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And it'll just mostly be, you know, just like we were chatting. It's just, this is a little tougher one for me because you're my friend and it's different, but we will start how I always start, which is, could you just tell us your name and when and where you were born, just for the sake of the tape?

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My name is Carol Hart. My last name now is Macfeat. I was born November 22nd, 1953, although I was born in Philadelphia. I moved to Avalon shortly afterwards. And... Oh, so you're really a Shoobie?

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Yes, I'm really a Shoobie. Yes, I was born in Philly. So we, yeah, we moved full-time to Avalon by like, I don't know, January, February. I mean, my parents lived here full-time before I was born in Philadelphia. We came back after I was born. Okay. And where was your house at that time?

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At that time, I lived at 171 25th Street. I lived there until 1964. And in 1964, I moved all the way to 212 26th Street across 2nd Avenue and over a block. Why did you move? Just because the house on 25th Street was too small and my parents wanted a little bigger house.

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That's cool. How many siblings? One sister. She's younger. She's four years younger than I am. And who do you remember playing with when you grew up? Well, when I lived on 25th Street, I played with the Salvesen children who lived directly in back

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of me. Karen, George, Billy, and then Chris was born a few years later. She's about 10 years younger than I am, but mostly Karen, George, and Billy. But also on 2nd Avenue between what was then the Sportsman's Tavern and Fisher's Hardware was a large field. And in that field, which was about the center of the island and the school was on 26th Street, a lot of kids gathered to play

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there. So I also played with the Tozour kids, the Torroni kids, Robertson, Inkey. At that time, all the kids in Avalon, whether you went to public school or Catholic school as I did, played together. So a lot of us played together there on that field or up by the Tozour's house. Cool. Where did you go to school?

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I went to St. Paul's School in Stone Harbor. There were eight grades there. I did not go to kindergarten. And there were only three or four classes of us that went all the way through St. Paul's and I'm one of those classes. Shortly afterwards, the school was closed because the fire department didn't like the fact that it had wooden fire escapes.

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Oh, you can't say you blame them, right? Right. So they closed the school. So that school was at 100th and 3rd Avenue where the current St. Paul's Parish Hall is. Back of that was the old St. Paul's Church, which was used as our lunchroom and cafeteria stage programs were in there too.

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So how did you get down there every day? Mr. Matthews was my bus driver. He drove me every day from first grade through 12th grade when I went to Wildwood Catholic. And he was a bus driver. And coincidentally, his house was one of the houses that was a major fire in the 62 storm.

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And then where'd you go to high school? I went to Wildwood Catholic. I took the bus to Wildwood Catholic as well. Were there other kids from Avalon going there? There were. There was a whole bus full of us. In my class was Ann Davies, Gloria Parenti,

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and Rick Garafola. But also on the bus with us various years were a couple of the Mataluccis, Larry and Marvin Wells, Don Losefsky, the Maleys, Tracys, McKinleys. So, you know, there were several of us on the bus. Cool. Where did your family, like, go to do your shopping? Or were there any

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businesses around at that time that you remember as being important to you? Well, you went to the Courthouse Acme, which wasn't where it is now. Because there wasn't any place else to go. So that's where you went food shopping. Mm-hmm. For clothes and, like, school clothes shopping, we went to Atlantic City.

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And I guess it was Atlantic Avenue and Atlantic City used to have major department stores like Gimbal's and things like that. So we would go over there if we did shopping. But we always got our saddle shoes for Catholic school at Beck's in Wildwood on Glenwood Avenue. Um, there were really no stores open here in Avalon in the winter except Keen's Pharmacy,

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basically. Pioneer Market was here. Avalon Supermarket was here. They were here in the summer. Wawa didn't come until probably the late 70s, early 80s, I think. Oh, was it here that early? Yeah.

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I thought Wawa was, like, a recent addition to town. I didn't even realize. Nope. Because I remember I lived over the 21st Street Bridge when I was teaching. I taught at Middle. I was living over the 21st Street Bridge with a friend of mine who was from Pennsylvania. And when the Wawa opened, we used to walk to Wawa just because we could.

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You know, like, we'd get a candy bar or, you know, a cup of tea or something like that just because there was something that we could go to after, you know, six o'clock at night. Donnelly's was here for a while, but that was probably not until the mid-70s. And, you know, but everything except the Princeton was closed in the evenings. It was pretty quiet

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here then. You, I know you are a member of the Catholic Church. Your family always went to the Catholic Church in Avalon. Yes.

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So you, you have memories of that from childhood. And at that time, it seems like you would have been going to the one on 25th Street. Well, um. Or did you go down to Stone Harbor?

