Photos by Bill Cramer/ Wonderful Machine
QB OF THE FAMILY
Sandy Hook
Carlos Zaragoza, 40
One of our favorite things is to play touch football on the beach. My son Robert plays football at James Caldwell High School. He’ll be a junior in the fall. He plays wide receiver, punt and kick returner, quarterback. Everything. He’s always in there. In fact, he complains about never getting taken out. So he plays us pretty hard at the beach, too.
The girls love to play. They’re on my team, and we play the boys. That helps even things out. My sister and wife and mother were sitting on little beach chairs watching us as the photographer was shooting, and they started laughing when the kids all jumped me.
We always do the same thing, make a day of going to the Shore. We try to leave by 7 am. The kids get so excited, they’re sometimes even up before me. My wife packs the lunches and the juice boxes for the kids. And the suntan lotion. Then we drive down to my mother’s house in Newark. Her name’s Betsy. My sister drives to my mother’s house too. Her name’s Cindy Rodriguez, and she works for the Newark Public Library. She comes from Parsippany with her daughter, and sometimes with another of the kids’ cousins. I make sure everything is packed and off we go.
We like to go to Sandy Hook because there’s no boardwalk there, so everyone enjoys the beach more. Once or twice we’ve gone down to Point Pleasant, but then the kids start saying they’re bored and want to go on the boardwalk, and my mother doesn’t want to walk there. At Sandy Hook we can just enjoy the sand and water. Also, it’s the closest Shore point to us. It only takes about an hour and a half. We usually get there around 8:30 or 9 am and stay until 3:30 or 4 pm. We also try to spend one long weekend down at Wildwood a year. I’ve got pictures of my kids going in the water when they were one or two.
It’s a great way to spend the day. Everyone entertains themselves. My mother will sit in a chair and read a magazine. CJ will stay in the water all day if you let him. When I say it’s time to start drying off, my daughter runs back in the water looking for the biggest wave to catch before we go. —Jill P. Capuzzo
JUMBOS
Wildwood
Peter Alborano, 34; Maechele Alborano, 42
Maechele: My husband is big on stuffed animals. We have four girls, and he makes sure we don’t leave until everyone gets one. He likes shooting baskets. Luckily, he’s pretty good at it, so it’s not like it costs us $500. More like $25. You make three baskets and you get to choose a large prize. If you make three more you get to choose a bigger prize. Three more and you get the jumbo. Everyone wants the jumbo.
Peter: We walk by and the kids see these big animals and they say, ‘I want that one.’ I figure either A) you’re going to become good at it, or B) you’re going to go broke.
You have to shoot the ball high, give it a lot of arc. You know the rim is pushed in to make it more difficult. Every year we come back with five or six animals.
Maechele: Every year I say, ‘You’re winning all these animals. How are we going to get them home?’ Last June we got a big Chevy Silverado. That gave us plenty of room to carry the animals home.
Peter: Haley saw a big wolf and she had to have it. I said, ‘If you want it, then you’re going to have to carry it.’ At least for a little while.
Maechele: The picture was taken the third week in August. It was a crappy week. It rained almost every day. I think it was raining that night. I’m a hairdresser, and my kids said, ‘Mom, look how your hair is hanging down.’ We spend a lot of time at the Shore. We try to get down there every two or three weeks. We live way up in northern New Jersey, in Andover, near Sparta, so it’s about a three-and-a-half-hour drive for us. Luckily my little ones are good travelers. All I have to say is, ‘We’re going to the beach,’ and they’re there. We get in the car early Saturday morning, hit the road, and head to the beach where we lounge all day. Then we hang out on the boardwalk all night.
Peter: In the mornings, Alexis and I get up, get our bikes, and ride the boardwalk. We like to be out there by 7 am. We stop, pick up coffee, and go back to the hotel to give my wife her coffee. Then we walk to breakfast, get our stuff, and go right to the beach till 5. Then we clean up, get a bite to eat, and go back to the boardwalk.
You can walk that boardwalk every night and it never gets old. I’ve been to boardwalks up and down the east coast, from Hampton Beach, New Hampshire, to Virginia Beach. But there’s nothing like the Jersey Shore, especially Wildwood. New Jersey is such a hustle-bustle state. Go, go, go. I manage a Lowe’s store. But you get down there, and it’s such a sense of family and a lot of fun.
Maechele: Sometimes after dinner we go shovel shopping. We go up and down the beach and find everyone’s shovels and toys they left behind. I don’t think I’ve bought a beach toy in the last four or five years.
