Thoughts, Memories & Ravings of Big Daddy Graham: How We Got Here

Note from the Editor: This column originally ran in the August 2018 issue. Big Daddy Graham has been in the hospital this summer, as you might have heard. We are looking forward to fresh columns in the future, but didn’t want to deprive our readers of his hilarious, knee-slapping thoughts, memories and ravings. Well, they’re kinda funny, anyway. Most of the time. Get well, Big Daddy!

“Hey, man, my car’s in the shop. What time on Friday are you going down?”

“Mary, what time are you driving home on Sunday? I’m gonna need a ride home. My usual ride has to come home on Saturday for a wedding.”

Now, if you are over 25 and reading this, you probably haven’t had to rattle off sentences like those in years, but you certainly can hark back to those days when you didn’t own a car. Or, at least back to owning a cheap heap that was such a piece of junk, you didn’t dare to drive it that far.

Times have certainly changed. I don’t think there’s a teenager in my development at home or down here on the island who doesn’t own a car. But that was not the way it was when I was a young buck a million years ago. Most of my gang did not own a car. Heck, I was the first one in my family to ever buy one, and that wasn’t until I was 20 and I had two living parents and an older brother and sister. I’m not crying poor-mouth, that’s just the way it was for most of my friends I hung with.

So, simply getting down (and back home) was an undertaking of sorts. Here are some transportation stories that I remember all too well.

TAKING A BUS DOWN

The very first time I was in Sea Isle (I was a Wildwood kid growing up) was when I was 9 years old and my buddy Wheels’ folks had rented a house on Landis for the week and invited my mother and me down for a couple days during the week. One little problem: How to get down?

Now, the first part of the journey I recall vividly. We had to lug our bags by foot to 70th & Elmwood, where we boarded the 36 trolley. Then when we got off the trolley, we had to journey, bags still in hand, up and out of the tunnel to 13th & Market. Then we struggled another two blocks to the bus terminal, which came off more like a homeless shelter. And these weren’t bums, these were the riders, including me! (A seedier joint there never was.) It was here that we then boarded a bus to Wildwood. If I’m remembering this story correctly, the Greyhound Bus didn’t even venture into Sea Isle back then.

My friend’s dad picked us up at the Wildwood terminal and drove us to Sea Isle. A couple days later, the entire trek had to be repeated in reverse. As big of a hassle this was, every second of the voyage was exciting. I was going to the shore! (I can’t say the same for the trip home.) Very few of my friends’ parents or older siblings had cars. It wasn’t a big issue. It’s just the way it was. While I was writing this, I asked both my daughters and various 94 WIP producers (all young cats) if they ever took a bus to the shore, and every single last one of them said no. Times certainly have changed and, in this case, for the better. I’d rather get in a held-together-by-rubber-bands jalopy with an expired inspection sticker than go through that smelly bus ordeal again.

HITCHHIKING

I wrote an entire article on thumbing rides down the shore for this paper once, so let me just say there was a period in my life where I hitched rides to Sea Isle and back an easy 70 times. It was a sometimes thrilling, albeit frustrating, method that you never see anymore. Seriously. When was the last time you hitchhiked or even saw anyone doing it? This probably says something about us as a society, but what the hell do I know? I’m no Nancy Grace. I had a little brother who once left the house to hitch to Sea Isle and we never saw him again. Someone told me he’s now in the Trump administration as the head of the Department of Transportation.

MY FIRST CAR

I bought it at Pacifico Ford at the Airport Automall. It was a white 1966 Ford Galaxie that set me back $400. It was every cent to my name and little did I know it was to be the most I would spend on a car for another five years. I was in the “wandering” stage of my life. (Sounds biblical, doesn’t it?) I had dropped out of two colleges and was working an endless series of stupid, dead-end jobs, and living with a bunch of other unemployed knuckleheads in a cheap apartment. It got to the point where I ended up buying (and I’m not kidding on this) one $100 car after another. One-hundred dollars! We were so broke that I actually went in on a $100 car with a friend. Imagine. I didn’t realize it then, but my ’66 Galaxie was the equivalent of a brand-new Cadillac.

Coming down the Sea Isle Bridge on Memorial Day weekend in my own wheels and seeing that blue ocean was a moment I will never forget. I had imagined it for years and here I was. Blasting the Stones on the AM radio (the only source of car entertainment those days) and getting ready for the onslaught of women who were going to be waving at me at the bottom of the bridge.

OK, that last part never happened, but a man can dream, right?

BILLY BOYLE

Now Billy, on the other hand, had a real job, that made real money, directly out of high school. He was the first of us to acquire a brand-new car. It was a yellow Toyota Celica and there used to be actual wrestling matches to determine who was going to get to drive down with him. And I’m not kidding. Ask my buddy Wiggles, who’s had back problems ever since.

BOAT

The late, great Rick Steffa used to boat us from the Sea Isle Marina to the Deauville and back on Sunday nights. But have I ever actually arrived in Sea Isle by water with bags in hand, ready to begin the weekend? No. But I’m going to. Maybe even this summer.

PLANE

I have a friend named Bob who owns a small Cirrus prop plane. At the time, I had never been on a prop plane. Bob used to occasionally fly down the shore. I had become friends with Bob over a couple of summers and I had never met anyone who would fly down the shore. Bob lived in Bucks County and he would fly out of the Northeast Philly Airport to the Woodbine Airport outside Sea Isle, where he would have our friend Big John pick him up.

He was always bugging me to accompany him on a flight, but I live in Mullica Hill and it would take me longer to drive to that airport than it would to motor down to Sea Isle. What was the point?

But, at that moment in my life, I had never been on a small prop plane, and the more Bob pestered me, the more I started to think that I would never have an opportunity like this again. An adventure!

Well, I drive up to the Northeast on a Friday afternoon in July. Bob meets me in the parking lot and immediately points out that my bag is too large … and it’s barely bigger than a backpack. Not a good start.

We walk to the runway and I’ve never stood on a runway before, so even that’s a little odd. Then we get to the plane and I swear I’ve had Volkswagen Beetles bigger than this. This is not going well.

“I’m not getting in that,” I said.

“Oh, don’t be such a wuss,” says Bob. Only he doesn’t exactly use that word. Bob has now officially challenged me and in the “cockpit” I go. After much bending and twisting, I get my 6-3, 240-pound body in the “seat.” I’m practically in tears, I’m so nervous.

Then Bob turns the engine on and the propeller is so loud it takes me screaming, “Let me out!” 10 times before Bob hears me.

And out of the plane I went and back to my car, where two hours later I was downing shots of tequila.

And to this day I have never been on a small plane or helicopter.

But I’m still doing shots.