For Frying Out Loud
Read For Frying Out Loud Online
Authors: Fay Jacobs
Bywater Books
Copyright © 2010 and 2016 Fay Jacobs
All rights reserved.
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Bywater Books First Edition: May 2016
For Frying Out Loud: Rehoboth Beach Diaries
was originally published by A&M Books, Rehoboth, DE in 2010
Cover designer: TreeHouse Studio
Bywater Books
PO Box 3671
Ann Arbor MI 48106-3671
ISBN: 978-1-61294-076-2 (ebook)
To BJQ and the Usual Suspects
Foreword
BY ERIC C. PETERSON
The last couple of years have not been kind to Fay Jacobs.
She moved to the seashore only to be buried under a foot of snow (which is not ⦠supposed ⦠to happen!), she's been bossed and chastised by a synthetic voice on the dashboard who apparently never heard of the Verrazano bridge, she's been threatened by bats in a literal backyard belfry and many other disconcerting adventuresâ¦
But who are we kidding? The last couple of years haven't been kind to any of us. The planet is getting hotter, our bank accounts are getting smaller, and all of those little gadgets we were told would make our lives so much simpler have only made them more complicated than ever before.
It's a good thing for us that Fay Jacobs has a sense of humor. Fay learned early on in life that while tragedies certainly do happen, most of them can later be turned into funny stories that can be shared with friends. And the laughs can make all the heartburn worth it. Well, some stories are more worth it than others, but you know what I'm saying. It's a philosophy that helps Fay get through the tough times. It's a philosophy that Fay has passed on to me during our seventeen years of friendship, and it really does work. Of course, the difference between Fay and I is that she has a lot more friends than I do.
And I'm no wallflower, either. Hey, I've got people. But Fay has a readership, built from years of writing a regular column in her hometown's newsletter for the gay, lesbian, and allied straight communities of Rehoboth Beach, Delaware (
Letters from CAMP Rehoboth
) and from two collections of essays and reflections (
As I Lay Frying, Fried & True
), both published by A&M Books.
This readership isn't just a group of fans. They're a group of friends. They've known Fay at her best and her worst, and she's made them laugh both times. Only a friend can do that.
So I guess I should amend that first statement. The last couple of years have been awfully good to Fay Jacobs. Okay, stuff happens â but when you're Fay, most of that, um⦓stuff”â¦can be turned into a funny story, and hundreds of people can soon have a good laugh about it. And if you knew Fay like I know Fay (and since you're reading this, I'm guessing you soon will), it doesn't get much better than that.
Eric C. Peterson
Table of Contents
A Whole Lotta Ugly from a Whole Bunch of Stupid
The Terrorists Have Won, Part Two
Attention Melting Pot: Gay Is a Culture
Get Your History Straight and Your Nightlife Gay
The Handwriting Is on the Wall
I'm Here, I'm Queer, I'm Talking About It
Crying Wii, Wii, Wii all the Way Home
Health Insurance Isn't Insurance; It's Pre-paid Healthcare
How Rehoboth Lived Up to Its Biblical Name
Thanks for the Mammeries: Pre-Quake Sunday
A Rolling Home Gathers No Moss
My Name Is Fay J, and I Am a Carboholic
Positively Stranger Than Fiction
Mort Rubenstein, 91: Madison Avenue Ad Man
I Have Questionable Content. Woo-Hoo!
BIG APPLE TO BIG SCRAPPLE WHY I LOVE THE DELAWARE COAST
I'm not a Delmarva native. Darn few of us here are. In fact, before I arrived I didn't know that Delmarva meant the Delaware, Maryland and Virginia eastern shore. Delmarvalous. Frankly, to be considered an old-timer you have to have arrived with the Dutch or been born in a manger in a chicken coop. So I'm an interloper. But that doesn't mean I don't love lower, slower Delaware.
Of course, when I first arrived, mid-1990s, everything was a culture shock for this New Yorker. Fresh off a daily one-hour commute, people here considered the one-mile ride from downtown Rehoboth to Route One going “all the way out on the highway.” At best, a New Yorker might carve a pumpkin, but would never consider making one a prize-winning projectile like they do here at the Pumpkin Chunkin' Fest. Most tellingly, folks in Sussex mostly looked baffled when I mentioned Matzoh Ball soup.
