The House at the Shore

By Joy Joseph

Starting in Ireland during the potato famine, a family is driven to emigrate to the U.S. for a better life. Parents and four children land in Philadelphia to begin anew. Aidan and Susan Curran begin in a society unfriendly to the Irish. Through determination and hard work, they eventually improve their lot and become people of substance. The children go on to their own lives. One becomes a Catholic nun, one a teacher. The two men start small in real estate and eventually own a good portion of South Philadelphia.

They have their trials and tribulations, become involved with the business classes of the city and move on to better things.

One son has a child who is affl icted with asthma, causing them to build a home on the South Jersey coast to ease the symptoms. The home originally a summer cottage, fi gures greatly in their lives ever after. The son grows up to be somewhat of a genius. He goes to medical school and opens a practice. He marries and raises fi ve children. During his lifetime he becomes adept at the practice of medicine, pharmacy, painting and poetry. He conquers several languages and becomes an amateur boxer. He joins the Army Medical Corp in 1918 and leaves his four children and a wife expecting a fi fth, to go to war.

While stationed in France he is decorated as well as wounded. He returns at wars end to fi nd his only son has acquired the same symptoms he had as a boy. For the childs health, they decide to move permanently to the Jersey shore.

He opens a practice there and all through the 1920s life goes on in a calm wonderful way, although he is aware of some nagging seemingly minor medical problems.

The Depression comes and he fi nds that during the war, when his wife was the only one to answer to, his lawyers and bankers had robbed him blind.

From a life style of wealth and comfort the family is forced to go on Relief to get food on the table. The doctor looses all his real estate to taxes, treats his patients for free and experiences faltering health. All they have left to their name is the house at the shore.

The doctor fi nally realizes that the mustard gas he was exposed to has been killing him ever since he was in the army.

At his death, the fi ve children who grew up to expect life would always be good and comfortable, have to change their lifestyles. A challenge when none were prepared to do so.

The story does not have a happy ending. But no one ever said life was fair.

The house at the shore is the only survivor

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 12, 2009
• ISBN: 9781462834907

Joy Joseph

Joy Joseph is a play write, director, actress, former dancer, drama coach, newspaper columnist and mother of eight. Raised in New Jersey, she studied dancing and drama from a very early age. She has been writing and directing plays and occasionally making appearances for the past twenty-eight years. A suburban theater group, founded by Joseph, has recently celebrated twenty-five years of performing. Along with this busy schedule, she also taught drama classes at a Catholic grammar school for eighteen of those years, reaching all grades from first to eighth. Each year culminated with a “Graduation Play” directed by Joseph For several years she also wrote a newspaper column for a Chicago Suburban newspaper as well as penning several short stories. She and her late husband, Lou Joseph, a science writer and media specialist raised their eight children in suburban Chicago where she has lived for the past forty-eight years.

Book preview

Prologue

Looking through the personal effects of my aunt, I discovered letters written by her father, my grandfather, to her mother while he was serving in the Army Medical Corps during World War One. They sent me on a journey into the past that I thoroughly enjoyed.

My desire to fantasize took hold and what you have here is a story based solely on his letters.

The letters are exactly as he wrote them. The rest is my fantasy

Chapter One

Yesterday, there had been bad weather reports coming in along the coast. There had been a storm far out in the ocean and now, looking seaward, you could see it was just touching land. If you looked down between the planks of the boardwalk, you could see the brine on the wave-endings. See it sliding up the sand, leaving seaweed, broken shells and clam and crab bits littering the surface. The sea was not the color of jewels this day. It looked more like cold gray steel. The waves were like slender fingers reaching out to you and daring you to come close and be pulled from your dry perch. Its secret plan was to grab you, toss and turn you and pull you out far beyond your ability to swim back to safety. As much as I loved that ocean, feeling it was my personal road to God, I never trusted it. Many times I had lain there on the sand, no one in sight, listening to the waves breaking on the shore and feeling closer to God than any other time in my life. But I also knew all about its tides, currents, undertow and sandbars. Oh yes, those hidden, playful sandbars. Often, they were luring you with the spectacle of standing in inches of water while being fifteen or twenty feet from shore. Sandbars that dropped off two inches after you thought you had a good foothold. The water suddenly rushing up to your mouth as you scrambled to get you foot back on wet land that turned to quicksand the moment your foot touched it. No, after I grew up I had always been content to take what the old ladies called a dip very close to shore and safety.

The wind was like the proverbial sharp knife as I stood there looking down the sand swept street. I wondered how many of the first floor tenants of the small houses farther down the street were going to have to throw away half of their belongings this year. Because they had been ruined by the seawater. The smell of the brine was something you couldn’t get rid of. It was almost a yearly ritual for the locals who seemed to consider it only a minor annoyance.

