Life's a beach

We didn't do traditional family vacations when I was a kid, but seeing as how we weren't a traditional family, the lack of traditional vacations sort of makes sense. This isn't something that I would ever complain about though, because instead of family road trips to the Grand Canyon, or trips (by car or plane) to Disneyland, we would pop over to the beach for 2-3 day stays multiple times each summer.

I say that we didn't take vacations, but there was the one trip to Seattle that we took when I was about nine years old. Thanks to yours truly, this trip was a complete and utter trainwreck. I can't remember what my deal was, but I was not happy to be there, and I made sure to let it be known during our entire stay. In retrospect, this disastrous excursion may have been partly responsible for my mom not wanting to venture too far from Portland when it came to future outings. I was just talking about regrets a couple of days ago, and this is one that is definitely on the list, as I still regret ruining this trip by being such a little a**hole. But I digress...

My earliest memory of being at the beach is pretty vague, there's no specific place involved, it's just me going around and trying to "rescue" stranded jellyfish. Due to the potential of possibly being stung, I wasn't allowed to help the big Pacific Sea Nettle's, but everybody else was fair game. It's very foggy, but I can remember going around and scooping my hand under them so that there would be a layer of sand between us, and walking each one that I found back down to the water. Looking back, the odds are high that many of them were already dead, and the one's that weren't, would've most likely just washed back on to shore, attempting to relay these facts to young me would've been pointless though -- I had a job to do, and silly grown-up words weren't going to prevent me from doing it.

The earliest memories that I have of a specific beach trip come from the year after my grandma died. My grandma was diagnosed with leukemia in 1988, and by March of '89 she was gone. The main part of my family wasn't very big at the time of her diagnosis, but she was the foundation, so her passing really did a number on everyone, especially my grandpa. Even though she was only in her early 50's, I think it was the suddenness of the disease that affected everyone so much, you know, it was like one moment she was being diagnosed, and then in the next moment we were at her funeral. I was only six at the time, and I was very close to her, but it would be years before I started noticing the effects that her death, and subsequent absence, had on me.

Fractures in the family dynamic started occurring almost immediately after my grandma's death, although I wouldn't learn of this until about a decade later, but early on there were some attempts to keep things together... namely a family beach trip in the summer of 1990.

My grandpa was fond of Seaside, so it was decided (by who I don't know) that a house would be rented for a couple of days, and everyone who could go, would go. Most of my memories from this outing are lost to time, but I do recall that not everyone was there (a couple of aunts and uncles were missing), and that I had to share a bed with my grandpa, which might not have been so bad, but my grandpa was notorious for his loud snoring (think wall shaking), so I probably didn't get a whole heck of a lot of sleep over those couple of days.

The other thing that I remember is that Seaside was awfully crowded, which didn't appeal to my mom or myself (even at eight years old I didn't like crowds). They did however have a really wonderful arcade, which had I been older, I probably would've spent the whole weekend in, but being so young, I needed supervision, and nobody wanted to spend a lot of their time watching me play games, so I don't think I got more than an hour or two there that weekend.

The summer of 1991 saw another planned trip to Seaside with the family, but before that took place, my mom and I went to Rockaway Beach for the fourth of July. I believe that this was my first time going there, and It. Was. Great! Rockaway truly was a breath of fresh air (literally and figuratively). At that time it was still a sleepy beach town, a sleepy beach town that also just so happened to put on a massive fireworks show each Independence Day. And for being such a small town, it sure had a lot of great places. Practically right across the street from our motel, the Silver Sands, was an antique book/junk shop that in retrospect I wish I would've been a little older so that I might've appreciated it more. And then like a block away was a card shop (I wish I could remember what it was called), and for being located in such a small place, it sure was stocked well (the owner was really nice too). The only thing I remember buying there that first year was a couple of packs of 1991 Wild Card football, and that only stands out because I pulled a 1000 stripe out of one of those packs -- although the significance of that card was lost on me at that time, as I didn't really understand what the deal with the stripes was.