Peter: The girls will bring the stuffed animals home, name them, and keep them in their bedroom until the dog starts pulling at them. Then they go into the trash can. Or if they’re in good shape, we’ll donate them.
Maechele: By the end of the summer I’ve had it with stuffed animals. I get tired of looking at them. I wait until school starts, and they end up in the garbage. I say the stuffing was going all over and I had to throw them out. But I tell the girls, ‘Hey, you’re lucky. You know they’ll always be replenished next summer.’ —J.P.C.
PUTTERING AROUND
Cape May
Dylan Merrill, 15; Victoria Wolak, 16; Valerie Wolak, 14
Dylan: We live in South Hadley, Massachusetts. We were in Cape May for the day, waiting for the ferry to Lewes, Delaware, so we stopped in at the mini-golf range. It’s fun to play. And mini-golf is a lot easier than regular golf. We did pretty well that day. The other boy is my brother, Dan. We didn’t really know the girls. They were just there. I always dress like that. It’s my summer attire.
Victoria: We’re from Wayne. We were down there for our family reunion. We went to the golf course and it was really fun.
Valerie: The house we usually rent on Long Beach Island was sold, so we went down to Cape May instead. We rented out the whole bed and breakfast. There are lots of us: cousins, aunts, uncles. Maybe about eighteen people in all. They come from Tennessee, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey. The beach was really great in Cape May, and the food was awesome. The best thing is chilling at the beach.
Dylan: Usually we go to the White Mountains in New Hampshire, but my mom has family in Lewes, so we decided to head south instead. This was our first time at the Jersey Shore. It was really nice.
Victoria: Mini-golf is something we like to do. Usually it’s my sister, Valerie, and me and our parents, and my cousin Julia. She’s from New Providence We all go on a group outing.
Dylan: When we got to Lewes, they didn’t have any mini-golf there. —J.P.C.
SOLDIER’S SEND-OFF
Belmar
Emma Caban, 26, Jen Patella, 26
Emma: One of our guy friends was leaving for Iraq the next morning—Sgt. Joseph R. Davies of Long Branch. I went to elementary and middle school with him. He’s a sergeant in the army and it was his last night of a two-week R&R in Jersey before he had to go back to war for his third tour, so we had a little going-away party at Boathouse Bar and Grill.
It was bittersweet. He’s one of the mission leaders. He takes a group of guys out to fight. He says it’s tough. It’s hard to be away from family all the time. And it’s frightening. He’s lost a lot of friends out there. But he’s very proud of what he’s doing, what the soldiers are doing, and he was looking forward to seeing his men again.
He’s doing it for his country, so we had to celebrate that. While he was over there on this tour, he missed his little sister’s wedding. That was hard for him. And he’s lost a few more friends. We keep in touch over the Internet. He can’t talk about much that’s happening over there. It’s hard for me to watch the news. I tend not to do it. We’ll be there for him when he comes back this August.
Jen: We have fun just being a big group of friends. Some of us prefer Jack Daniels. Some of us prefer Captain [Morgan]. And some of us prefer Miller Lite. But it’s not really about drinking for us. I always leave my drink somewhere and forget about it.
Emma: Four of the six of us were sorority sisters at Monmouth University. Jen, Rosetta, Kelly, and I were in Zeta Tau Alpha together. Michelle dates one of our guy friends. Well, she used to. Kristen we know through Kelly.
Kelly and Kristen are married and expecting babies by the end of the summer. The rest of us are single. Interested fellows can find us at the Jersey Shore. Come find us. Seriously.
I work for a nonprofit in Long Branch that refers people who need assistance to organizations that can help them. I only get to the Shore maybe on a Saturday or Sunday, and that’s very condensed. Jen, Kelly, Kristen, and Michelle are all teachers, so they have summers off. I’m very jealous of my teacher friends.
Jen: It’s very sad to have to say goodbye to the students for the summer. But it’s nice to have two months off to revamp and feel refreshed for September, when you get a new bunch. We hang out with a ton of other teachers, and it’s not like we work together—we’re all in different districts. In the summer, probably every week we’ll get together like that. It’s nice to be outside.
Emma: We live by the Shore year round. In the summer it’s definitely a party scene, a very young atmosphere. Every other license plate you see is from New York. I don’t like that you have to pay for the beaches. But it’s good, it brings money to the towns.
Jen: It gets crowded in the summer. It’s harder to get places. Parking’s terrible. But it doesn’t stop me from going out. And it’s great for local businesses. A lot of places are closed for the winter and just open up for the summer.
