The Ocean City noise ordinance kicks in
By Bill Kellys
Ocean City High School teacher Bill Hamilton held the last Classic Philosophy class of the summer school session under Shriver’s Pavilion, with the hippies playing guitars and singing above them, being hassled by the noise police now armed with decibel meters.
As the six students, including Kate, the mayor’s daughter, sat on a beach blanket and ate Mack & Manco’s pizza from a cardboard box, they began to discuss the assignment, “Waiting for the Barbarians,” the 1904 Greek poem by Constantine P. Cavafy.
Taking turns, Hamilton had each student read a part of the poem out loud. It’s about a city or nation whose people panic and descend into chaos on hearing the news of the imminent arrival of a horde of barbarians, but their fear creates more damage than the barbarians, who ultimately fail to show.
Waiting for the Barbarians
By C.P. Cavafy
Translated by Edmund Keeley
What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?
The barbarians are due here today.
Why isn’t anything going on in the senate? Why are the senators sitting there without legislating?
Because the barbarians are coming today.
What’s the point of senators making laws now? Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.
Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is he sitting enthroned at the city’s main gate, in state, wearing the crown?
Because the barbarians are coming today and the emperor’s waiting to receive their leader. He’s even got a scroll to give him, loaded with titles, with imposing names.
Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas? Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts, rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds? Why are they carrying elegant canes beautifully worked in silver and gold?
Because the barbarians are coming today and things like that dazzle the barbarians.
Why don’t our distinguished orators turn up as usual to make their speeches, say what they have to say?
Because the barbarians are coming today and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking.
Why this sudden bewilderment, this confusion? (How serious people’s faces have become.) Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly, everyone going home lost in thought?
Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven’t come. And some of our men just in from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.
Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians? Those people were a kind of solution.
After they read the poem, some of it twice, they engaged in a heated discussion as to whether the poem still had meaning, if it could be related to contemporary events, and if it was worth discussing at all. After the one-hour lesson, Hamilton announced that everyone had passed the course with an A grade as they knew they would as he was known as a pushover for easy A’s.
Meanwhile, up at 14th Street, where the jocks and the surfers hung out, a crowd was gathering on the beach. The ordinance against loud music on the beach and Boardwalk went into effect at noon on the Friday before Labor Day weekend and was to be strictly enforced.
Some of the federal emergency public safety anti-riot funds were used to purchase a dozen decibel meters from Edmund Scientific, which were distributed to the policemen patrolling the Boardwalk by minimally trained summer police: wannabe cops, though they did pack .38 specials, which gave them some authority.
While all was relatively quiet and cool at Ninth Street, it was a totally different story down at 14th Street, where Pete Carroll and the Carroll Brothers, who were the house band at Bay Shores, slept on the beach practically every day and jammed when they were awake because playing music was not just a job to them, it was something they really liked to do and did as much as possible.
They would usually just bring a couple of acoustic guitars, a small snare drum and a sax to the beach, but because the noise ordinance was going into effect, they decided to hold a peaceful, nonviolent, musical protest of sorts. With the cooperation of their friends on the beach patrol, they put a gasoline-powered generator under the lifeguard stand and hung an American flag draped so it couldn’t be seen from the Boardwalk. The generator powered an amplifier and two speakers, which were put on top of the lifeguard stand. The band were surrounded by a legion of fans and friends, wall to wall so it would be hard for the cops to get to them.
Pete Carroll fired up the generator, plugged in his guitar and strummed a loud chord, which could be heard at Ninth Street, five blocks away. The two cops who were patrolling that area immediately called for backup, and all 12 of the boardwalk cops heard the 10-4 on their walkie-talkies and responded, as did almost all of the people walking the boards and the shopkeepers in that area.
Among the witnesses to what was about to happen were Bob Harbough in front of his grill, Freddie the Clown selling balloons, Sam McDowell – the Old Salt from the Smuggler’s Shop, and Jiggs, an old man in a white ten-gallon cowboy hat with his name – JIGGS embroidered on it, whose daily routine was to sit on the bench in front of Bob’s Grill and flirt with all the teenage girls in their bikinis, who all loved Jiggs.
As the dozen cops gathered at the top of the Boardwalk stairs that led to the beach and consulted one another and with their captain on the radio, WOND AM radio newsman Mike Sherman arrived, parked illegally and after looking around at the scene – the cops in a huddle, the crowds on the Boardwalk and beach, and the band playing loudly around the lifeguard stand, he jumped in the glass pay phone there, pumped in a dime and called his studio, ordering them to stand by for a live report from Ocean City, where the city’s noise ordinance was being severely tested within minutes of going into effect. It wasn’t long before the KYW TV3 crew arrived in their white Chevy van with the cameraman protruding from the hole in the roof, getting it all on film.
Each of the 12 cops had a noise meter and kept looking at it, and they all read the same – the needle was as far into the red as it could go and was bouncing against the wall. When his superior on the radio asked where the needle was on his decibel meter, the young cop looked and said, “It’s a Harvey Wall banger.”
There were 12 officers on the riot squad, plus a lieutenant who assumed command of the situation as soon as he arrived, commandeering Jiggs’ bench as a command post. Each riot squad cop had a blue motorcycle helmet and rectangular Plexiglass shields, and fell into place as soon as they jumped out of the APC, and formed two lines of six and then fanned out into a wedge with two shields in front and moved like a Roman phalanx onto the Boardwalk, pushing the crowd out of the way in front of them.
The KYW TV camera only invigorated the college kids who began chanting, “The whole world is watching, the whole world is watching!”
The Carroll Brothers kept playing as the riot squad made their way through the beach crowd, trampling on blankets and knocking over beach chairs, they made no friends as they made it to the lifeguard stand and put handcuffs on Pete Carroll and his bandmates and led them away. They were handcuffed with their hands in front of them, allowed to keep their instruments, and were paraded across the Boardwalk past KYW’s cameraman and Mike Sherman, reporting live over the radio from the pay phone.
Once they were inside the new paddy wagon van, the Carroll Brothers, even though encumbered by the handcuffs, began to play their instruments – “Sweet Georgia Brown” could be heard by the crowd, who followed the paddy wagon all the way to the Central Avenue red brick police station. When they got there, the crowd surged around the paddy wagon van. And when the door was opened they screamed, yelled and applauded wildly at their new heroes.
The riot squad remained at 14th Street and the Boardwalk, and were then ordered to return to the lifeguard stand where a hippie had plugged his radio into the amplifier and the music was being broadcast. As the riot squad made their way back to the lifeguard stand, the pot smoking hippie surfer who volunteered to man the gas generated electric amplifier, got some wires crossed and as he lit a joint, started a fire that startled him. As he stumbled backwards and fell into the sand, the gasoline generated fumes exploded, launching the lifeguard stand into the air and onto the riot squad, creating general chaos and mayhem.
From the police station pay phone Pete Carroll called Norman Stern, the new Bay Shores manager, but Stern refused to pay the bail, set at $500, and when word of that reached the crowd that filled alley they passed a hat and in about 15 minutes the Carroll Brothers were free.
The end result was a publicity bonanza for both the Carroll Brothers and Bay Shores, as the incident at 14th Street made front page newspaper headlines with news articles, radio and TV news that mentioned both the Carroll Brothers and Bay Shores and making them famous, publicity that couldn’t be bought at any price.
There was chaos and mayhem in Ocean City and the Hell’s Angels and the barbarians hadn’t even arrived yet.
Next Up: Grace Kelly Returns to Her Roots.
To comment on this story or this series: Billkelly3@gmail.com
