New Jersey « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

New Jersey

There’s not a word for it; it won’t matter tomorrow

I wanted to write about motivation but, really, who has the energy for that? It’s something akin to ennui that’s been afflicting me the last few days. Not ennui, but something close to it. If there’s a place where that feeling and paralysis by analysis might intersect, that’s where I’ve been living.

There is much to do, but it seems like a lot so …

You power through, because that’s what professionals do. But there isn’t a lot of joy in that. There is, instead, a tiny bit of fear: What if I messed up an important date, or sequence or things, because I found myself with a galloping case of Tuesdays that covered the first part of the first week of the new year?

Besides, he said on Monday, there’s tomorrow. Which is the same thing he said on Tuesday. And what he spent part of today saying.

Tomorrow, much work will be done.

Getting a good solid start, that’s the secret. It isn’t motivation; it’s momentum. Tomorrow I will create it. I will manufacture it. I will rip it from the air and these keys at my fingertips. I know the secret. The secret is to find the opposite of ennui, enthusiasm, in deadlines.

The self-imposed deadlines start tomorrow.

This is the 21st installment of We Learn Wednesdays. I’ve been riding my bike across the county to find the local historical markers. This one isn’t in the Historical Marker Database, but it’s the 40th one we’ve seen in this series. And the marker is about a now empty lot.

I can’t find anything with a few simple searches about that first academy. But the town’s high school was here, too, for a few years in the early part of the 20th century, before moving down the street and around the corner. I found a photo of the class of 1907. Someone wrote that it had 18 students, the largest the school had enrolled to that point. It also included the school’s first black graduate, apparently. If that’s true, it is interesting, since the marker tells us integration came later.

There were postcards featuring the Copner school. Here’s another one.

There were two generations of men named Samuel in the Copner family around that time. I believe that old school was named after the first. He was said to be an early and loud advocate for public schools in the area.

There’s also a black-and-white of the old Grant Grammar school.

Here’s the lot(s) today.

That church will come up in a future edition of We Learn Wednesdays. In the next installment, we’ll see a house that dates, in part, back to the 17th century. It has, as you might expect, a busy history. If you’ve missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.

cycling / history / New Jersey / photo / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
2
Jan 24

OK, this got away from me, but it’s fun

Shaping up the spring semester. This will take between now and, say, May, to achieve. Perhaps April, if I am lucky. But the process has begun. One class is in good shape, and another is more or less all set — and I’m grateful for help from colleagues that allow that to be true. By tomorrow I’ll have some pretend momentum on my third class.

It’s also possible I’m fooling myself.

This morning I also did the traditional monthly cleaning of the computer. Many things were swept from the desktop. More files axed from the “downloads” folder. Other files and folders were reorganized in a tidier bundle. So determined was I to bring order to chaos that I did not bother at all to consider how I will never find all of those files again.

And so it was that I have 57 files and folders left on my desktop. I could get that down to 50 if I wanted to try.

Let’s try.

Ha! Forty-three items. Don’t ask me to hit 40.

There are also nine windows open — spreadsheets, word docs, browsers and such — and I can’t reduce that number. I’d just have to re-open one of them right away, and who has time to allow anything to load these days?

Go look out the back windows! Hurry!

I’d just seen it through the narrow slats of the closed blinds facing the front yard, too. Or, at least, I thought I had. I looked back to the east, though, and this was what I saw.

It was a plague of grackles (Quiscalus quiscula). Grackles have magnetite in their heads, beaks and necks. The magnetite allows the bird to use the earth’s geomagnetic fields to navigate flight. If I am reading the Audobon site correctly, they are around here year-round, this isn’t even their migratory season. I haven’t seen them in such large groups before.

I’d like to thank the two hawks who live in the tree line behind us for running them off.

On New Year’s Eve I finished out the best most humble little year of cycling I’ve ever enjoyed. It was one of those get-to-and-over an arbitrary number rides.

