“Summertime is always the best of what might be.” (Charles Bowden)

There’s a joke people like to make when you say you’re from New Jersey: “What exit?” It’s delivered with a grin, as if the entire state can be distilled to interchanges and toll booths. Small, densely populated, and constantly in motion, the Garden State takes its nickname from the fertile farmland and famous tomatoes that have long shaped its identity. Yet it is more often defined by its roads—the New Jersey Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway—those long arteries of asphalt that run not only through the state, but through the story it tells about itself.

I grew up in a bedroom community in northern New Jersey and had the best of both worlds: A quick 10-minute trip over the George Washington Bridge and into “the city,” where everything was vibrant and alive, and a 90-minute drive to the ocean, where the atmosphere softened and the hours took direction at their own pace.  For northern Jerseyans, going “down the shore” is less an itinerary and more an inheritance — a seasonal migration woven into family tradition. Ask where “the shore” is, and a local may look at you with mild suspicion, as if you’re trying to crash the party. The Jersey Shore does not require explanation for those in the know.

By the time MTV turned the Jersey Shore into the eponymous smash hit reality show in 2009, the shore became infamous in its celebrity.   For many proud Jerseyans, the show was viewed not as a tribute but as a caricature—one that reduced a time-honored custom into a spectacle of drunkenness, spray tans and a bedlam of bad behavior, leaving dignified citizens to disavow any connection aside from a shared regional accent. 

Along the East Coast, the shore has its own mythology: boardwalk lights flickering awake at dusk, the hypnotic music of the rides, and the clang and whirl of bustling arcades. The savory perfume of cheesesteaks with peppers and onions rising from the grill is its signature scent, while clams on the half shell are eaten at your own risk. Even the sand is part of the enchantment—sun-struck and torrid by late afternoon, then cool and inviting after dark, when teenage couples stretch out beneath the open sky and let the whispers of young love carry them through the season.

My childhood summers were spent in Belmar, New Jersey, a picturesque beach town a few miles from Exit 98 off the Garden State Parkway, where Victorian and Craftsman homes line manicured streets and the salt air finds its way into every cranny of the neighborhood. My aunt and uncle owned a beautiful house two blocks from the beach, complete with a wraparound porch that never failed to gather our extended family—and several pots of coffee—long into the evening.

On Friday nights, my dad and uncle would arrive after work, and once the greetings were over, the first order of business was a trip to Kaplan’s newsstand to stock up on comic books and candy for the laid-back weekend ahead. If I close my eyes and summon my senses, I can still taste the chewy coffee toffee that was a mandatory purchase with every visit. 

From Memorial Day until Labor Day, Belmar became our home away from home.  Life at the beach arranged itself around beloved routines, summer friends who seemed to vanish to another continent during the winter months, and stubborn grains of sand that surfaced in pockets, sheets and floorboards, a wink and a nod that the joy that happened today would happen again tomorrow. 

If you were fortunate, childhood summers gave you a treasure trove of cherished memories and a catalog of unforgettable characters.  The longest days of the year seem to hold memories differently, as though the sun itself has a hand in preserving what matters. Summer, when you’re young, feels like it is both endless and already slipping away—a reprieve from the long discipline of the school year into a season of abundant fun, and before you know it, a lesson in the gentle brevity of all that is to be held dear.