Lucy, the Margate Elephant

Let's say hypothetically that I won a property in Margate, NJ, in, say, a poker game. I'd start boxing-up my books right away. There are some gorgeous houses there, some with Spanish-tiled roofs, some cloaked in stucco, and almost all beautifully landscaped. The top non-beach pastimes seemed to be dog-walking and bike-riding. Nice, but it's not going to happen. I don't play poker. Nevertheless, I got to cruise through this lovely town on my way to see Lucy the Margate Elephant.

Blog-reading music:

Side-view of Lucy and the entrance to her park

Lucy used to stand where the brown building is now.

I had my heart set on visiting someplace I'd never seen before on this first weekend of summer, and I'm running out of ideas for extreme southern New Jersey. When a writing workshop brought me to Atlantic City, I remembered the giant elephant I've been wanting to visit. Lucy was built in 1881 by James Lafferty, Jr., a Philadelphian who owned property in South Atlantic City, now known as Margate. He had the elephant built of wood to attract attention, which it did and still does. Lucy has been moved from her original location about 300 feet away to make room for a condo building, and after that a group got together to Save Lucy. She was restored and entered as a National Historic Landmark in 1976.

Head on: Lucy's trunk ends in a barrel

You may have already heard of Lucy, but did you know that she had two sisters? The smaller one was built in what was then South Cape May, NJ, (and is now under water) around the same time as Lucy. This one was called the Light of Asia and succumbed to rough weather conditions around the turn of the twentieth century. The other elephant was built in Coney Island, NY, and called Elephantine Colossus. It was intended solely for amusement and burned down in 1896.

Let's go over Lucy's head...(the spots are raindrops)

This means Lucy is the only elephant you can tour. Go up the narrow circular stairway in one of her legs all the way up to the howdah on her back. This is where you can take in a nice view of the Margate beach and surrounding neighborhood. Then climb down the spiral staircase to the middle floor to see some exhibits about Lucy, and some rather nice art featuring Lucy (for sale), and look through Lucy's eyes to see what she sees.

Through the eye of Lucy

Our tour guide pointed out that this part of the elephant was built to look like a boat...and it does, with her eyes as portholes at the bow.

Inside Lucy's abdomen looks like the inside of a boat

Then head back down the spiral staircase in the other elephant leg to the ground and over to the gift shop for elephant gifts of all kinds, souvenir smashed pennies, and postcards.

Because I know you are wondering what the back looks like.

Atlantic City Minus the Glitz and Glamour

Part of my collection of non-casino-related Atlantic City brochures

 Atlantic City is not a place I go often, and I seem to have a talent for not going to casinos. Yesterday, as I attended a writing workshop there, I recalled other times I visited this city without gambling or glitzy shows on my mind.

Boardwalk Hall (formerly known as Convention Hall)

 Way back in my college days, our marching band accompanied the Temple University football team to an indoor game at Convention Hall (now called Boardwalk Hall).

Boardwalk Hall Detail

This was a special event, probably designed to please big donors. Gambling in AC was still a sparkly new idea. Before we arrived my mind stretched to imagine what football played indoors would look like. Once the game started and appeared much like any outdoor game I had attended, my mind became preoccupied with imagining that this was the same space that hosted the Miss America Pageant for decades. I remember missing the beach so much that  night that I snuck out of the hall with my friend, clarinets in hand, just to touch the beach and get sand between my fingers.

A few years back I received a writing assignment from a magazine. They wanted  an article about Atlantic City activities and destinations that did not involve gambling and nightlife. That was easy for me: I covered the new outlet shopping center called The Walk, fancy boutique shopping on shopping mall piers, and boardwalk strolling on the famous four-mile Boardwalk. I reminded readers that you don't even have to walk the boards, you can hire a three-wheeled rolling chair usually pushed by an ambitious young person anxious to make some dollars. Atlantic City's beach is still there, of course, even though it is overshadowed by some very tall, well lit, modern buildings.


Have you heard of the White House Sub Shop?
This world-famous restaurant is just down the street from yesterday's writing conference. Its walls are covered by autographed 8x10 photographs of famous people who have dined there. We sat under Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., and a cluster of former Miss Americas. The steak sandwiches are remarkable, partly because of the ultra-fresh rolls, baked daily at a bakery across the street. This piece of authentic Atlantic City is a cool place to go for lunch, and lines around the block of hungry diners are legendary.

