Thoughts, Memories, Ravings of Big Daddy Graham: Finders Keepers
Editor’s note:
This story originally ran in the Endless Summer issue of 2018. When we went to print with this issue of the Sea Isle Times, Big Daddy Graham was in the hospital. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to write something new, so we decided to share another oldie but goodie from his collection. Thankfully, Big Daddy is now recovering at home.
A while back, I found a pair of light, North Carolina blue silk basketball shorts in my Sea Isle crib. This was during a time period when my daughter Ava would routinely ask me and my wife Debbie if she could have four of her friends stay over and she would ultimately end up inviting 14. And this was in a house that comfortably slept about three thin people and a blow dryer.
But some knucklehead left his blue silk shorts behind and I took a liking to them, washed them, and have been sporting them ever since. I wear them often while I perform my 94WIP radio show because they’re so light and comfortable.
So, jump four years later and I walk onto my deck from the beach and there’s Ava and her friends playing a makeshift version of beer pong. I grab a seat to watch the action and to make sure no one is vomiting on my wife’s new outdoor sofa.
During a break in the action, one of Ava’s friends (who didn’t come around that often, and I didn’t know as well as some of her other friends) says to me, “So you’re a North Carolina fan?”
“Not really,” I reply. “In fact, I always root against them. Even against Duke.”
“Oh, I just figured that because of your shorts, you were a fan.” (Long silent pause.) “You know I used to own a pair of shorts just like that.”
(Longer silent pause.)
“Is that right?” reply I.
And that was it. Except for a wedding a year later, where I know he was wondering if I was wearing the shorts under my suit, I never saw the dude again.
That’s how it works when you own a property in Sea Isle. If you’re nice enough to invite someone down and allow them to use your bathrooms and showers, then they have to know the rules. Leave something behind, it’s mine! Showers and bathrooms are very personal. How often does a guest use your shower at home back in the states? Like practically never. So, what that comes with is a completely different set of rules.
T-shirts, jeans, towels, razors, sunscreen, coolers, flip-flops, soap, shampoo, conditioner, bathing suits, beach chairs, beer, wine, alcohol, Excedrin, aspirin, prescription drugs, ALL MINE!
Ever have a T-shirt that you just adore? It fits right on the button. The material is just right. What makes it even more the perfect shirt is when you didn’t even buy it. My buddy Ralph left a “Pep Boys Manny, Moe & Jack” tee behind one summer and I swear on a stack of Playboys, I wore that bad boy for close to 20 years before it literally disintegrated. Even better was the fact that I bumped into Ralph almost 10 years later at the Pour House and he exclaimed, “So that’s where that shirt went!” and we both had a big laugh over it. It’s a “guy thing.” No big deal.
But women? I will hear my wife or one of my daughters actually call one of their friends to let them know they left their white top behind. “I’ll bring it over to Lauren’s the next time I’m over,” one of them will say. Are you kidding me?! I myself would wear it before I would give it back, although I guess people would wonder what’s going down with me if I strolled into LaCosta wearing a white halter top. But that’s still preferable over giving it back.
The last time I bought a bar of soap was 1997. Shampoo, 2001. A razor, same year. Conditioner, 2003. You see, most guys don’t care what brand of shampoo or conditioner they use down the shore. At home? Maybe it’s a different story. But in Sea Isle? A man wouldn’t think twice about using Quaker State Motor Oil if it was hanging around the outdoor shower. Which, by the way, the outdoor shower is strictly a man’s domain. A woman would prefer bathing on the 40-yard line at the Linc before stepping into those filthy man units.
I acquire so many beach chairs throughout the season, I have an annual yard sale every last weekend of September where I make as much as a couple hundred dollars. I have friends who own trailers or property “somewhere out on Route 9” and every Memorial Day weekend when they use my driveway to park to go to the beach, I say, “Hey, no sense in lugging your beach chairs back and forth, just leave them in my backyard.” Every year I hear them say the same thing to themselves every Labor Day weekend: “Ah, just leave them. We’ll be back down before September ends.” But every year they never come back down and cha-ching goes the cash register! Another sale for me.
Coolers and flip-flops pile up on the deck. Bathing suits on shower nozzles and bathroom doorknobs. Pills and toothpaste on the bathroom counters. My shore pad might as well be a “Five Below” store.
I’ve had college kids have their cars break down where they have to leave them on my street or in my driveway. While even I wouldn't stoop so low as to strip the car before they came back down the next day with help, I did have someone make me an offer once on a ’98 Honda Accord that had been left behind for a week. It was a lowball offer, but who knows? A couple hundred bucks more and there might have been a sale.
Just a week ago, someone asked me what year I graduated from Council Rock.
“Huh?” says I.
“I said, what year did you graduate from Council Rock?”
“I didn’t go to Council Rock.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said the stranger. “I saw your Council Rock beach towel.”
It could have been a RuPaul towel and I wouldn’t have noticed. Just another towel left behind.
But one night, one poor soul actually left his girlfriend behind and, like all the above-mentioned items, never got her back.
Ava had about 10 college-age students sleeping over. I woke up around 5 in the morning and when I walked out to the kitchen to grab a snack, I could hear someone out on the deck talking.
It was Ted, a dude Ava had gone to Clearview High with. It sounded like he was half-talking, half-crying. When I walked out on the deck, Ted abruptly hung up his cell.
“Hey, Ted, what’s wrong?” says I.
“Well, I went out to the bar and Terri didn’t wanna go. So, I went out without her and when I got back she was asleep on the couch with Rick. And Rick’s one of my best friends. I’m going in there and punch him out!”
“No, no, no, you’re not,” says I. “You got somewhere else to stay?”
Ted replied: “Well, Charlie’s, I guess. Over on 40th Street.”
And to Charlie’s place I walked him, hitting him with every lame relationship chatter BS I could muster. Today? Ted’s living in Hoboken and working in Manhattan and doing quite well. But Terri ended up marrying Rick and Ted never got her back.
Finders keepers. Losers weepers.
