Jersey Shore Magazine

j e r s e y s h o r e • F A L L / H O L I D A Y 2 0 2 0 63 ▲ HOME PORT A LOOK BACK, continued from page 66 Specialty Food Markets JOE LEONE'S GASTRONOMIA 527 Washington Boulevard, Sea Girt (732) 681-1036 www.joeleones.com Please refer to our ad on page 61 and our listings on page 61 and below. Joe Leone's Gastronomia is a scaled reflection of our flagship store, Joe Leone's Italian Specialties in Point Pleasant Beach. Joe Leone's Gastronomia is a satellite source for traditional Italian specialty items, homemade breads, handmade mozzarel- la, and restaurant quality prepared dishes—all produced fresh daily. Built for convenience, Joe Leone's Gastronomia offers a variety of choose and go sandwiches, salads, soups, sauces, dips, chees- es, and desserts for everything from the family meal to entertaining guests. Custom Gift Baskets, Handcrafted Gift Boxes, and Gift Cards are also available. Committed to quality, personalized cus- tomer service, and overall Excellence for over ten years, Joe Leone's Gastronomia has earned a com- parable reputation to our original location. Open seven days. We invite you to visit us in person or always online for an unforgettable experience! JOE LEONE'S ITALIAN SPECIALTIES 510 Route 35 South Point Pleasant Beach, (732) 701-0001 www.joeleones.com Please refer to our ad on page 61 and our listings on page 61 and above. Proud to call Point Pleasant Beach home for over twenty years, experience the Premier Italian Specialty Destination at the Jersey Shore! Driven by a passion for culinary excellence and a commit- ment to quality service, our Point Pleasant Beach location is an award-winning Italian Specialty foods retailer, offering an expansive array of imported gourmet retail products, custom-built sandwiches, sauces, soups, salads, imported as well as domestic cheeses and ornate homewares. Produced fresh daily from scratch, our home- made breads, handmade fresh mozzarella, and restaurant quality prepared dishes represent the foundation of our proud reputation. Custom Gift Baskets, Handcrafted Gift Boxes, and Gift Cards are available for any occasion. Be our guest to experience our vision for excellence and witness our tradition of commitment to customer satis- faction and outstanding products. Challenge your senses, embrace the experience! Open seven days and always online at JoeLeones.com. u outside one next to him. As we rotat- ed, everything outside of us became a blur. I'd try to grab a brass ring for a free ride, but my short arm couldn't reach. All the while the fun-crazed face, a caricature of George C. Tilyou, owner of Steeplechase Park, looked down on us. That face later became Tillie—the face of Asbury Park on the Palace Amusements. 1 entire faces, masks will only be worn over their noses and mouths to avoid spreading the airborne coronavirus. It's ironic that this parade that cele- brates the dead is cancelled because of a pandemic. This reminds me of a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, "The Mask of the Red Death." In it, Poe tells of a similar pandemic and how a prince and a few of his selected nobles thought they could avoid it by having a masquerade ball in his isolated and well-fortified abbey. They could not! Seems the people of Toms River are wiser than the prince since they can- celled this year's Halloween parade. Hopefully, we will be able to cele- brate Thanksgiving around our har- vest tables with extended families. Something we always looked forward to is the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City. As of this writing it is still too soon to tell if this too will be cancelled. If so, we'll all miss seeing Santa Claus end- ing the parade and ushering in the Christmas holiday. This Christmas, that little boy and his brother, now adults older than their father was, will get together and amble down to the Seaside boardwalk and beach. Here they'll gaze at the waves rolling in as they talk above the sound of the breakers looking back and recalling their good times together. Frank Finale is the author of the coffee table books "To The Shore Once More, Volumes I - III" and children's books "A Gull's Story, Parts 1 - 3." He is also coeditor of the anthologies "Under A Gull's Wing" and "The Poets of New Jersey." Please refer to pages 6 - 9 as well as www.jerseyshorebooks.com for more infor- mation about his books and appearances. Continuing to look back, another holiday that I look forward to at the Jersey Shore is Halloween, especial- ly in Toms River where I taught for many years. There, high school art students paint the store windows with macabre scenes or fall festivi- ties. Judges award prizes for the best ones. Various organizations and school clubs build elaborate floats for the long-awaited Halloween parade, the second largest parade in the United States. Excitement builds and crescendos with children and adults dressed in costumes and prizes awarded for the most imaginative. Sadly, everything is different this year. The parade was cancelled due to the pandemic. Prior to this, the parade, which began circa 1919, had only been cancelled during the Great Depression, World War II, and Superstorm Sandy. Children and adults will still be wearing masks, except that instead of covering their Tillie, the face of Asbury Park. 1 Fred Trump (Donald Trump's father) purchased Steeplechase Park in 1964. In 1966, he announced he was tearing it down to build giant seaside apartment towers in its place. Trump relished the idea of knocking it down—to the point of having an "amusement park funeral" featuring girls in bikinis and chances for onlookers to destroy the landmark with stones and bricks. Once Trump was done trashing the 69-year-old piece of history, he bulldozed the rest. Trump ended up never getting permission to build his high-rises there and had to resell the proper- ty in 1969. In Asbury Park, the caricature face of Tillie has outlasted Fred Trump. In subsequent years, the land was leased to ride operators who attempted to restore the park to its original glory. The leases expired in 1980, and a variety of things occupied the land. Today, MCU Park (home of the minor league baseball team Brooklyn Cyclones) sits where Steeplechase Park once was. Sea Girt sunrise. Kelly S. Andrews

• Cover