As a matter of course, I was suspicious of any event celebrating live chickens or dead Horseshoe Crabs. And no bonafide New Yorker would ever be caught ordering a flat breakfast meat called scrapple made of spare pork parts too peculiar for sausage.
Sure, my real estate agent provided full disclosure that I was moving to Rehoboth Beach, but frankly it never occurred to me I'd be living in rural Delaware. The first time I ventured outside my comfort zone was to the DMV. At first I thought some patrons were civil war re-enactors but it turned out they were dressed for agribusiness. Who knew.
And people were really, really friendly, which made me both nervous and suspicious. I'd lived in a New York City apartment building for three years and never said a single word to anyone in the elevator. It's just not done.
My second expedition took me across the Woodland Ferry outside Seaford. I love a good ferry ride, like the one between Manhattan and Staten Island, crowded amid 30 vehicles and 4,440 passengers with, of course, nobody saying a word to each other. Twenty one million people ride it annually, racing five miles in 25 minutes, on the most reliable transit schedule in the U.S.
The Woodland Ferry, on the other hand, takes six cars and a sprinkle of chicken catchers over a really narrow trickle of the Nanticoke River. The slower lower trip, lasting five minutes, is like an arcade ride, and I love it. And it might or might not be running Thursday mornings because it might or might not be down for maintenance.
For sheer contrast with, say, Manhattan's Bloomingdales, we've got Wilson's General Store, and darn it, the shop was closed on the Sunday I first rode past. Their sign said Ammunition, Notary Public, Groceries, Meat, Hardware, Subs, and Coffee. You never know when you are going to need eggs and buckshot at the same time.
I'm sure it surprises no one that prior to my first Apple-Scrapple Festival I was a scrapple virgin.
There I was, chowing down on this legendary farm food, negotiating it nicely until I looked up and saw the 40-foot scrapple company sign listing the ingredients as pig's snouts and lard.
Just then the Hog Calling Contest began with people wailing “Suuu-eeeee, Suuueeeee,” which was roughly the same sound I was making spitting out my pig snout sandwich. Wisely my mate grabbed my arm and steered me toward a vendor hawking kosher hot dogs, which, if dissected, are probably the Hebrew National equivalent of snouts and lard.
Here's another of my favorite Sussex traditions â business cards by cash registers. Back in the Big Apple or its kissin' cousin downtown Rehoboth, business cards by the register represent realtors, day spas and concierge services. A mere mile outside town, there are cards for gun cleaning, taxidermy, and deer-cutting. So near and yet so far.
Hey, just last week I saw a wild turkey by the side of the road, recognizing it as such from my previous experience with a whiskey bottle. This turkey had an under-chin wattle just crying out for a good plastic surgeon. I was sure it was my find of the day until I passed the front yard with the camels in it. I imagine every day, not just Wednesday, is hump day in that household.
Then there's the infamous Delaware State Fair Duck Drop? Officials literally drop a duck (albeit gently) onto a numbered grid where people have plunked down money to wager which grid gets the first duck poop. You can't make things like this up.
We also have the prehistoric-looking horseshoe crab. They say it's more closely related to spiders, ticks, and scorpions than to crabs and I believe them. New York has its crustaceans, mostly on menus, but I can't remember ever seeing a horsehoe crab wash up on Fire Island. Here, in the name of eco-tourism, they throw the damn things a festival.
So my love affair with the coast and its rural neighbors continues. Not that I haven't shared my culture with the locals. Lots of long-time Delmarvans can be found singing karaoke with me to Liza's “New York, New York,” spearing matzoh balls at my Passover Seder, or razzing me for my allegiance to the Bronx Bombers. Don't tell anyone, but lately I've been rooting for the Shorebirds, our local farm team.
But I do have to be careful. Last time I went to New York I inadvertently started chatting with people in an elevator and almost got myself arrested. I'm an honorary Delmarvan now. Except for the Scrapple. Some traditions are just too hard to swallow.