What My Retirement Should Look Like

I often wonder what the next phase of my life will look like. I'm familiar with childhood, teen years/high school, college-into-young-adulthood, marriage, and divorce-hood. Through most of these phases, I worked, worked hard, worked multiple jobs simultaneously, and was loyal to my employers. Retirement looms in front of me now as the next big phase, but it is a ways away (a decade) and I'll have to pay off some debt (I'm looking at you, student loan!) before I get there. What do I want retirement to look like? The following fanciful constellation of jobs has been compiled from positions I've actually seen advertised this spring.

I'll be living at the New Jersey shore, Cape May specifically. That's a given, because that is where my heart is and that is where I feel most at home. The Cape May Light is my icon for this part of the universe, and recently I saw that Cape May MAC, the organization that administers the property, was advertising for Lighthouse Keepers. A dream of mine! These keepers would not have to tend to the light to keep mariners safe because that is automated. These contemporary keepers would not have to lug heavy barrels of oil up the circular wrought iron steps, either. (Have you seen the 2019 movie, The Lighthouse? It wouldn't be like that, I don't think.) These new lighthouse keepers mainly corral the many visitors and tell stories and facts to keep them occupied. One of the previous keepers offered short, illustrated lectures in the Nature Center on weekends. I could do all of this and then go for a two-mile walk in my beloved Cape May Point State Park afterwards. I don't think there's a uniform, but I seem to recall a navy blue polo shirt with the keeper's name and "Lighthouse Keeper" embroidered underneath. I would also want an authentic, retro-looking lighthouse keeper hat.

On a different day of the week, I'd schedule myself to drive over to Wildwood in my black-and-fuschia lady pirate uniform in order to portray the enemy of the Dark Star Pirate Cruise ship. This job would require captaining a small motorized vessel, shooting a powerful but harmless water cannon in the general direction of the tourists, and creating a colorful (and humorous) lady-pirate-villain costume. A pirate hat would be required. From my landlubber desk where I currently write, non of these job requirements seem prohibitive, but in rare moments of introspection I suspect I might feel a twinge of imposter syndrome. I'll snap out of it. My name would be either Lighthouse Lil (combining my first two job personas), or Maritime Margie (to preserve my 'MM' initials). I imagine that on my days of portraying the villain, I would fly big, bright, black-lace-trimmed, fuschia bloomers from the mast instead of, or in addition to, the Lighthouse Lil flag and the skull and crossbones. I will be refreshing my pirate talk fluency. 

The Robert Shackleton Theater

When I'm not guiding tourists up and down the 199 lighthouse steps, or shooting water jets at unsuspecting pirate cruisers, I predict that I will be creating and sewing costumes for one of the classy theater groups in Cape May, Cape May Stage. (I've seen lots of their plays in their little church-turned theater.) They really are, as I write, looking for a Costumer. The job description included other required skills including working with the public and lifting fifty pounds. I can lift fifty pounds, but do I have to then carry it? I can sew. I've made costumes, mostly Halloween and Colonial. Once, whe I took a career aptitude test along with my students, my result was Costumer for Opera. That result seemed outrageously specific, but it has launched me into many a daydream. Have I missed my calling? There is still time.

I will need to generate income during my retirement, and I haven't yet crunched the numbers to see if this trio of gigs will sustain me. I imagine they won't if I want to still buy books and travel. I will have to supplement this income with royalties from my award-winning, best-selling author career which is about to take off with the publication of my collection of grown-up travel essays, Nerd Traveler (published by Read Furiously, July 2021). 

July 6 from Read Furiously!!!

I've been waiting a long time to bust out of the hum-drum, the quotidienne, the quietly anonymous. In retirement, I'll have the opportunity to be a character...or four.

A To-Do List has been created:

Signs of Spring in Cape May, New Jersey

I remember working on an assignment in second or third grade where we had to go out into nature and find 'Signs of Spring.' We probably had to make some kind of visual presentation, but I don't remember that. I do remember finding buds on trees, tiny leaves, dandelions, and probably pansies. I think of that assignment every year when the trees start to bud, and today as I walked through Cape May on a fabulous five-house Private Home Tour, I identified some Cape May signs of spring.

I did notice more traffic on the southbound highways last night, and I noticed more cars competing with me for the best free parking. But I'm trying to keep this post focused on positive things, so I'll point out that there were many folks biking around the city today. These bikes were parked outside Congress Hall.
It was a warm spring day, so there were quite a few people catching some rays on the beach. You can tell it is not summer because those tents on Steger's...uh, I mean Jackson Street Beach aren't unfurled yet.Tulips, of course. It's actually a little late for tulip viewing, but these looked nice on Washington Street Mall. Cape May takes pride in its tulips because the earliest European residents were Dutch.

So back to that Private Home Tour: loved it. I felt like I was being nosy at first paying money to sniff around other people's homes, but each of the hosts seemed pleased to show off their beautiful homes. I'm going to blog at length about this for the NJ.com Jersey Shore blog, so I won't get into detail here, but I will say this tour was a special treat. Cape May's Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts and Humanities, the tour organizers, asked that we respect the homeowners' privacy and not take photos inside. Here's a shot of one of my favorites, possibly because the lady of the house is a stitcher and a gardener and that was evident throughout.
Here's my favorite elementary school sign of spring, buds on trees:Each house had a docent stationed on the porch assigned to chat us up until the hosts were ready. One of these docents pointed out something I hadn't realized before. Cape May has trees. Lots of big, old, shade-giving, leaf-shedding trees. Other New Jersey shore towns, not so much. You learn something every tour.

