Sanford Friedman
OCEAN
The center of Seaside's social life was not the public beach,
but the Casino on Ocean Avenue. There, on top of the low clay
cliffs that lined the Jersey coast for miles, the summer residents
pursued their pleasures as
if
the beach and ocean did not exist.
The Casino's facilities included bathhous<:s, a restaurant, a lounge,
a card room, an outdoor dance floor and bandstand, and a fifty
foot pool.
Stephen had received his first swimming lessons in the pool when
he was three, but now, at the age of six, he had very mixed and
complicated feelings about
it.
On the one hand, he adored the
pool just because it was made of water. That in itself was saying
a lot since Stephen loved the water more than almost anything–
not more than Clarry, of course, and not more than his marine
collection, but more than Mommy sometimes, and more than Daddy
at others, and certainly a whole lot more than his brother, Roggie.
The other thing he liked about the pool was the fact that you
could jump into it whenever you liked, providing of course you
had waited an hour after lunch. There was always someone around
to keep an eye on you-like Mommy right this minute: "Three bam."
-that was its one advantage over the ocean.
But whatever its advantages, the swimming pool just didn't
compare with the ocean. In the first place the ocean, salty or
not, wasn't filled with this irritating chemical that burned your
eyes. In the second place there weren't all these grown-ups eat–
ing and knitting and gossiping and playing Mah Jong and Michigan
rummy and backgammon and bridge, and whispering about the Lind–
bergh baby-at the ocean you could get off on your own. In the