When the nor’easters, storms of high winds and driving rains, hit the island, I remember a time the ocean and bay met in the middle of the side streets at the western tip. That was when we saw couches and chairs floating out the door of the ground floor residences. The periodic call to evacuate the island sent people scurrying over the three or four bridges onto the mainland. Lucky were the people who had relatives there to camp out with until the waters receded. Being so far north, most of the tropical storms had blown their best shots at the more southern coasts. Everything was so moderate that no one seemed to mind. It was all a part of living the good life at the shore.

Coming out of my daydreams I looked down the street at the House,at 127 S. Beach Cove Ave. What was it about it that kept bringing me back to it? I had only lived there for the first twelve years of my life and still, I loved it more than any place I’d ever lived and it would always be Home.

Chapter Two

By the time I had come along the house was growing old. It had been built around the turn of the century by my great grandfather and great, great uncle as a summer cottage. Some cottage! It was four stories high. It had a private ground floor apartment holding up a second story porch that wrapped itself around the second floor. Bay windows poked out all over the third floor and turrets pierced the sky from the fourth. When it had been built there wasn’t anything between it and the beach. Now, a row of tiny brick two story houses stretched out on either side of it making it seem like a sentinel that had to watch over everything and protect the little places.

My grandfather, a physician, pharmacist, army captain, painter, man of letters and father of five had been the one who had turned it into a year-round home for his family and by extension, mine. That had occurred before I was born, when he and my Grandmother were raising their family, all the while suffering first from prosperity, then war, calamity, depression and finally poverty. I came along at the tail end of everything and heard the stories over and over again. I often wished that I had known him better when I was young. His letters to my grandmother, which I discovered much later in life opened a whole new personality to me. Yet each of his children called him a different name. Each spoke of him in different terms. Each referred to him as an expert on a different subject. It was as though he was all things to all of them, each holding him in their own special place in their hearts. He was the love of them all, even years after his death when they were old and ready to follow him.

He had come to this house when it was new, living in it first as a summer home, then as a permanent one. I followed years later when things had already changed on the street and around town. I looked at things with a jaded eye for a young child, taking everything for granted, never knowing then what it took to get there and who came before me.

Children have a way of tucking favorite memories away for future perusal. They may be of a single incident that was so spectacular that it burned into their consciousness, or it could be an ongoing ritual that they took comfort in because of its familiarity. My memories of the house, although they spanned only twelve young years, were a mixture of both these things. The love and security I felt colored everything that happened to me there and of course burned into my own consciousness. And so, my memories were all sugar coated, loving and happy. It took until I was much older to understand the nuances and underlying problems that existed. And so, I am about to tell you of the incidents and people that

I remember:

Chapter Three

The people;

I remember my Grandmother, a quiet, kind, loving woman who always had a lap available for my use. She was quite stylish, I thought, as she had her hair set on a regular basis and when her daughters took her out, she dressed in lovely shades of purple or blue. She had very nice brooches that sparkled under the light. And her hats were to die for. They were replicas of England’s Queen Mother Mary’s. She often let me play with the hats, which is probably why I still like to wear them. I remember that she liked to do different things and wasn’t afraid to try something new.

Once she became friendly with the mother of two girls who were friends of her daughters Maeve and Peggy. The lady firmly believed that she could foretell the future. She often came to visit my grandmother, at her invitation of course, for tea in the afternoon. I was allowed to sit at the table with them on some occasions. At these times, my grandmother would put on the teakettle, set out some delightful cookies and wait for the water to boil. Then of course the tea, which was loose leaves, had to steep for just the correct time before pouring. Mrs. Staub and my grandmother would chat in a most friendly way while waiting for just the right moment. When it came, they drank their tea and ate their cookie in a most ceremonial way, not speaking at any time. When they were finished, Mrs. Staub would take both cups which were empty now, except for a coating of tea leaves in the bottom, and turn them upside down, placing each on its own saucer. She would rotate the cup slowly, tap it a few times and then turn it over. By now, I would be in such a state of excitement that I could hardly breath, waiting for the grand prediction to be proclaimed. She would show my grandmother the cup and point out that some leaves had taken the shape of a dog or a cat or some animal. Some others looked like the profile of a man or woman. Some others looked like a cloud or a house or a kite or some such object. Each thing that she saw had some deep otherworldly, slightly spooky meaning to which my grandmother would nod knowingly, in a very serious way. After Mrs. Staub had left for the afternoon, I would anxiously wait for the right time to talk about this exciting afternoon, to which my grandmother would reply, It’s just a bunch of hogwash!!!

I was crushed!

I remember my aunt Maeve. She was the oldest and when my grandfather died, she slipped into the head of household slot without much fanfare. She was olive skinned with large brown eyes, slightly slanted that gave her a mysterious, oriental look. She worked hard to keep things on an even keel. She sometimes held two jobs at a time. But she always had time to take me every Saturday, out to the local department store, do a little shopping and then go to the Vienna Restaurant. It was such an interesting place. It had very high backed booths that were painted light green. It was almost like going into a private room when you were seated. So, every Saturday, I had a Bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich with a vanilla milkshake. Who wouldn’t love Aunt Maeve?