Cape May's World War II Observation Tower

I chatted with World War II veterans at the restored observation tower and learned some stuff I didn't know. This mysterious structure has intrigued me since I was a child. It stood there with no explanation just down Sunset Boulevard from Sunset Beach and the sunken concrete ship Atlantus.
It looked creepy and spooky. The tower was finally restored over the winter of 2008-2009 by Cape May's Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts and Humanities and opened to the public in March 2009.

Signs, officially called "interpretive panels," tell the history of the tower. It was built in 1942 as part of Fort Miles. Fort Miles was mainly situated on Delaware's Cape Henlopen, with some sites on Cape May. Originally it was called Fire Tower #23, and there were eleven others on the Delaware coast and three others in the Cape May area. The towers were staffed by soldiers who were charged with guarding the Delaware Bay and River from German U-boats. The ports upriver (Camden, Philadelphia, etc.) were though to be prime targets. Part way up the spiral stairs is an engaging memorial to local veterans showing then and now photographs. A couple more flights and there is the soldiers' "Dayroom" or lounge.


From the veterans last weekend, I learned that these towers were actually decommissioned in 1944. The army figured that if there were German U-boats approaching, they wouldn't be seen anyway because they would be under water. Also, the shipping channel, closer to the Delaware side of the bay, was not deep enough for the U-boats to submerge to sneak up on us. After the decommissioning, those two thousand soldiers involved were reassigned and the towers were staffed by volunteers until the end of the war.

I had been wondering about communication, too. How did the soldiers in this tower communicate with those in the other towers and on the base manning the big guns? (Cape May was remote when I was a child--imagine thirty years before that.) My question was answered by the equipment hanging on the wall and explained by the veteran at the top of the tower Sunday: they used radios until telephone lines were put up. Telephone lines, as you might imagine, were much more secure than radio transmissions.

The tower now has metal, spiral stairs up to its sixth-story top, but those don't seem military.
What did the soldiers use in the 1940s? The veterans explained to me that there were straight wooden ladders running up along the inside of the tower. They were staggered and passed through manhole-sized openings. If a soldier fell, he wouldn't fall all the way down because each ladder ended and a new one started on the opposite side of each floor.


The restored tower is no longer creepy to me. It is a meaningful memorial to the Cape May residents who fought for our country and a great addition to Cape May's riveting World War II destinations. How lucky are we that there are still veterans from that Greatest Generation willing to share their knowledge with us today?!

The view from the top:

Exploring the Formerly Scruffy, Always Charming, Cape May Point

I am a tourist when I go to Cape May Point: I visit the lighthouse


and Sunset Beach.

I relax on the beach by the lighthouse which is now a state park. Birding is big there, but I seem to lack the birder's eye that can identify an unusual bird by just its tail feathers or the color of its feet.

I thought it might be fun to write a piece about Cape May Point, familiar to me but not quite. This quiet neighbor to uber-popular Cape May seems to have its own personality. I like exploring what lies beneath the surface of places.

As part of my research into what makes Cape May Point...Cape May Point, I interviewed Rich Chiemingo, a lifelong resident, at least in summers, and self-described Cape May Point hermit. He keeps busy today educating visitors of all ages about John Philip Sousa, Doo Wop music, the Cape May Point Lighthouse and the Twin Capes' involvement in World War II history

for Cape May's Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts and Humanities. (http://capemaymac.com/index.html) Rich apologized that he was not exactly a font of knowledge. (What?!) He painted for me a picture of what it was like to be a kid in Cape May Point in the 1950s and 1960s as if he had just walked out of a "show, don't tell" writers' workshop. He described an idyllic existence (using all five senses!) cooking hotdogs in beach bonfires with cousins. Those same kids would wait under the fire station's siren pole waiting for the siren to blow while inhaling the smell of the pole's hot creosote. When the noise started they'd run screaming with their hands over their ears. Those tender bare feet would step on wild cactus that really hurt in the beginning of summer but by the end would toughen and not notice the cactus as much.


Television reception was terrible then, but there were Phillies games and Doo Wop music coming out of transistor radios and Rich's older cousin's black Oldsmobile convertible. His memories were at times like a mixture of mine and my older sister's: weekly trips to Cape May's boardwalk and the big annual Wildwood Boardwalk excursion.

I asked Rich what has changed since those magical childhood days and he had two big answers. First, the place has become more developed and more populated. (We agreed that the homes of today are gorgeous, though, and he added that Cape May Point's properties are consistently well-kept.) Rich used the word "scruffy" to describe those early days, but emphasized that he meant scruffy in a positive, natural, primitive and charming way. I know exactly what he means because my little section of beach paradise was like that, too, until the grandiose, modern beachfront homes started appearing in place of the tiny fishing shacks with concrete-block fences. (This scruffiness is close to what I call "Authentic Cape May" in another article.)

Rich's second answer was that he realized as a young adult that not every kid had this opportunity to run around barefoot all summer. Other kids got to go away for a week or two, but he got to spend the whole summer in this kids' paradise. Yup, it took me awhile to figure that out, too. I am no Oprah, and I dread doing interviews. I get this nagging feeling that I am being too nosey. With every interview I do, though, I come away with a new understanding of a person or a place and in this case, both! Rich's vivid memories fave me the spark to pursue this Cape May Point project.

Later that day I showed up with my camera at Sunset Beach on the edge of Cape May Point. I was surprised but delighted to find the parking lot full (in March), and the beach populated by others experiencing this little piece of authentic Cape May.