The "Family Vacation" Story

Fortune hunters Steve and LDub.  I got him the shirt, but 
after he told me it was a Fred's Tavern shirt he was wearing
when he fell off a roof while being a chimney sweep, I told 
him to find a different home for it after he took it off.

It was an ordinary day.  Roaming the beach at 94th Street in Stone Harbor searching for gold.  Yep!  My brother Steve and I have become treasure hunters on the nearly empty beach.  The last few years he and his wife Kathy have rented a house in Stone Harbor, New Jersey during the month of September and have invited my wife Carol and I to join he and Kathy.  The week is meant for his family vacation and he is thoughtful enough to ask his brother and sister-in-law to join his family.  As we were growing up in the early 1950's, mom and dad rented houses in the Chesapeake Bay community known as Crystal Beach.  Steve and I always enjoyed our summer vacations together, but as we grew older we tended not to spend as much time together since we were five years apart and had different friends and different interests.  Now that we are both older and no longer have our mom and dad, we have grown closer once again.  Our families share most holidays together and Steve now has graciously invited Carol and I to join he and Kathy and his family during their yearly week at the beach in the fall.  We have begun to share stories of our youth and the good times we spent on vacations as children.  Steve loves to go out of his way to make the family vacations fun and entertaining.  This year he purchased two

My beach fortune.

 metal detectors, hoping his grand- children would enjoy them when they arrived for a few days.  But, he thought he and I should try them out before they arrived.  Headed to the beach with the headsets covering our ears and the units turned to high to try and find treasure buried deep in the sand.  After about ten minutes of finding nothing I felt it best to "plant" something to make it more interesting.  Took a new penny from my pocket and tramped it into the sand, hoping I would remember where it was located.  As Steve and I were searching the same locale, I heard the unit alert me to a find and dug deep into the sand, producing the shiny penny.  Steve was ecstatic!  Made him try even harder.  After about a half hour of searching I was able to find a lid of a bottle, a metal candy wrapper, a hook and screweye, a piece of aluminum foil folded over and a small tube of Abreva which is a cold sore medication.  Steve found a few bottle caps, but not much else.  We still enjoyed the time together, but realized we weren't going to become rich from our exploration.  Didn't matter since we were getting to once again spend time together.  As we age it seems more important to rekindle the bonds we once enjoyed as we traveled through childhood and adolescence and how better to do that then by the good ole' family vacation.  Works for us!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.