The link that you see at the left....Isaac Crockett....is a novella that I wrote over twenty years ago. It's the story of a young man raised in Ocean City, New Jersey....whose father is the pastor of the local Reformed Presbyterian Church....who along with a few of his mates started a rock n' roll group....Pilgrim....that became one of the biggest bands in the country. At the very beginning of the story he comes to the rescue of a young lady....thinking never to see her again....but God had other plans. She is Roman Catholic.....they do meet again.....and well....then I told a story. I named every character after someone I had known in life....it was just easier to pick names that way....and I went to the funeral of one of these friends a few weeks ago.
Ocean City and its boardwalk are one of my favorite vacation destinations. My wife is more of a resort type person....but I like the boardwalk.....walking it....stopping in just about every store....walking past the hermit crabs....and browsing the little figurines....and just enjoying the sight of families having fun....then buying a cup of those greasy french fires.....and washing it down with a milk shake. I've been known to walk the entire boardwalk with some googly eyeglasses that I bought in one of the stores.....or wearing a long pony tail under a hat....or anything that blinks a neon light really. I still have my.....Harvard Law....(big letters)....just kidding....(little letters).....t-shirt! That's me.
There's one other thing that I have done on every beach vacation for the last three decades at least. It started with our young son....as he and I would buy a couple of those little bottles with a shark's tooth or sand and shells in it....plugged by a cork. We would write a little evangelistic message on a piece of paper....put it in the bottle....push down on the cork....and throw them into the surf....for someone to find. As the years passed....I would put the URL of this website in the bottle.
OK I'm a little weird....but you knew that already anyway. A few times a week I visit a webcam from Ocean City N. J.....and just look at the waves coming in.....real time....and the boardwalk....even though in the winter there is barely a walker or two on it. So I brought it up on Saturday.....and a message said that the camera was down.....and I checked later in the day.....still down. Later that evening I read in the news where there was a fire on the boardwalk....at the amusement park arcade....on top of which I presume is the same camera that I pick to look over the surf. It's only been a few days but hopefully these folks will recover quickly....and that seems to be the plan.
One last thing.....at the end of my novella....after a lot has happened in the lives of Isaac and that young lady Anne....and the story seems to be at an end....a fire breaks out at a shop on the boardwalk....the Christian bookstore owned by Isaac and Anne....which leads to what God's new plan will be.
There has been 2492 visits to the novella....so some must have read it.
