Scene on the Road

For many, the end of August means a last chance to get down to the shore. It also means this blog is winding down, and since I've only made one road trip in New Jersey all summer, I decide to go out with a two week jaunt along all the shore routes.

So I'm zigzagging across the state, trying to take as many of the back roads to the shore as I can. U.S. Routes 9, 40, 30 and 322; NJ Routes 47, 49, 50 and 72; along with County Roads 542, 559, and 561. The ones I missed, including those routes ending up on the northern side of the AC Expressway, I'll hit next week.

I'd also like to wrap up the summer with some of YOUR road trip photos. Send me your jpegs as email attachments to Roadtrip@phillynews.com. I'll post them here over the Labor Day weekend and run some in the newspaper with my final column.

Just north of downtown Woodstown, I miss a turn and end up facing a compound of warehouses along Woodstown-Mullica Hill Road. They're painted with aphorisms, platitudes, maxims, proverbs, folk sayings, and half-truths, all older than this Ford pickup parked outside.

Bob Moore, on the right below, the manager of Helena Chemicals' Woodstown warehouses, has worked in the leased space for fifteen years. He tells me the writing on the walls hasn't been re-painted or re-touched for over 30 years. The warehouses were built by Earl L. Erdner, starting in the late 1940s and expanded and were painted through the 1960s.

He's walking with Bob Tull, who's making an insurance site visit for the Chubb Group in Philadelphia, and, as an engineer, is even more impressed with the wooden trusses inside the buildings.

Everyone I meet here has a favorite quotation. Bob Pedrick, who's unloading trucks, likes this one. I chose the photo with his forklift blocking part of it, so you can fill in the age yourself.

"A quotation at the right moment is like bread in a famine."
the Talmud (not on the wall)

In front of the Cowtown Rodeo, on the other side of Woodstown - the WESTERN side.

A week before they head back home to Chelyabinsk, Russia, university students Daria Makushina, left, and Alena Tuckmacheva play solitaire on their laptops along Route 9, at end of a day working at a campground in the U.S. Department of State's Summer Work and Travel Program.

Day campers arrive at the Cape May County Park & Zoo.

A shuttered WaWa, on Route 9 outside Avalon, near Exit 13 on the Garden State Parkway. There is a new Super Wawa near exit 17 in Ocean View.

Paul Sweson cleans the door glass at the Ocean View Service Area on the Garden State Parkway.

Marvin Katzer of South Hampton stops to look at the history display in the service area's Visitors Center on his way home. He first came to the shore to work as a busboy between his junior and senior years in high school. He worked summers in Atlantic City all through college and met his wife Arlene there, eventually buying a house in Ventnor.

Stewart Segin, with the Upper Township Public Works Department, catches up on his reading while he takes a lunch break along Route 50. He's always been a reader, since the days of the Bulletin.