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When I was young, little, like, till, I don't know, 62, I think it was, the church on 25th Street was not open in the wintertime. And this was not a parish. So you had to go to St. Paul's for church. And my parents were very active in the school and in the church, you know, in the choir,

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all those kinds of things. So we went to St. Paul's for church in the winter. In the summertime, like the spring, when it got warm enough, because the church on 25th Street didn't have heat or, you know, we, in the spring, we would go there. But then in the summer, we would go to the auditorium on 50th Street. And they would have masses in the auditorium at 50th Street,

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which is now called Monsignor Tierney Hall. And the front of the church, on the front of the auditorium, which is closest to the Catholic church that's there now, was where the altar was. Currently, it's the kitchen in that hall. And they just set up chairs every Sunday and, you know, had masses on the hour.

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And the masses would be full. But the thing was, you had to get there early so you could sit in the first couple rows because the center of the church got so hot that people would be passing out. And they had big, these big tall fans that they had going and they moved air around in the center of the church, but they turned them off during certain parts of the mass, like the sermon

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and things like that, so everybody could hear. So if you didn't sit in the first couple rows, you passed out. So, I don't think I realized that. Like, what, it was, I think, we talked about it before, you and I. The big Catholic church was built, I think, in 83?

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Correct. But there was a hall there before that. The hall is still there. Okay. I didn't, I didn't realize that there was anything there before 83.

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Oh yeah, the hall was there first. Okay. So, the hall was there first and, well, right, and that was built as Sacred Heart Hall. So, it was built even before, I think, we separated from Stone Harbor, from St. Paul's.

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So, the hall was built as Sacred Heart Hall. We always just here called it the auditorium. And they would put the chairs up every Sunday, take the chairs down because every Wednesday night was bingo. And that was a big production. My parents worked on bingo as well. So, my sister and I always used to get to go to bingo. We'd get to collect the cards and sell sodas and all that

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kind of stuff to help with bingo. And then after Wednesday night bingo, they take all the tables down from bingo and set it up again for church. So, that was here from, I'd say, the late 50s. I'm not sure exactly. And then after that, they built, there was a rectory on the corner of 49th,

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not where the rectory is now, but on the corner of 49th and 2nd was the rectory that they built because the church earned that whole block. And so, they built that rectory. And then, I guess, in 83, they built the church. And then shortly after that, they tore down that rectory and built the current rectory. Because the original rectory was on 26th Street,

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which was on the house tour a few years ago. What do you remember doing as a teenager that you can tell me? Well, I was very involved in high school. So, I did a lot of stuff in Wildwood. In the summers, I worked at Kohler's Bakery when it was owned by Bernie and Marcia Bischoff.

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And they were open from Easter to Thanksgiving. So, I worked most weekends from Easter to Thanksgiving. Every weekend, Bernie made fruit cakes for Thanksgiving, for Christmas, and all that stuff. And it was right across the street from my house. So, I just kind of rolled across the street. Bernie was a little wild. It's not the current Kohler's. It's the old Kohler's.

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Have you seen pictures of the old Kohler's? Okay, you had the windows along the side. And we had a great time working there. He was really, really fun to work for. Also, going into, I guess, end of sophomore year, beginning of junior year of high school, a bunch of us were really bored. So, we started what was called, with the help of

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Cary Lawson and Joe Breslin, the Jersey Cape Youth Council. And John Robertson, myself, a few other people got together. We visited all the high schools in the county and kind of got things going. And we would run a dance every month at the community hall. And other activities, maybe, you know, we'd do bowling, a bowling thing, or a hayride,

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or something like that. But primarily, it was dances at the community hall. And I had my own key to the community hall to go in and decorate and that kind of stuff. Very cool. You know, that wouldn't happen now. But yeah, so it was really fun. Ocean City did not choose to participate, but we had major participation from middle, because of us being so close here. And John

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was from Middle. So there's major participation from Middle and Wildwood Catholic, some from Lower and some from Wildwood High. That's very cool. I never knew that. Yeah, but we did do that. And yeah, it was really, it was fun. It lasted like, for our junior year and senior year. And then, I think it lasted maybe my first year of college. And then the core group of people that

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were running it moved on. But my mother loved that I did that, because I was the treasurer. And every night after the dances, we would have so much money that the police officers would drive me to deposit the money in the Sturdy Savings Bank night deposit. And it just so happened that I live right next door. So she didn't have to come get you. Or she didn't have to worry about

