Delaware: The Early Years 1

No, this is not about the history of De La Warr, or whoever. This is a brief history of my memories of our earliest trips to Delaware. We had a trailer there from the mid eighties until the death of Uncle Buddy in 2005.

Dad, my uncle, and Uncle Buddy started looking for a trailer in 1986, I believe. I was only about five or six at the time, so I don't remember much. We do have an old video of them looking at a few trailers on sale. They must have gone on a trip by themselves giving how young my sister and I was. I do remember going on one trip where someone showed us around one trailer which I'm sure we didn't get, but my memory isn't that trustworthy. Anyway, we finally got a trailer located at Angola Crest II, next to Rehoboth Beach.

The trips to "The Beach" (as we would call it) would usually take about three hours. We usually drove with Uncle Buddy in his big red car. This had three seats in the front and three in the back. Dad would always drive and Uncle Buddy would have the passenger front seat so he could crack a window to smoke his pipe. My sister and I would have big fights over sitting in the front if we were allowed. I think there were a couple years where we would switch places on the return trip to shut us both up. If I sat in the back, I would usually sit behind Uncle Buddy and watch him dump ashes outside.

Since we were kids, I'm sure my younger sister and I were for the most part bored out of our minds. We probably played guessing games or brought coloring books or just slept just to make it. At least there were a couple things that would grab our attention. The first thing was the stop we used to make about half way there. Somewhere next to the Delaware border was a couple of gas stations that we would take a break at. We would look around and usually be allowed to get one drink and one snack. I would usually get chips, and this was the first place where I tried FunYuns. One of the gas places had a couple arcade games, but I can't remember which games. Something obscure.

Our favorite part of the trip was the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. This was a pay bridge ($2.50 if you go one way, free the other) that was really long. The rest of the trip was interstate highways and some (less as time went on) farmland, so this bridge would always wake us up. It was actually exciting to see the signs for the bay bridge long before we saw the toll booths.

After paying the toll, we would usually use the right bridge from our view. One of the bridges had two lanes and the other has three, and it was the "right" bridge that had two. I say usually we use this one because the lanes had traffic singles with either a green arrow or a red X indicating which lane to stay in. There have been times where we went on the "left" bridge and stayed on the right lane while westbound drivers were zooming by.

I spent a lot of the time taking everything in. I would look down at the bay to see if any boats were going by. I would look to see if there were any seagulls on a nearby dock. I would watch for and count along with the mile marker. A lot of times I would imagine a man running around on the bridge as we progressed. He would either be running up the cable support or underneath the opposite bridge. It was like a game in my mind, because I had to have him make some crazy leaps so he wouldn't fall in the water.

At one poin I had a dream about this bridge where I watched a news report that said that there was a hole in the bridge. And by hole, I mean that it looked like a giant lemming had mined downwards. For a while I had wondered if I had dreamt this or not, which shows how silly I was. In the dream I actually saw a car nearly drive off, so clearly this didn't happened or it would have been a huge news story.

Anyway, after that I can't remember too much, but I do remember there were four towns with compound names. I remember this because when we once visited an aunt at the nursing home, we played a guessing game with our dad. Dad picked out four towns and made us guess at the names by putting together two words. For example, the name of one of my teachers plus town was Milltown, or something. (Google maps says I just made it up. Who asked them anyway?) I don't think we go through these places anymore after finding some better routes. Yes, my memory is this bad.

Anyway, we would finally reach the big road leading to the trailer. There's a big McDonald's billboard around the final turn before Coastal Highway and that was as exciting as the Bay Bridge signs. Finally we would start seeing what would quickly be familiar sites. We would first see Nassau Park, where my dad's mom once lived and where several of my dad's siblings lived. We would see St. Jude, a church we used to go to before we found another one. There was a mini-mall that included a theater that is still there. Eventually we would see the McDonald's that would mark our turn. We would continue down another highway before we would see a strip of old looking stores. It contains a convenient store that I hated because of the one time I went in and saw some magazine with some Garbage Pail Kids. At this poin we were a mile or so away.

Making our turn at the intersection here led to a real long road. We would pass a few farms before we finally got to Angola Crest II. Angola Crest was a place with several strips of trailers that are divided by three roads. Our trailer was on the left side if you go down the middle road and was the next to last trailer. After three speed bumps, we would finally reach our destination.


I apologize for ending the post here. I wanted to do a post about our early trips to Delaware, but just talking about the trip is going longer then I expected. Besides, I should have plenty more stuff to talk about when it comes to Delaware. Tomorrow I'll talk about some of the stuff we did in the early years at the trailer. Hopefully this post isn't that boring and will help lay the foundation of future nostalgic trips to The Beach.


Update: I know I did a poor job of describing what the bridge looked like in my dream. Here's a side view of what I meant. Keep in mind that I had a frontal view of it when I was watching the news.