The purple line is what I actually did over the year, and despite the not-at-all consistent nature of that line, I was able to best two of the three humble goals I set at the beginning of the year. The final one proved just out of reach, but I am pleased with the effort.

I am still working my way through all of the Zwift routes (a project put on pause since last spring allowed for outdoor riding). So there I was in a simulated New York. I managed to claim a green jersey for holding the fastest sprint segment on the route.

I assumed that was only because all of the fast people were out celebrating.

So yesterday I reset the spreadsheets for another year. A blank slate. All of that progress goen. On yesterday’s ride I worked my way through one of the Neokyo routes. Beaches, villages, countryside, downtown, a casino, more beaches. It was fast, but challenging. No special jerseys for that one. But, for this brief moment at least, I am ahead of where I was at this same time last year.

And that’ll be this year’s spreadsheet and graph, trying to stay ahead of last year’s marks. My legs are ready, he said while sitting in his office chair.

This is not for the historical marker content, which will be here tomorrow, of course. But I did see this one on our New Year’s Eve walk. It was at the other end of Main Street, in a neighboring town, which we finally explored that evening. It isn’t a part of the marker series because, though it is one town away, it is in a different county, which is beyond the current scope of the marker project.

But those Christmas lights, hanging from the tree above, they sure did do a nice job of lighting that stone, didn’t they?

One name at the top of the list has a star on either side. That’s Pvt. Elmer Morgan, who died in France just after the war ended. His body was brought home, where he received a full military funeral, with firing squad, horse-drawn caisson and a band. The old books say everyone turned out for the services. Assuming he shipped out with the unit — Company E, 303rd Ammunition Train, 78th Division — in May 1918, he arrived in England after 11 days at sea. They were quickly moved through England to Calais, France. The food was bad. Also:

Other disillusionments were in store for us. After dinner word spread that the canteen near by sold beer. A large percentage of the company immediately grabbed their canteens and departed swiftly in the direction of that establishment. The first one of the shock troops who reached his objective, came out with a glad smile on his lips, carefully removed the stopper from his canteen, took a long breath and raised it heavenward. After one swallow, he removed it and spat, remarking sadly “This ain’t beer.” Another dream shattered.

They marched and trained and built things on their way across France, it seems. Dodging the occasional air raid, learning to throw hand grenades as they moved. And, once, the King of England drove by them. In September 1918, they made it close to the front, being very near the Battle of Saint-Mihiel. They found themselves, as engineers, pretty close to the front line throughout the fall of 1918, working on bridges and railways, braving shelling and the occasional gassing panic. The last weeks of the formal war seemed to move pretty quickly for them, they seemed to be hampered more by lice than the enemy near the end, and then …

That night our slumbers were rudely interrupted by a modern Paul Revere, mounted on a spirited motorcycle, who dashed madly through the town yelling at the top of a very excellent pair of lungs, “The armistice is signed!” With shouts of **Get off that stuff!” “Where’d you get that stuff?” “Take that man’s name!” we rushed to the windows. But he was gone. From farther down the street came a volley of pistol shots, but whether the owner of the revolver was attempting to celebrate or trying to shoot the bearer of the glad tidings no man knoweth. Grumbling “same old stuff” we returned to bed.

The joke of it all was that the report was true. The next day as we marched through St. Mennehould a K. of C. Secretary (for some reason we seemed to place more reliance on his words than on those of any one else) confirmed the rumor, and if that was not enough a stray copy of the Herald was sufficient to convince the most skeptical. The armistice was really signed …

They kept drilling, kept working, and kept experiencing the war, even after it was over. The weather was the weather, the destruction they saw, and attempted to repair, was overwhelming, and so were the returning refugees and prisoners. They also briefly saw Gen. Pershing, and a circus — not one in the same. In February 1919, this dirty, grueling peace time, was when Elmer Morgan died. But it isn’t mentioned in the unit history. I wondered if I was skimming the correct book.