Then there was Aunt Peggy. A striking blond with green eyes, she was the fashion plate that followed in her mother’s footsteps. But even better! She made all her own clothes without a store bought pattern!! Once, for a trip to D.C. she made me all new dresses for the trip! And, she took me with her on some of her dates, when they were going to the amusement park!! It was hard to decide which to love more, Aunt Maeve or Aunt Peggy?

Now Aunt Fiona, short and dark haired, was a little different. She was only fourteen years older than I and sort of regarded me as a little sister. She suffered from epilepsy long before people understood the ailment and was forced to leave school and stay home. So, we sort of played together from time to time. But she was always very nice to me so I took her seizures in stride and loved her anyway.

Uncle Tim was a great guy. He and Aunt Maeve opened a hot dog stand on the boardwalk one summer and he gave me hot dogs on demand. He also grabbed me by the feet when I started to swallow a penny and shook me so that it fell out. So he was a hero in my eyes.

Of course the other hero of my young years, was my father. When I sat on the porch in a wooden beach chair and it collapsed, catching my fingers, he was there to save me. When I ran a nail through my foot on the beach, he ran me to the hospital. When I fell out of bed one night and rolled under it and everyone was convinced I had wandered outside and were all running up and down the street looking for me, he was the one who lifted up my little four poster bed, single handed mind you, and found me curled up, sound asleep. When my mother was in the hospital having my sister, he took me to the Saturday matinee movie around the corner. I had a box of crackerjack and of course a prize.

This was about the time I decided that he was the handsomest man in the world. I thought he looked exactly like Errol Flynn (who was my movie hero) with his dashing moustache and head of dark wavy hair.

We used to go down to the beach with my grandfather’s old dog Jiggs, who by then was blind. Daddy would put a clothesline on him so he could run far and not get lost. We would fly a kite over the ocean in the fading September days. Sometimes we were the only ones on the beach. It must be what heaven feels like.

Last but not least was my Mother. Tall and lanky, with blond hair that she wore in the latest fashion upsweep, she was an enigma to me. I have never been quite at peace with my feelings for her. I never felt like I bonded with her, although she was always good to me. But with so many other would-be mothers, ready and willing to take me here and there, I think sometimes she faded into the background. But of course, I had no idea what sad things were going on in her life.

Chapter Four

Now, about the House:

Inside, the house had nooks and crannies to die for. Hide and go seek could be played just about anywhere. There were two living rooms, one for every day and one for Sundays. The Sunday room had a large window facing the ocean, where you could sit and look out over the porch, sometimes at the azure blue sky and sometimes at the storms brewing. This was a hobby that my grandmother and I shared from as long as I could remember. I would sit on her lap in the old mission rocker and she would tell me great stories, all ocean related of course. I knew about monster fish and what a widows-walk was before I was six.

Breakfast was always in the kitchen, so was lunch. But dinner was always a formal meal that was eaten with great pomp, in the dining room with the silver platters on the buffet and sideboard shining in candlelight. The toile wallpaper gave me many,many evenings of pretend while the adults talked.

The kitchen ran the entire width of the house. It had about five windows across the back, making it a wonderfully bright room in the morning with the sun shining in. The linoleum floor was large squares of black and white that if you were very small you could pretend you were playing checkers on. And in fact one aunt did start a game one evening to distract this measles covered, woebegone, sufferer.

Upstairs, there were four bedrooms, the back one of which had belonged to my great grandmother, who had died at 96, when I was four. She had been over six feet tall and probably a little senile, because she was always playing some game with me that required her to stand in the doorway to the Sunday parlor and not let me out. A game, which of course,I hated, and cried lustily until my grandmother would come and rescue me. After her demise, they turned her room into a playroom for me and I became the most popular kid on the block.

My mother had been the only one of five siblings who had married and so I was the daughter of three maiden aunts as well as hers. So, as you can see I was the princess of the castle until my sister came along, a pleasant seven years later

The porch was a room to itself. So much of life was spent there in good weather and bad. When it was too stuffy inside, my dinner was placed on a small table outdoors so that I could enjoy my meal without being too uncomfortable! I remember watching my father, who was well over six foot tall, coming down the street toward the house and being sure that he could touch the floor of the porch, which had to be about 10 or 12 feet above street level. I called Daddy, Daddy, touch the floor, touch the floor! He looked up and laughed at me and promptly bent over and touched the floor of the first floor porch which was ground level and rather small.

The porch was also a crow’s nest. When the storms kicked up the waves they looked sky high. When the hurricane of the 40’s hit the boardwalk and scattered the planks out to sea, we stood on the porch and watched a lamppost bob up and down before sinking and we saw a bench from the pavilion take a dive. The water came up the street almost six foot high at first. Later in the day the coast guard came down the street in rowboats taking the people in the small row houses to the convention hall for safety.

Since there was no electricity, we had lit candles and put them on the sideboard. One of the sailors saw the light and thought it was a fire. They came onto the porch by climbing out of their boat, shimming up the posts and jumping onto it. When my grandmother