opinion

What the Hell """* Shore Rental Is Crazy , But...

(ED. NOTE: This column by Bob Finucane recently appeared in the Delaware County (Pa.) Daily Times.) Maybe we won't get our week at the beach this year, after all. Have you checked the rents? Well, we have. And they're atrocious. So we'll have to see. The place we rented two years ago in Avalon for $1,200 a week, which was robbery, is now $1,600 a week. Can you believe it? I may be an impulse renter but I'm not a psycho. IT ALL STARTED. I guess, when I was a poor little kid. One of my goals was to be able to afford a house at the beach for a week or two in the summer. Not only at the beach but on the beach. I wanted to look out my window and see nothing but ocean. The years passed and I became an adult. A poor adult. I discovered that a house with an unobstructed view of the ocean is a prize property that rents for big money in the summertime. I learned that owners of these prize proper-

ties clobber renters for every single inch of that unobstructed view. The owners know there are enough dummies and like to make cash cows of these seashore donkeys. So two years ago, I sort of said, "What the hell!" and went $1,200 per week, for two weeks, for an oceanfront house at Avalon. ANYONE WHO'S RENTED a place at the shore knows the routine. You drive down on a cold winter day and get from the real estate broker keys to five or six places resonably close to the beach. Then you drive around, walking through each one, until you find the one you like. It's windy and raw and you don't spend much time examining the outside of the property. Too cold for that. So you can imagine our surprise when we arrived to begin our vacation to find the $2,400 expenditure brought less than we expected. The house had an unobstructed view of the beach, alright, but access was something else. The little boardwalk which runs between the house and the beach was built so close to the sand that passage under it is impossible. And there are no steps to take you across the boardwalk. SO...? So to get to the beach from our "beachfront" home means carrving the chairs, umberellas, blankets, buckets, shovels, tanning lotion, magazines and, of course, beach tags, down the street to the end of the block and hanging a left onto the beach. My dream of walking . out the front door into the surf turned out to be an expensive fantasy. We went to Avalon a few weeks ago to look for a place to vacation for a couple of weeks this summer. We wanted no part of our $2,400 nightmare of two summers ago but we were curious about what the rent would be for that house this year. We found out and the sound of $1,600 per week is still ringing in my ears. We grabbed the keys to half a dozen other places and went looking. All except one were located within half a block of the beach. All except one were $1,000 a week or more. We're considering the one that's less. THIS KIND OF money for a week at the beach is crazy but if you don't splurge once in a while, even though you can't afford it, life is going to feel like one endless final exam. The house we'd like to rent — we still haven't totaled the rolls of coins we've been accumulating with the seashore in mind — has one stickout feature: a second floor deck that faces west. Decks are important at the shore. If the house doesn't have a deck, where are you going to lounge after a hot day at the beach, and sip a late afternoon cocktail, and feel a soft breeze cooling your sunburn, and hear your brother-in-law say, "I wonder what the poor people are doing right now?" He knows, of course. We poor folks are relaxing on the deck, sipping a late afternoon cocktail, enjoying a cool breeze on our sunburn and feeling like the richest of the rich and famous of the world.

Our Readers Write , Lee: Man of Honor

To The Editor: Recently, an item from your news paper dated April 30 was brought to my attention. It was written by Fowler H. Stratton of Avalon in answer to a column by John Merrill. Stratton made the statement that Robert E. Lee was a traitor to the United States and should have been shot or "hanged by the neck until dead". The Constitution gave tne states the right to secede. All the signers of the Declara tion of Independence by strict definition were traitors, including the Father of our Country. The difference is that the United States won the war against. the mother country and tHe revolutionaries turned out to be heroes! What would they be called if England had won the war? Should these same ^ heroes have been shot or hung by the neck? LEE DID A LOT of SOUl searching before he made a decision to join the Confederate forces. Shouldn't every man feel, as he goes into battle, that he fights i for a just cause? When we still search out German officers from World War Two, do we not tell the world each individual is (Page 71 Please)

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Joseph R. Zelnik Editor Bonnie ReinS General Manager Gary L. Rudy Advertising Director John Dun woody Special Promotions Director Darrell Kopp Publisher Uo-oi, C orp 1916 All >iw>id AM property fw ik# e*hfe teWewi el pwfalKoeoe iWI be *be property ol ibe Sro-rrr Corp Ho port hereof eoy be reprorbrred DEADLINES News & Photos Thursday Advertising Friday — 3 P.M. Classified Advertising Friday — 3 P.M. 465-5055 For News or Advertising Information Mail Subscription: Yearly. S40; Six Month. S20 Call 465-5055 For News. Adverting or Subscription InformationWi __ T'I-TT" *"* 'i" "* HIHO II >MI i «M» K\ SCAPE MAY |t| *ralin~IJtspafctf Cape May City EdMoo of the Cape May County Herald Ewvry UMmmUp By «■■■»»- Cm pmnttom fO fcaHttUpeHayC^He. ~ WJ.IMH /f

