“Every now and then, we would get a wild
hair to go camping,” he said. “Things were
made easier by living on the bay in a time when
people didn’t much give a damn. Nobody told
us we couldn’t camp or light fi res on the beach,
nobody told us to move our boat, and nobody
cared that wild Indians were whooping it up
in the middle of the night. And so it was in the
decades before Englewood was “discovered.”
We had everything, man. We loaded the
boat like we were assaulting Iwo Jima. Tents,
lanterns, food, guns (for varmints), knives (for
the Boogie Man) gasoline (great for refueling
engines and starting fi res!) ... and off we putted.
Little boys on the adventure of a lifetime. We
unloaded, set up the tent, unpacked food and
lanterns – let the riot begin!
“By dark-thirty, we had explored, chased, and
fi shed to exhaustion. If we were lucky we had
some clams or fresh fi sh that we caught, and we
would start a fi re and cook them. Sometimes
we just had hot dogs. Sparks from the roaring
fi re fl ew upward to die against the velvet sky,
and we stared into the fi re, mesmerized by the
stars and Milky Way overhead.
“Sitting peacefully didn’t last long.
Abandoning the fi re, we raced up and
down the beach, running through the
waves causing an explosion of cold
phosphorescence in our wake. Later,
collapsing around the dying fi re, we
roasted marshmallows as the rising moon
turned the night white ... and the terrors
of the night set in. Laying on our blankets,
we listened to the sounds of night. The
hoot of owls, the cry of a mourning dove.
The life and death of the night hunters
and their victims. Looking out onto the
beach, glowing in the moonlight, we could
see “spook shadows” and hear the eerie
rustlings of the wind through the pines.
“Little boys with vivid imaginations would
try to ignore it all and sleep ... and in the
cold light of morning, we would pack up
and return to civilization.
“But for that night, we were Tom O’
Bedlam.”
Generational Englewood resident Janice
Parks (shown in the photo above, at right,
circa 1978) fondly remembers time spent at
Ski Alley as well. Back then, the only sounds
you would hear were those of the wind in
the Australian pines, and the never-ending
lapping of the surf.
“We would park down by the Sea Star
Motel and go shelling all the way down the
peninsula to the end and back,” she said.
“I always expected to fi nd treasure washed
ashore; when I go there today I have the
same expectation. The Pass and Ski Alley
were where I learned to waterski.