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who was bringing me home, because the police were bringing me home. So, you know, she never really had to worry. They pulled into the drive-thru there. I hopped out, put the money in the bank, and then ran into the house. So she was very happy with that. So, you know, but, but we, you know, we did that. And, you know, just kind of hung out. I mean, there were two movies. Oh,

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there were two movie theaters in Stone Harbor. One was open year-round. There was a bowling alley in Stone Harbor, and there was a bowling league that we all participated in. Wasn't there still a movie theater in Avalon? There was, but that wasn't open in the winter. Oh, wow. No, no heat situation. So, no, the movie theater in Avalon was not open

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in the winter. And only one in Stone Harbor was open. There was the Park and the Harbor in Stone Harbor, and the Harbor was open all year-round. The movie theater in Avalon closed right after Labor Day. But the bowling alley was in Stone Harbor, and I guess this isn't teenager. This is to like eighth grade. We had a bowling league, and Mrs. Eakin, my friend Barbara's mother,

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used to drive us all down. We all had our own bowling balls and bowling shoes, and we would go bowling every Saturday morning. That's cool. Yeah, and then Little League, there was like cheerleading and that kind of stuff. You have the pictures from that. And you were in the Avalon Players. I was in the Avalon Players. In the summertime,

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I, Bill Salvesen, who was my neighbor, coached Little League Baseball, and because I was a girl, I wasn't allowed to play, but they taught me how to keep score. So, I used to go to all the baseball games and be the scorekeeper, whether they were here in Avalon or Middle, Leesburg, Eldora, all kinds of fun different places we went to. And that was a combination of

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summer kids and winter kids, because at that time in Avalon, there were many families that the mothers didn't work, so they were down here all summer with their kids. And, you know, so you were friends with them, and you expected them, like Easter weekend, you knew those families would be here, and they'd be here on Labor Day. Right. You know, they'd come back after school was over

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and then stay on Labor Day. Yeah. And you were a beach tagger. I was one of the originals. I also worked in the booth when it was behind Borough Hall, a very small little booth. I was crammed in. I would start that. And Borough Hall was a different place than it is right now, right? No, it was that place. It was that place, a different building. It was built around that,

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like there's been additions and renovations, but it was there. Okay. So, it would have been the back parking lot where the little beach tag booth was. And by little, I mean not even like behind your desk. In fact, from the end of your desk there, it was really, really little. And so from the time I got home from school, I worked in the beach tag booth until I started

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on the beach, which was around June 15th. The first year was very difficult. People were 72, right? Very upset about it. I was stationed on 76th Street all summer. And part of our job was to keep the Stone Harbor people out. Because the first year, Stone Harbor had them in 71. We got them in 72. Beach tags were not reciprocal.

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So if you saw somebody, you had to turn them around. And it was ugly. And then you had a lot of people that, as I said, were very upset. They were property owners, taxpayers, you know, and were yelling about having to pay for beach tags. And we did not sell beach tags. You had to back to Borough Hall. So if people are on 76th Street and you tell them they have to go to 32nd

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Street, they're not really happy. But I heard the whole, you know, "I fought on the beaches of the Pacific so the shores of this country would be free. And no college kid in a group house is going to tell me to leave the beach." So what did you do? Did you call the police if somebody wouldn't? Um, eventually, but for the most part, you know, you just kind of talked them into it.

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The next second year, I was a rotator, like for people's days off. And like being on 76th Street was nice because all the people knew you, all the kids on the beach knew if they got lost, they just said they were on Carol's beach and the lifeguards knew where to bring them back to. So that worked great. So then the next year, I was a rotator. A couple

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times I ended up on 28th Street Beach, which was not pretty. And the police were called numerous times from that beach for, now probably would have been considered assault. Like people, we had, we're these ugly pith helmets and people are like knocking the pith helmets off your head, going, you know, all that kind of stuff. But, um. What year did they become reciprocal? Do you remember?

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73. Oh, okay. So that, that was short-lived. That was short-lived. It had to be short-lived because people were screaming. Yeah, there's no way. Yeah. People were just. Just build a wall on the beach. And basically that's what it was. And you know, or else they try to walk so far out in the water that the lifeguards would be screaming at them that they had to come in. And you know, you're

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standing there like, well, and the poor people that were just visitors had no idea that they had crossed into the other town. Right. And you know, they're like, but I have a beach tag. Well, that's a Harbor Beach tag. You know, this is like 79th and three quarters. You're in Avalon. So, you know, so that was pretty ugly. And then the next couple of years I was the supervisor. And, um, wait a minute,

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72. Yeah. The last years I was a supervisor and I did the scheduling and had an office in the old police station. And, um, you know, I used to just go check on everybody. So yeah. So I did that. .