I did a few quick searches of the other names, in the order in which they appeared.

William Adams was a private in a depot brigade. Soldiers passed through those units as an administrative and supply function. Adams might have been one of the last friendly faces some of these guys saw when they were preparing to leave for the war, or one of the first ones they saw on their way back. He died in 1952 at 59.

If I’ve got the right one here, John W. Blake was a veteran of both The Great War and World War II. He was a machinist, and lived to celebrate his 90th birthday, in 1987.

Jesse Borton is our first Navy man. He was an electrician during the war. He died in 1958. I infer from his wife’s obituary that they lived in Wisconsin for a time, which is where she is buried. He is interred in California.

Lieutenant Harry B. Chalfant served in an ambulance company, the 165th, in the famed 42nd Infantry Division. He attended the University of North Carolina. He married a younger woman in 1936, and she died in South Carolina in 2006. Harry was in the Navy during the war, and worked in the lumber industry after, managing projects across South Carolina, before they retired to Florida in 1972.

Webster Coles returned from France, married his sweetheart and sold cars in his hometown. He died in 1959.

Another man, Lawrence Elliott, was also a car dealer. He turns up in an old newspaper clipping from 1950. Seems he was on vacation in Florida and there was a boating mishap. He was fishing just outside of Fort Myers when his boat tore itself apart. He was stranded in the swamps for 18 hours. He made it through, though one of the men he was with did not. Elliott lived to see the Reagan administration.

I wonder what it was about the local guys and car dealerships. Here’s another one. Allen C. Eastlack went in with his brother and dad and, at 18 or so if the math works out, landed one of the oldest Ford dealerships in the nation. It dates back to 1913, and is still in their family. Allen was an ambulance driver in France during the war, then came home and helped start the local Rotary Club, was a hospital trustee, member of the American Legion and mover and shaker in the local Republican party. He died in 1965. It looks like he lived right across the street from the dealership. Today there’s a bank where his home was.

John Orens died in his home at 66. He worked in a dress factory and was a local fire chief for almost two decades. His wife died a few years after he did, but I think they might still have some daughters alive today.

Already in his 30s, Clarkson Pancoast was an old man by the time he shipped out to France with the 13th Engineers. They were attached to French forces. Looks like they worked with trains and the railways. He came back home and died in 1937.

Samuel Richman died, on Armistice Day, 1921, at age 25.

Harold Stratton liked to go fast. He raced cars at a local track. He might have been a member of a prominent Stratton family around these parts. Possibly, his grandfather, or an uncle a few generations back, had been a congressman. He was born in 1893 and lived to see men walk on the moon. He died in 1973, 80 years old.

Walter Scott sailed in the Navy, came home and became an engineman, and died of pneumonia in 1961. His widow survived him by four decades. His brother Raymond Scott was a coxswain in the Navy. He came home and he and his wife had three children, the oldest of which just died two years ago. Raymond was 73 when he passed away.

Clarence Stetser is buried not too far from where I am writing this. He died in his 50s.

Charles Standen was 87 when he died. He was a husband, a father of six. He had seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren when he passed away in 1985. It still says “PFC, US Army, World War I” on his gravestone. His service seven decades prior is what was written in stone.

It’s a thin guess, but I think George Tighe might have served in the Navy. If I have the right man, he lived around this area until he passed at 89 years old.

Elvin Wolfe came home and took up a rural postal route after the war. He did that for at least two decades. He died in 1957, in his early 60s. His widow outlived him by almost 30 years.

