Act 1 Scene 4 - The Girl's Last Good Time

Act 1 Scene 4 

The Girl's Last Good Time

For Susan and Liz the first stop was the beach, the same 9^th Street beach they visited early that morning, only to find it now quite crowded, even though the lifeguards won’t go on duty until Friday, when they are scheduled to leave.

Walking alongside the black rock jetty they spread a blanket and towels out near where Linda and the nurses and the mayor’s daughters would normally be if they were there, then taking off their flower print skirts they lay out in the sun in their bathing suits.

After noon they put on their shoes and leaving their skirts behind, walk up to the boardwalk and get slice of pizza from the Mack & Manco counter and eat it while walking north down the boardwalk. Past Shriver’s candy store, Monroe’s books, the Orange Juice stand, Moorlyn theater and another Mack & Manco’s they go in The Birdcage headshop, attracted by some shell necklesses.

There the incense is burning and they are greeted by posters of Brando on a bike, Marilyn with her dress flying and one advertising The Atlantic City Pop Festival in August.

Danny, short, with long but balding black hair smiles from behind the counter and pulls a tray of necklaces out and puts it on the counter in front of the girls, who begin to rummage through them.

Danny, who also owns a head shop in Philadelphia on Sansom street between the Guitar Workshop and the Electric Factory concert venue, stocks both stores with the same hip items, and has an eye for beautiful young girls, and offers them a job for the summer selling the jewelry. They both laugh, but decline the offer saying they have other plans, but they each buy a necklass, blouse and skirt and an Ocean City, N.J. shirt.

After stopping in an arcade and taking four small black and white head shot photos of themselves smiling and making faces, they go back to their blankets and meet some boys who have set up their beach chairs, blanket and blaring radio next to them.

Realizing they were getting too much sun, they packed up their belongings and left the beach early, saying goodbye to their new friends, an headed back to their room to take a shower in an old, lion’s claw bathtub with a shower curtain around it, and try on their new blouses and skirts before hitting the Point.

Although the drinking age was 21 and they were only 19, they knew that wasn’t a problem, as Susan had her older sister’s drivers license that didn’t have her picture on it, and they knew that if they dressed and acted sophisticated there wouldn’t be a problem, and there wasn’t.

It was late in the afternoon when they went around the Somers Point Circle and down Shore Road where they made a right onto Delaware Avenue and parked, with their car top still up.

At the red mahogany bar at Gregory’s they ordered some cool iced screwdrivers, and looked at the menu, ordering a dozen clams on the half shell and bowels of snapper soup from the bartender Vince Renich, the former bar back and bartender from Bay Shores. When Bay Shores closed on Labor Day 1965, Vince followed the crowd of other bartenders, waiteresses and musicians to Florida, where he got a job bartending at one of the beachside hotels.

But the following year, after getting married and the birth of his son Vince, Jr., Rennich decided he needed a steady, permanent job, and after Charles Carney quit, he took the job of his former mentor. And Vince didn’t like having to shuck the clams any more than Charles, but he did it with a shrug, and talked to the girls as he did it in front of them.

It being a weekday before the Memorial Day holiday weekend, business was slow, only a few of the Tight End Fishing Club down the other end of the long rectangle bar, when a young man comes in the front door and sits down at the bar across from the girls.

Although they were busy eating, they noticed the well dressed and handsome guy in the button down shirt and open collar, who orders a draft beer and asks Vince if Gregory Gregory was around.

“No,” Vince said, “he’s off fishing with his uncle, but he’ll probably be back later on and throw their catch out at the other end of the bar by the kitchen.”

“Tell him Ted from Temple stopped by to say hello like he asked,” the young man said to Vince, before explaining that Gregory had come to Temple as a prospective student and Ted had showed him around campus. Gregory had told him about the bar in Somers Point and all the beautiful girls on the beach, which made the girls giggle, look at each other and laugh as they were listening in. 

“I’ll tell him,” Vince said, as the girls finished their drinks and meal, paid their fare and moved on, down Delaware Avenue to the Anchorage, then to Tony Marts and Bay Shores before heading back to the rooming house and letting themselves in the front door, surprised to find the owners still up watching television in the living room.

The next day was the same routine, pretty much, except they ate a cheesesteak at Joe Del’s next to Mack & Manco’s for lunch, and each called home from the pay phones on the boardwalk at the end of 9^th Street.

At some point Susan made a quick turn and with a beep of a horn and screech of tires, there was a small clank that dented the fender of a VW bus with Arizona tags and manned by two young hippie guys.

They were both sorry, and blamed each other, but Susan insisted on seeing the local insurance man to file a claim, as she did. As he filled out the papers the insurance man looked out the window and could see the dark blue Chevy convertible, top down, another young girl leaning against it, and two long hair boys standing next to a VW bus parked alongside.

Deciding not to tell their parents about the fender bender until they got home, Susan and Liz also decided to splurge a bit and get a more expensive seafood diner at one of the first class restaurants at the Point. Then they hit the bars, but instead of going back to their room at 2 am when the Point bars closed, they went on to the Dunes and continued dancing until dawn.

Sleeping on the beach all day, it set their biological clocks off a bit, so after the Anchorage, Tony Marts, Bay Shores and Dunes routine on Thursday, they decided to return to their rooming house at 4 in the morning and pack it in.

This time they woke up the Mr. and Mrs. Syben, returned them the keys, and carrying their own suit cases down the steps. Explaining they wanted to “beat the traffic,” they hugged the Mrs. Sybe and promised to return again before the end of the summer and to write – send them some post cards from South Carolina.

Back across the causeway they went around the Somers Point Circle to the Point Diner, where they settled into a booth and looking around saw many of the kids they had been drinking and dancing with at the bars earlier that night.

After pumping some dimes and quarters into the juke box in their booth, and eating breakfast, they downed their last drop of orange juice and coffee and asked for their bill, but were told that the two young men at the counter had picked up their check.

Outside, as the girls put the top down and got in their car, they were seen by an off duty policeman, moonlighting as a security guard at the Jolly Roger bar across the street. He watched as the two girls pulled out of the parking lot and stopped at the circle to pick up a young man who was apparently hitch hiking, possibly with his arm in a sling. He was a clean cut guy, short hair and well dressed, and not a hippie.

The dark blue Chevy convertible pulled off the circle and headed west on MacArthur Boulevard towards the Garden State Parkway.

It was 5 am Friday morning of Memorial Day weekend, 1969.