Emma: At the end of the summer, you have your reunion with the locals. It’s a calmer atmosphere. By then it’s okay to wear flip-flops anywhere you go. You can tell who’s from the Shore and who isn’t by the way they dress. I’m from Long Branch, and we used to have the boardwalk with an arcade and a water park—that’s all gone. There was a little ice cream spot and a pizzeria on the pier, but our pier burned down and was never replaced. So I guess there’s not much recreational activity by the beach for younger people.
The morning after the photo was taken, I had a summer fair for the nonprofit I work for, so I didn’t stay out late. Our friend had an early flight to Iraq, too. I think we all left around midnight. Didn’t get too crazy.
We know where to go where there aren’t too many 21-year-olds. But we do love Bar-A [Bar Anticipation in Lake Como]. It’s one place in the summer where you’ll find 21-year-olds, 30s, 40s, and 50s just in one place.
Jen: Boathouse is a really relaxing, comfortable atmosphere. If you want to be outside, go to Bar A. We go to 507 [507 Main in Belmar] sometimes for dancing. We usually go when DJ Delany is playing or DJ Jersey Joe. And there’s a band in the back. —D.W.
EXPECTING
Long Branch
Jerome Semler, 43; Alexandra Semler, 30
Jerome: We were celebrating my 43rd birthday at Pier Village in Long Branch. It’s so convenient, just 35 minutes from the Westfield area, where we live. We went down for the day. After dinner, we went upstairs to have a couple cocktails by the pool and catch a sunset.
We have friends who live near Long Branch, so we go there every Sunday to visit. We swim, there’s a tiki bar on the beach, we have lunch, we go fishing. Our passions are the sea and the sun.
We’re expecting. My wife will be eight months pregnant in June. She’s 30. First child, first marriage. For years before I met her I was busy with my career. I started a maintenance company after college, and it required all my time. Now, twenty years later, it’s a lot less consuming.
We met in an aerobics class at a gym in Westfield—Power Flex, a combination of aerobics and weight training. There was the physical attraction initially. Then, as classes went on, we became friends, and that was it.
Alexandra: I did my exercises and left. I never paid attention to him, until one day he came over and asked me my name and invited me for a cup of coffee. I didn’t go out with him that day. I’m from Colombia, so I was kind of afraid. I know how South American men are. They don’t respect women.
He asked me out for a month. After class, he used to say, ‘Hi, what are you going to do today?’ So I would say I was busy. He would insist and insist: ‘Come on, let’s go for a cup of coffee. Come on, I’m not going to do anything bad to you. Don’t be afraid.’ Finally, I said, ‘Yes.’ He asked where I lived. I was still cautious. I said, ‘We’d better meet at the gym.’
We went in his car. He invited me to a very nice restaurant down the Shore, between Sea Bright and Long Branch. We went out for three months, but, you know, as friends. He was a gentleman. He didn’t even touch my hand. After three months, it started to get more serious. We went out for a year and a half, then we moved in together. We married two and a half years after we met.
Jerome: She’s a very calming, very sweet soul. We’ll be together three years come November. When this picture was taken, we had been married a little over a year—more of a newlywed relationship. That was a romantic evening, for sure.
Alexandra: He’s very sweet, very family oriented. I really like that. He’s the youngest one. He has six brothers and one sister. He really cares about them. Very Italian. They have the same customs that Spanish people have. My sister-in-law doesn’t have to call before coming over—everybody’s welcome. When we get together, it’s a blast, everybody’s laughing.
Jerome: She’s a very up person, and I’m an up person. She’s a shaker and mover, not the type to be in the house watching TV. But she has simple tastes. I don’t perceive that she needs to be driving the fanciest car or staying at the Ritz-Carlton. She doesn’t like spoiled children. I think she’s going to be a good disciplinarian.
Alexandra: We can’t wait until the munchkin comes out. We found out it’s a boy. When I hear kids whining or crying for toys, I say to him, ‘I was raised differently. I was raised that you don’t ask for things, you have to work hard if you want something.’ I would like to teach my kids respect.
—interview by Julia M. Klein
ANGLER-PHILES
Cape May
Fred Liguori, 52
It was cool and drizzly that morning, certainly not the kind of day you hope for. That was the first time we were ever down at the Jersey Shore. We live in Connecticut. I’m an American Airlines pilot. We had to go to Jersey for a christening and decided to make a vacation out of it. It was a terrible week weather-wise. Out of six days, I think it rained some every day. My son Nicholas, who was eight at the time, and I were hoping to go to the beach that day, but instead we decided to go fishing. My younger son, who was five, didn’t want to go.
We try to go fishing four or five times a year. We used to have a boat in Connecticut. The very first fish Nicholas ever caught off that boat was a sand shark. It wasn’t real big, probably two feet long. But he’s been real excited about fishing ever since.