The last name on the plaque is Sgt. Schuyler Wilkinson. He served in the national guard, the 104th Engineer, specifically. They were called up in June 1917 and shipped out a year later as an element of the AEF’s 29th Infantry Division. They served at Moatz, Grandchamps, Coublanc, and Lafford, principally attached to the French Army’s V Corps. They provided engineering support and combat engineering to the French and the Big Red One. They were returned to the U.S. in May of 1919 and Sgt. Wilkinson went home and raised a family of three children with his wife. He died on a trip to Florida in 1966, aged 73. Their three daughters all died within the last decade. One of them was a secretary, another worked in a nursing home in Georgia. The last one to pass away, Miriam Wilkinson Parker, was an educator. She did her undergraduate degree where I know teach. She took a master’s degree from the same university where I obtained my undergraduate degree, 880 miles away, and just 40 short years before I enrolled there.

Small world.

adventures / Alabama / family / Monday / New Jersey / photo / running — Comments Off
1
Jan 24

2023 2024

Happy New Year! Are you over it yet?

Bah humbug to that, I say. This is going to be a great year! For a time. We’re in control of our perceptions about things from there. So, I say to you, have a great ~~2023~~ 2024. Happy new year. Peace on earth, good will toward man. Additionally, here’s to food in your belly, spare items when and where you need them, and minimal downtime of your internet connectivity.

Let’s look at some photos I took last week, which will be the official wrap up of last year, here, on the official keeper of such things.

(kennysmith.org, the official keeper of such things — since 2004.)

I’ve come to think of this as the daily commute of the Canada geese. I don’t know why they’re still around here. Shouldn’t they be flying south? Instead, it’s just to the southwest in the morning, and the northeast each evening. Maybe they’re doing test flights or getting in the base miles.

So there I was in a Mexican restaurant, washing my hands, and I saw this by the door. At first, I was amused by the name of the product. And then, I chuckled at the location of the can. That gave way to appreciating the accidental photo composition, which was quickly replaced by wondering why I was doing all of that before dinner.

I went to the bank, a branch, or possibly just a company itself, that never gets visited. The one teller was surprised to see a person walk through the front door. It was all solid and old and quiet and vacant. But I liked this chair.

Same seat, from the other side, just so we can admire the craftmanship of the upholstery.

The branch manager was a young woman, swift and certain and equally surprised by seeing a human being in her workplace. It struck me as a nice place to spend a part of a career.

I wonder if the chair was comfortable.

In my life, I have traveled some, I have not seen every place and every thing. So this is probably in error, but: I’ve never seen these colors of winter anywhere but in the ancestral haunts. They’re limping through a severe drought just now, and so the clover is a mystery, but the grass is always like this in the winter, and the leaves are always like that this time of year, curled, desiccated and showing no hint of their previous beauty. Here, though, it always just feels like a pause between seasons rather than an end of one. I don’t know why that is.

I saw this house one night. I don’t know the story of that pig, but you get the sense it must be important to someone inside. There’s just the one, and they carefully spotlit the thing.

I believe this one was taken the same night. We were standing in the driveway talking to the neighbors when I looked up.

I haven’t done a lot of running this year because, well, I’d rather ride my bike. Or swim laps. Or do most any other thing I can think of. And so the running has been minimal. I did a two-mile run in the neighborhood, and late in the week we did the dam run. My lovely bride likes the dam run, an out-and-back that we do on most every trip back to the valley. You park in a park’s parking lot, run a mile over a long bridge, then up a hill for three-tenths of a mile, and then work your way along some beautifully maintained TVA trails, until you get to the Wilson Dam. We run halfway across the dam, and then turn back. Here you’re looking back at the bridge, the Singing River Bridge, from the dam.

That route gives you a 10K. I haven’t run a 10K since last December, in Savannah, because see above. With that in mind, given the cool air, the late hour, and the unambitious mist that couldn’t turn itself into a real rain, I told my lovely bride that I would run with her until I couldn’t. And then I would trail along, and double back when she met me again. So there we were, still together at the dam.

And there she went, back across the dam and back toward the car. So I just … kept on running. Caught her, passed her and then we wound up finishing the run together, victorious yawp and all.

That night, I believe it was, my mother suggested Chinese takeout food. We went to pick it up and, there on the counter next to the register, were these two boxes. For some reason, the idea of buying fortune cookies by the batch amused me.