Berry's World : » . . 3 0 <?'« Bbv«A « •Honestly, won't it be nice when summer is over and we have our beaches back?' #

Concerned About Vets To The Editor: We are concerned about the attitude toward veterans by officials in and out of government. The Reagan administration, particularly OMB, CBO and the Grace Commission, would like to turn its back on older veterans and all veterans seeking medical care unless they were disabled in combat. There are about 27 million veterans flooding VA hospitals. We all know that only about four million to 4.5 million veterans currently use the system. - Finally, we are concerned about the future of our veterans programs, that veterans, who answered our nation's call in its hour of need to preserve the freedoms we enjoy, would be adandoned in their own time of need. A local veteran in West Cape May who was wounded twice in Germany and a seven month prisoner of war just received a letter last week that his pension will be cut this July. Paul F. Parrinello VFW Post 386 Cape May

-From the Angelus to Just a Gigolo Don't Mention This , But ...

By JOE ZELNIK My dad's gonna kill me for this. But I feel responsible to warn the women of this county: as you read this, I am enroute to the Philadelphia airport to pick up my father, 81, for a four-day visit. It comes just 53 weeks after his last (and first) visit to the Jersey shore. He came that time for my wedding. He comes this time for another wedding, this time my oldest daughter who looks sweet and innocent, but works for IRS and would cut your heart out for a mathematical miscalculation. .IN OUR LAST EPISODE, you may remember, my father's biggest thrill was not marriage, but the thunderous applause that followed his impromptu vocal performance on the stage at Henny's in Stone Harbor (How could I tell him that at 1 a.m. in Henny's, the crowd would applaud a drum solo of "Claire de Lune?") My dad, I have pointed out in the past, is so shy he passes up salad bars for fear people will notice him . Yet at the age of 16, to my amazement, he sang on the giant stage of the Gowanda (New York) Theatre in a sort of vaudeville act. When he left the county a year ago, he said he would probably be willing to come back this September, after the tourist rush. This wedding brings him four months earlier than planned. His first concern? His rendition of "September Song," which he has been practicing for a year, will be less appropriate. THAT'S IF PIANIST George Johnson invites him to Henny's stage, he hastened to add. "I'd rather not sing," he told me on my visit to him in March. "I'm not good enough. But if George forces me..." What would my father sing, if George forced him, that 'is? "Don't mention this," he said, well knowing after my 30 years in this business that I would print his x-rays if they sold newspapers. HE THEN DUG OUT his list, which he has been rehear sing for some months. It includes the song that started his Henny's career, "I'm Along Because I Love You," a lyric" I imagine has special meaning.

But everything else in his repertoire is fresh ; I mean not performed last year: "Yes, We Have No Bananas." "I Don't Know Why," "You Always Hurt the One You Love," "September Song," "Always," "San Francisco," "Carolina in the Morning," "April Showers," "Girl of My Dreams," and "Just a Gigolo," which, he added, he sings "slow and sad," as opposed to the recently popular version by David Lee Roth. ALTHOUGH HE SINGS BALLADS, he prefers to listen to livelier music and can polka from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. without a break. Fortunately, there is no dancing at Henny's. I am hoping my dad will meet a very, very old widow with a beachfront house. (My) object: matrimony. My dad, on the other hand, has somewhat different ideas. "I don't have anything against older women," he said on the phone the other day. "You know, 40, 45." I am getting the feeling he is willing to sing in Henny's, but may drag me to the Windrift for some action. MY DAD CAME to this country at the age of 8, and soon afterward took his first "job" doing chores for the local priest. They included starting the fire first thing in the morning and ringing the Angelus three times each day: 7 a.m.; noon and 6 p.m. At one time he delivered 90 newspapers a day, a bag on each shoulder. He made $1 a week. He left school at 14 to work in the tannery, then quit to go to the glue factory for two cents more an hour. He has worked ever since, eventually getting his own neighborhood grocery store 46 years ago. The business continues. ALTHOUGH HE HAS one-third as many years of formal education as I, he's a lot smarter. For example, I barely passed a second language, French, in college. He's trilingual, able to converse in English, Slovenian and Polish. He has all the oldtime values that apparently came here with the immigrants, tucked away in their tattered suitcases: love of God and country, stoicism, respect for hard work, honesty. I'm like him in at least one way. I still stoop to pick up a penny.