Then there's the Absecon Lighthouse, a grassy oasis in the city just a few blocks from the casino culture. Absecon is the name of the island on which the city sits, and also the inlet just to the north. The lighthouse is New Jersey's tallest with 228 steps. It was built in 1857 and contained a first-order Fresnel lens, the most powerful of the time. We visited Absecon Lighthouse on a tour of New Jersey's eleven lighthouses for an article I have been working on for years. (It's a slow-burn inspiration.)

St. Michael's Catholic Church (left) and Dante Hall (right)

That writing workshop yesterday took place in Dante Hall, a smart little building that used to serve as a parish hall for the adjacent St. Michael's Catholic Church, and a community theater. Here's the connection: Dante Hall is administered by Richard Stockton College of NJ with which Murphy Writing Seminars, LLC, partners. Little bas-relief busts of Dante appear throughout the building next to doorways, an appropriate inspiration for writers swimming in words for a day. This day was called

 

the Shore Thing Writing Getaway. We talked about writing and received prompts from Peter Murphy that encouraged us to surprised ourselves with our writing. I sat on the Boardwalk to write about an extraordinary day, required to incorporate fortune cookie fortunes. (I'm collecting those now, so don't throw them away!) These prompts were tough, and my results were not my best writing. My best work of the day was a short piece about a lie. I've been lucky (or naive) and couldn't think of many lies I have been told, but one stood out about a person who lied to me for years about his birth date. Not important, maybe, but for years I bought him milestone birthday cards one year too late. The nice essay was worth the deception, I suppose.

Contemporary AC is more than just casinos and nightlife just as the Prohibition-Era Atlantic City of my favorite show Boardwalk Empire had more to offer than gangsters and Speakeasies! My next Atlantic City excursion will probably be to visit a destination visited for over a hundred years by gangsters, flappers, real estate moguls and ordinary folks: Lucy the Elephant in nearby Margate, built in 1881!

NJ Lighthouse Crawl

Every year, I say I'm going to participate in the New Jersey Lighthouse Challenge in October, and every year I don't. October is a very busy month for me, and I just can't seem to fit it in. This year, Fred, Gladys, and I decided to make our own challenge on Thanksgiving weekend. We thought we'd hit all the oceanside lighthouses from Sandy Hook in the north to Hereford Inlet (North Wildwood) in the south on Day One, hang out in Cape May for Day Two, and then travel north on starting at Cape May (at the confluence of the ocean and Delaware Bay), visiting the three bayside lighthouses. (That's the East Point Lighthouse in Heislerville, on the bay, at the top of this post.)

Unfortunately, Fred had to go to work on the morning of Day One, and I hadn't considered that the days are short and we'd lose daylight around 4:30. This was important because I had planned to photograph each lighthouse even if I didn't climb them. The Day One plan was spread over Day One and Day Two, and there was a lot of extra driving. On the positive side, we enjoyed traveling the Ocean Drive in the off-season through some of the shore towns we don't often visit. Gladys was thrilled that all of the lighthouses were dog-friendly this time of year except Hereford Inlet in North Wildwood. This is because they have a pretty awesome garden and prefer to regulate the fertilizer that goes in it.

So we visited the eleven lighthouses: Sandy Hook, Twin Lights (Navesink), Sea Girt, (Day One); Hereford Inlet, Absecon, Tucker's Island, Barnegat (Day Two); and Cape May, East Point, Finn's Point, and Tinicum (Day Three). I photographed all and climbed none. At the beginning, we borrowed the term 'challenge' for our adventure, but about halfway through changed that to 'crawl' (see the title of this post). Red and green words in this post are hyperlinks, by the way.

STUFF I LEARNED

• Sandy Hook is famous not merely for its nude beach, but also for its lighthouse, the oldest in the United States (1764) and occupied by the British during the Revolutionary War.
• The Absecon and Barnegat (pictured below) lighthouses were designed by the same engineer, Brigadeer General George Meade who later distinguished himself at the Battle of Gettysburg.
• The Absecon Lighthouse is only steps away from the Showboat Casino in Atlantic City, and is New Jersey's tallest lighthouse with 228 steps.
• The exoskeletal Finn's Point (pictured below) and and Tinicum lighthouses are rear range lighthouses, and each was used with another light. Ships' navigators would line up the two lights to make sure they were on course to enter a channel, river, or harbor.

• Cape May is still my favorite.