When we got back, I passed out the food and my lovely bride quickly pronounced the little soup chips to be the good ones. I’m not sure how she knew that while they were all still in the baggie, but she was correct. And they were better, and less expensive, than the cookies.

We saw this in the airport on Saturday night in Nashville. Sunday morning, after weather elsewhere delayed our plane, we got back home long after 2 a.m. But we got back. The night before last, then, I made it to bed at about 3:30 a.m. After a week of almost getting on a regular sleep schedule, establishing a routine that would approach a normal person’s sleep schedule, I am immediately back to this.

But the art dangling from the ceiling was cool. We looked at that wondering what it was made of, and how many different sorts of places you could install that. (Not many.)

Last night, we did a thing we weren’t able to do before Christmas. We went to one of the charming nearby small towns and walked among the lights and looked at the store fronts along a half-mile stretch on Main Street. We drive through it from time to time and, daylight or at night, it is perfectly charming. But, finally, we walked and lingered and enjoyed. Lots of antiques, two book stores, three chiropractors, boutique clothing, rental spaces, restaurants and so on. Perfectly charming. It only took us six months to explore it a bit.

This was on one end of our little walk.

I know this fire company traces its roots back to 1704. (The oldest formal unit in the country is found in Boston. It is only 25 years older.) Given the age, and the prominent placement, there’s a great story behind that bell you can see upstairs. I’ll have to ask around about that.

Tomorrow, I’ll show you what was on the other end of our walk. And, probably, talk about riding bikes and whatever else comes up.

Happy 2024!

cycling / history / markers / New Jersey / video / We Learn Wednesdays / Wednesday — Comments Off
6
Dec 23

This took 223 years to write, and is incomplete

This morning was about grading. I paced things out perfectly. There was a big digital stack of things to read and comment on. Each item unique, each requiring some feedback. And that’s the thing, really. How much feedback? I, you’ll be surprised to learn, often have a lot to say. Hopefully some of it is useful. Hopefully some of it gets read.

So I read through and grade and give feedback on one assignment, then take something else off the list, and then back to that. It’s time intensive, but could be beneficial, so I approach it with great care, spreading them out a bit to bring the same enthusiasm to the last as I did to the first. I’ve been going at this since Monday evening. Today, I’ll finish them.

At lunchtime, I went downstairs for lunch, oddly enough. A study break. I had my sandwich and looked up into dark clouds. Storm cloud dark. And then this happened.

It was 40 degrees, I checked as that stuff was falling out of the sky. That changed my carefully planned out list.

I had two lists, actually. One on paper, and another in Word. The Word list got changed. So, more grading, and some writing, because there was no way I was going to go outside in the snow. Shame, too, I had figured out the whole day and had time for a nice medium-length ride. So organized was I! But it snowed for 45 minutes. It was just starting to gather in the grass when the cloud moved out. I did more school work while I waited a while to see if it was really over. To the northwest a sliver of blue broke through.

So I went for a bike ride. The plan was to combine the two usual routes. This would give me a pleasant 35-mile route, and I was going to enjoy all of that, me and my many layers of cycling clothes that keep out the wind. Here’s the last of those clouds moving off, during the first route, about 15 miles in.

I shot a little video soon after that. The last two times I’d been through there this time of day I saw deer running through the field into the tree line. Two rides ago, four deer ran alongside me, a race to the woods. Last time, I counted seven in a full-on sprint.

White-tailed deer can run faster than I can sprint, but I kept up with them. They might have been running at half speed. But, this time, I was prepared. I was going to round that curve and capture a bit of video of a whole herd of deer jogging to my left.

No deer showed up today.

Five miles later, on the second route, all of the old snow clouds were gone, and we were set to experience a beautiful sunset. This was actually going to be a problem though.

