't recommend that place any more." he said. Me neither. 1

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Joseph R. Zelnik Bonnie Reina Gary L. Rudy John Dunwoody Darrell Kopp

Editor General Manager Advertising Director Special Promotions Director Publisher L>. .J All Iu.l,i. In. Ik.

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