The family trip to Seaside came later in the summer, and it would end up being quite the disaster, but at least this time it wasn't my fault. My uncle's fiancée (my soon to be aunt) was... hmm... how to phrase this? Let's just say that she was under the weather, and it made for an unpleasant trip... for everyone! My mom was so disgusted after this, that she decided that her and I would be skipping the following year's family trip, which actually led to us skipping the next couple of years.

The summer of '92 proved to be a good one, as we returned to Rockaway for the 4th again, and then later in the summer we went to Newport for a weekend. I had some early birthday money when we went to Rockaway that year, which ended up getting spent on a box of 1992 Wild Card Basketball, and a few more packs of '91 Wild Card football. The box was as good as I would've wanted it to be, but the football packs were where the magic was, as they yielded yet another 1000 stripe [even then I still didn't realize how amazing this was, I would eventually pull two more years later from different locations... I still haven't ever heard of anyone else ever pulling four 1000 stripes]

My first trip to Newport ended up being pretty good too. They have the big aquarium there, which is somewhere that I would recommend people going at least once, but the real treat, at least for me, was the Ripley's Believe it or Not! museum. I loved everything about Ripley's when I was a kid, so even though the museum was a bit cheesy, and not overly large, I absolutely adored it. There was also a wax museum right next door, but that didn't do a lot for me at the time.

1993 saw us return to Rockaway for the 4th once again. This would be the year that I got a box of 1992 Topps Archives as an early birthday present (no more packs of Wild Card football though), and can recall opening up the box at the motel. I think that then later in the summer we went to Lincoln City, which I don't have any recollections of.

My mom and I would continue to take at least two trips to the beach each summer until about 1997, always to Rockaway for the fireworks show, always staying at the Silver Sands, mostly because of the indoor pool (if you've ever been to the Oregon Coast, then might understand why an indoor pool was so appealing) -- and later in the summer it would either be Lincoln City or Newport. Somewhere between 1993 and 1997 we would attend one more of the family's beach trips, I can't remember where it was, but it wasn't Seaside. By then the family had grown quite a bit (kids were being cranked out left and right), so it was quite a bit different then it had been five or six years earlier.

I don't recall why it is that we stopped going to Rockaway, but by the time we stopped going it had changed quite a bit as well. Both the book/junk store, and the card shop, were just memories by then, and the town was becoming more touristy - probably why the Silver Sand's prices went up - which now that I think about it, is probably why we stopped going.

The trips may have stopped, but I will always associate 1991 Wild Card Football, 1992 Wild Card basketball, and 1992 Topps Archives with Rockaway, more specifically that card shop in Rockaway. At one time I had quite a few cards from all three sets, but all of them (save for the 1000 stripers), and so much more, was donated to a charity auction in the early 2000's. I had stopped collecting by then, and hadn't planned on ever coming back, so when I heard about the auction, it seemed like as good a place as any to give the bulk of my cards too. There have been a few times since I started back up with the card collecting, that I sort of regret giving away all of those cards, but then I remember how excited the woman who ran the auction was to get the donation, and knowing that the proceeds went to a very worthy cause, it makes me feel far less regretful.

Since returning to collecting I have a picked a number of 1991 Wild Card football stripes, as I do still like that set quite a bit. The Wild Card basketball is a lot less appealing to me at this point, it's the college jersey's, I'm just not a big fan of cards with guys in there college uni's. And the Topps Archives, well, I still love the hell out of that set, but have had little luck finding any in the wild. I've maybe come across 2 or 3 of the gold parallels over the last nine years, and that's it.

A couple of months ago, Randy, who can be found on Twitter @RefsInTheBack, picked up a box of Archives, seeing this provoked many memories, many of which you have just read. Because of the memories, and because of my inability to find any cards from this set, I took advantage of the offer that Randy made a few days later when he asked if anyone was interested in any of his duplicates. I really only wanted a couple of cards (at least for now), and Randy was kind enough to send those couple of wants my way. So many thanks to Randy, not only for the cards, but for providing the inspiration for today's post as well.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.