I started too late. The sunset came too early. I was still going the wrong direction. So I cut it short, turning south so I could eventually head back the other way. And then I started making deals with my legs. I would really like to make it back to the left-hand turn before it gets dark. Or, at least back to the red light at the crossroads.

I did both, but just barely. I saved about three miles by turning around early, and even so, my last mile tonight was in the dark. Good thing I cut the ride short.

This is the 19th installment of We Learn Wednesdays, where I ride my bike across the county to find the local historical markers. Including today’s installment we’ll have seen 37 of the 115 markers in the Historical Marker Database.

I did not find this marker today, but about a month ago. It was sunny and cool, but I didn’t linger long. The sun was headed to it’s home in the western sky and I had to get back on the road. But you have to stick around long enough to admire a bit of history.

We’re at the oldest AME church in the state, where members can trace their history back 223 years and was apparently the only church from these parts at the founding conference of the AME Church in Philadelphia in 1816.

Philadelphia had a lot of Georgian architecture, which influences the building here. Perhaps that has something to do with the early church leadership, as well. Rev. Reuben Cuff, the son of a former slave, began preaching in a log cabin out in the countryside a few miles away. Oral tradition has it that after the elder Cuff’s owner died, he might have married that man’s widow. The couple had three sons, who had some formal education, which wasn’t locally guaranteed. That last link makes some small leaps about Reuben and his brothers, based on the stories that have been passed down over the years. Like any personal 200+ year old story, it can seem plausible, if the base of it is accurate.

The rest of the story goes that Reuben had nine children with his first wife, and three with his second wife. He died at 81 in 1845. He’s buried in a small family cemetery, near his father. You can see his house here. That research finds he had the only stone house in the township, more than three dozen acres of land and a barn.

In 1839 an arsonist burned the old church building, but the congregation eventually rebuilt. This one, in the Classical Revival style, opened and took the Mt. Pisgah name in the 1870s.

A quick search shows me one photo of the interior of the church building. That organ has two sliders and 20 stops. It dates back to the 1960s.

There’s a small cemetery, which was established in 1860, attached to the church. A 20th century Cuff is buried there.

In next week’s installment of We Learn Wednesday, we’ll see a building that predates this church. If you’ve missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.

And now to work on some lecture notes.

adventures / cycling / Friday / New Jersey / photo — Comments Off
17
Nov 23

Sometimes, you get lucky

We have a well. And all of the well apparatus is located in our basement. I have never had a well before, but both sets of my grandparents had them once upon a time and both of them had the well guts in a little outbuilding and, basically as far as I knew until we looked at our new house, that was how it was done.

In the course of puttering around the basement — it’s a pretty awesome space, and not just because we went without a basement for 13 years — I noticed that there are some stickers affixed to the well guts. Fine, let’s be technical: the machinery. The tank and filter and the piping that connects everything. Hereafter referred to as the well’s guts. On the sticker for both the tank and filter, you can detect a pattern emerging. This one gets serviced every year. That one every two years. And in the fall! So make a mental note of that, and when late October rolled around I called the well people and said, come on out and meet the new neighbors, why don’t ya? Also, give me a well education.

The well guys are booked pretty solid these days, it turns out. Even the manager of the joint seemed impressed by the volume he was dealing with. So it took a while to get them out. And, since we’re talking about it here, you can safely surmise that today was that day.

And not a minute too soon, it turns out.

The guy goes down to the basement with his two crewmates and looks it over. I was not sure, at first, if he was passing a stone or reacting to what he saw. It was the latter. He described the problems he saw, forecast what they would turn in to and then said “I have this on the truck, or you can wait … ” but there’s really no waiting.

Do your thing, well surgeon.

His crew gets to work, quietly, efficiently and solve the problem. Out came the entire old tank.

In went a new tank. At first, there was some worry about the new tank because they couldn’t find the o-rings. (They found them.) I said “I grew up a Challenger kid; I know o-rings are a big deal.”