When we’re fishing, we talk about fishing, we talk about school, we talk about his sports. That day, he caught two fish and I caught two fish. I think they were baby bluefish. They call them snappers. We threw them back.
It takes me back to when I was a kid. My dad used to take me fishing all the time. My birthday is October 12, which is Columbus Day. When I was growing up on Long Island, you got the day off from school for the holiday. So my dad would always take that day off, and we would go fishing. —J.M.K.
TWEET PEEPERS
Sandy Hook
Ken Kavulia, 62
We kind of had a hard time that day. Not much variety—loads of shore sparrows that are not too spectacular. But we did see a cedar waxwing, a pretty impressive bird. It’s got a tufted head and a light-tan body, grayish wings, a brown head. Don’t take my word for the colors too much. I’m partially color-blind.
My wife’s sister was visiting us from Germany. She’s a bird-watcher, too, so we took her to some of the better areas along the Shore. We started in Allaire State Park that day, then went to Sandy Hook. Both are in Monmouth County. We decided to save Brigantine for another day. We try and get out once a month for bird-watching, just to see what’s new. It was a beautiful day, bright, clear skies. The temperature was very comfortable.
I’m a retired computer programmer, my wife was a biotechnician. She and I met in Iceland. She was returning home to Germany after working in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, at the university. I was visiting Europe for the first time. We both took Icelandic Airlines. At that time, Icelandic required that you stop over in Iceland on your way to Europe. So while I was there I took a tour, and she was on the bus, and we met. I would have been 28. She would have been 30. We didn’t see many birds. That was before I got interested in birds.
She gave me her address and said, ‘If you’re in Nuremberg, stop at my parents’ house.’ And I did. I met her parents there, and she showed me around Nuremberg. Then I continued on my journey. We exchanged letters after that and dated for a couple of years. She came here once. I went over there a few times. It got very expensive. We decided it was cheaper to get married than to continue dating.
I liked nature, but I had never had any experience with birds, growing up in Bayonne. When we moved down here—we live in Howell—we saw so much bird life in the backyard that we got a little guidebook and started trying to identify the ones that came around to our feeder. And we started visiting different parks around here. We would see some of the shore birds. Then we went down to Cape May and Brigantine, which are wonderful bird spots. It developed gradually.
There used to be more birds around, but a lot of development has taken place, so we don’t quite see all the species we did before. There was something called a pine siskin—it looks kind of like a small sparrow, but it has a little yellow under the wings. That was a nice bird. The most spectacular one was something called an evening grosbeak. It’s got a yellow breast, a yellow mask, and yellow on its back, black-and-white wings, a black tail, a black cap on its head. This is the male I’m describing. It’s a little more gaudy than the female. The first year we saw, I think, over twenty pairs of evening grosbeaks. After that there were less of them, and then perhaps five years later, in the early ‘80s—well, we haven’t seen any since then. —J.M.K.
KICKS
Belmar
Carole Kearns, 64
I’m widowed—three years in December. I feel that dancing gets you out of your head and out of your problems, so you feel better. I haven’t really been physically sick for a long time. I would recommend dancing for anyone.
I go dancing at least six nights a week, and most of it is on the boardwalk. If it’s raining, there are a couple other spots. Avon by the Sea has an inside place, and so does Belmar. They’re all on the ocean. It’s free, too, so it’s wonderful.
This picture was taken on a Thursday night, ballroom dancing in Belmar. Thursday is usually the senior group, about 20, 25 of us. The guy I’m dancing with, Dick Mort, is in his late 70s, but he’s an absolute riot. We’re good old friends. We were probably doing the Lindy.
We have a whole agenda. Monday nights Bradley Beach has ’50s and ’60s music. Belmar has an orchestra on Monday nights, which you can sit and listen to. Tuesdays I go country line dancing in Bradley. In Avon on Wednesday night, there’s Irish Joe Finn. He sings Irish tunes, and people sing along. Thursday is our ballroom dance night at Belmar. I can’t remember what we do on Friday.
Some people go just to sit and watch and listen. Some people come in wheelchairs. One friend of mine comes with a brother who’s in a wheelchair. He’s in his mid-30s. We push his wheelchair out on the floor and dance around him. We have a good time. Why shouldn’t he be out there in the middle?
I took a line-dancing course years ago in high school. I’ve been line dancing ever since. My husband never danced. I didn’t start taking ballroom lessons till after he passed away. At first I hated ballroom dancing, trying to do it perfect. I don’t do it perfect now, but I have a great time, and I think that’s the whole point. —interview by Julia M. Klein