‘Waiting on the Angels’ – an ongoing series
By Bill Kelly
While the beach and boardwalk in Ocean City were much like it is today, Ninth Street was radically different from what it was in 1965. Coming into town across the causeway from Somers Point the Ninth Street strip has been totally revamped. Gone are the big old, clapboard hotels – the Lincoln, Strand and Biscayne, that were once nice hotels where tourists could stay for a reasonable rate. By 1965 those hotels had deteriorated into shabby joints that were taken over by college students who could get a room for a few dollars a night or cheaper by the week. These discounts appealed to what the mayor called the “transient population,” mostly college kids who didn’t spend much time in their rooms anyway.
Before Lauderdale and Cancun there was Ocean City – “Where the Boys Are” was the scene and where the college kids came from Philadelphia, Delaware, Pittsburgh, Ohio and West Virginia to line the beaches, wall to wall – beach blanket bingo. While the families still populated most of the island, the college kids ruled Ninth Street, the Ninth Street beach and the Fourteenth Street surfer’s beach where most of the action took place.
To put things into a proper perspective, especially for those who weren’t born yet, in the summer of ’65, LBJ was president, young men were eligible for the draft, the war in Vietnam was quietly raging and Richard J. Hughes was governor of New Jersey, and the governor would come into play before the summer was out. The songs on the transistor radios on the beach blankets and the juke boxes at the Chatterbox, College and Bob’s Grill were by the Supremes, Four Tops, Sony and Cher, the Byrds and Beach Boys as well as a slew of British Invasion bands – the Beatles, Hermans Hermits and the Rolling Stones, who would play the Steel Pier in Atlantic City and make a cameo appearance in the story.
The Byrds’ cover of Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” and the Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” were popular in the hippie camp, while “I’m Henry VII, I Am,” Sonny & Cher’s “I Got You Babe,” and the Shangri-Las’ “Leader of the Pack” were played by the surfers at Fourteenth Street. There was a clear social divide among the college kids of the day, with the long haired hippies commandeering the Ninth Street beach and pavilion and the crew cut straight jocks and surfers taking up most of the Fourteenth Street beach. The hippies generally congregated at Shriver’s Pavilion in front of the candy store, which was next to where Roger Monroe had his book store.
Walking south on the boardwalk, there was the bath house next to Mack & Manco’s, Joe Del’s cheese steak and sub shop, Preps Pizza, the arcades and Flanders Hotel, which retained its first class status, all still there, as well as the Copper Kettle Fudge building on the corner at 11th Street. Until he was murdered Harry Anglemehyer lived above his boardwalk fudge shop in the second floor apartment overlooking the beach and ocean. That’s where the immoral act that got him arrested allegedly occurred.
The corner building stretches on for half a block and is of the Spanish Revival design in the same style as the Flanders Hotel, the Music Pier, the Chatterbox and the John B. Kelly’s family home at Twenty-Seventh Street and Wesley Avenue, all designed by the same young architect Vivian Smith.
Two blocks further along Fourteenth Street was the surfer’s beach and the most popular place for the high school and college kids to hang out, making Bob’s Grill and the College Grill-Varsity Inn the hippest hangouts in the Happy Days-American Graffiti tradition. Though the Varsity Inn moved to 8th Street in the 1970s, Bob’s Grill is still there and if Bob Harbough is still around he can verify everything said here is true.
There were no beach tags or beach fees at the time, and most people rented an umbrella, beach chair and raft from either Bert’s Beach service or Surf & Sand, who had contracts with the city. At day’s end you paid a dollar for a shower at a boardwalk bath house before hitting the Point. At least that was the routine for the shoebees, as they were called – day trippers who came down by train with shoe box lunches and didn’t spend any money except what they had to.
Besides the hippies and the straights, there was another social divide among the college kids – between the weekend warriors and those who were down for the entire summer. If you were a weekend warrior you stayed with friends, got a hotel room or slept on the beach and were gone by Sunday afternoon, but if you were in for the duration you had a job as a waiter, waitress, bus boy, grill cook or retail clerk, lived with your family, a group rental or rooming house and were in a strict daily routine.
The two things the hippies and the straights had in common were the routine and music. Both camps listened to portable transistor radios, played the jukebox, strummed guitars, sang songs and were into the routine – the Groundhog Day recurring ritual that inevitably ended at the Point.
You worked six to eight hours a day and then you went to the beach for an hour and joined friends who were already there. Then you went back to your room for a quick shower and change of clothes and hit the Point between eight and ten, and you didn’t just go to the point – you hit the Point with a vengeance.
First you went to one of the shot and beer bars – Gregory’s, Charlie’s, Sullivan’s or the Anchorage, tanked up on a few cheep draft beers and then go to Tony Marts or Bay Shores, where ever your favorite bands played. Sometimes between sets, you’d walk across the street to see certain bands that rotated on two stages so there was always live music constantly going on. When the music shut down at two in the morning, you went to the diner for something to eat and then to one of the after hour joints and carried on until the sun came up. Then you went to the beach and fell asleep and when you woke up you went for a dip in the ocean and then went to work. Then repeat the process.
As Peter Pan put it: “This has all happened before and it will happen again.”
Johnny Caswell and the Chrystal Mansion – At the Shore
School is out
Come on, let’s go
Come on, baby
Let’s hit that road
(CHORUS)
We’re going down to the shore
Just like we did once before
Cause there’s no school anymore
So, baby, meet me at the shore
Hey, there’ll be lots of fun
Yeah, lying in the sun
On the boardwalk, holding hands
Beach parties in the sand
Everybody’s gonna be there
The hippies, the conservatives
And even the squares
Dancing til’ we can’t no more
Come on and meet me at the shore
We’re gonna swing every single night
Everything’s gonna be alright