The head guy misheard me, and asked if I said I worked on the Challenger. (No. I was in the third grade. Also, not a rocket scientist. He doesn’t know the last part, couldn’t know that, but how old does he think I am?) One of his assistants didn’t know what the Challenger was. So I started explaining the space shuttle, all the while thinking Make this short. He doesn’t care. And that’s how I got into a conversation about o-rings.

This was about the time the old tank was brought up from the basement. Here’s the underside.

The guy pointed to some particular points, used some technical terms. Rust was one of them. He said we had a few days, maybe a week or so, before this exploded. And then a flooded basement, aggravation, insurance claims, etc. Sometimes, you get lucky.

I had a lovely 27-mile ride this evening. This afternoon, really, but it goes from light to dark in the blink of an eye. I pedaled over to one of the neighboring towns. We drive through there, but hadn’t ridden to it yet. And it was no big deal. Nice empty roads for the most part. In the town, they were decorating the museum with Christmas lights and going about the beginning of their festivities. They do it up big, for a small place, or so I gather. I’m looking forward to seeing it.

Because I knew time and light were working against me, I took a slightly different and more familiar route back to the house. And, just before I got there, I was rewarded with this view.

I got inside at about 4:38, and this matters. Into the garage. Off come the bike shoes and helmet and jacket. Stop the apps, turn off the taillight, shed my gloves, all of it one smooth practiced sequence. I looked at the time, glanced at the GPS and thought, I can make it.

It being the inconvenience center, which closes at 5 p.m. It’s only about seven miles away and through town and I have to load the car. But if I make it today, I don’t have to do it tomorrow. So I shed the cycling kit and put on an old shirt and shorts and, still sweating, load up the car with the garbage cans and recycling. I drive. The GPS says I’ll get there at 4:57. And what do you know, I got there at 4:57.

The guy that mans the place is serious about time. It’s Friday and he’s got dinner on, I’m sure, but he’d already pulled his pickup down to the gate and was preparing to close it when I pulled in.

Got time for one more quick drop off?

“I close at 5,” he said. He held his out, fingers wide. almost pointing with his palm, making the emphatic point about time.

He let me in, and I understood I was supposed to feel bad about it. There was another guy dropping off his rubbish, too, though, so I stopped pretending to feel bad. But I did hustle. It was 4:57 when I got there. It was 5:01 when I again saw the guy that worked there, waiting to lock up behind me.

Sometimes, you get lucky.

I would like to apologize to him and his wife for making dinner one minute later than necessary. But he was a gentleman and I was grateful for the gesture. It won’t happen again. I hope.

On the drive back, I saw this view, to my left.

The photo is timestamped 5:10 p.m.

Back to the beach! Which is where we were Sunday afternoon! And I’ve been rationing out photos to keep this space busy looking during a busy week! Exclamation point!

While the photos I shared from Cape May yesterday included both an accidental and intentional overexposure, here is a deliberate underexposure. Sometimes you need a dancing silhouette.

Here’s one more shot of the Cape May light house. Built in 1859, automated in 1946 and still in service. It is the third lighthouse to announce this part of the coast. The remnants of the first two are now underwater. Going to the top will cost you a climb of 217 steps, and a small fee. They say you can see 10 miles away on a clear day like this one.

This is all part of a coastal heritage trail route. “A park in the making,” the sign says. You can check out maritime history — fishing villages, light houses, forts and more — coastal habitats, wildlife and historic settlements. It’s a lovely area. And, this time of year, no tourists. We’ll surely go back for another visit soon.

We had a mid-afternoon snack at a local shop, one of the few places that was open on Beach Avenue, the main drag. My favorite New Englander ordered a lobster roll and talked me into a shrimp roll. It was a good choice.

Texas toast, basically, stuffed with shrimp and drizzled with a cocktail sauce. Hard to go wrong.

So we sat there, just over the dune from the shoreline, and had some seafood and counted ourselves lucky for the experience.

Sometimes, you get lucky.