It was the summer of 1976, and I was working at the Osprey in Manasquan, down the Jersey Shore. It was billed as the longest bar in New Jersey, and if you believed the locals, it had the world’s longest bar. Whether that was true or not didn’t matter—it felt like the center of the universe that summer.

The Osprey was enormous. The main bar featured the band Salvation, the hottest bar band on the Jersey Shore. Between their sets, the action shifted to the Boat Bar, where I spent most of my time working. A DJ kept the disco music pumping while the band took breaks, and the dance floor stayed packed. The Boat Bar flowed into several smaller bars and eventually into the food bar, where I’d often be assigned. Every room was wall-to-wall people. During the summer, it seemed like everyone at the Shore eventually made their way through those doors.

I had started working there the summer of 1975, just a year after graduating from high school. It was about as exciting as life could get for a twenty-year-old. Sometimes I’d fill in as a bartender when the crowds became overwhelming, but most of the time I was the stock guy—the one hustling behind the scenes. I kept the coolers stocked with beer, washed glasses, hauled trash, and did whatever it took to keep the bartenders moving. It wasn’t glamorous, but I loved every minute of it.

My days settled into the perfect summer routine. I’d spend the afternoon on the beach, report to work around two o’clock, and stay until closing at two in the morning. After we cleaned up, management gave us thirty minutes to enjoy a free drink before we’d head over to the Bamboo Room at the Sea Girt Inn. When that closed, we’d finish the night—or more accurately, start the morning—at the Surf and Sand Burger Place, grabbing food from Linda Ripple or Dorothea, two of the regular waitresses who always seemed happy to see us.

Life didn’t get much better than that.

I’d crash at a friend’s house, wake up, head straight back to the beach, and do it all over again. Since I was living in Long Branch, about forty-five minutes away, it made more sense to stay down the Shore for the weekend than drive home every night.

Manasquan wasn’t like Seaside Heights or Asbury Park. There wasn’t a giant boardwalk packed with rides and games. It was quieter, with a handful of restaurants and beach spots. But that’s what made it special. The people you saw lying on the beach during the day were often the same people you’d run into at the bars that night. It was one big circle of friends, music, sunshine, and late nights.

Then came July 3, 1976.

The Fourth of July weekend was about to begin, and we were preparing for one of the year's busiest weekends. Looking back, this is where the timeline splits—at least in my mind. If you’re a Back to the Future fan, you’ll understand.

A friend invited me to spend July Fourth on his boat to watch the Tall Ships sail into New York Harbor for the Bicentennial celebration. Ships from all over the world would be there. It was truly a once-in-a-lifetime event.

I turned him down. I had to work.

I’ve often wondered what would have happened if I’d said yes. What if I’d spent the day in New York Harbor instead of behind the bar? What if I had never been at the Osprey that weekend? Would I have ever met Amy?

That simple decision became the biggest “what if” of my life.

That evening, my coworker Jenny McGuire—who, I’ll admit, I had a pretty serious crush on—started telling me about three girls visiting from North Carolina. They were staying with her sister and brother-in-law, who had attended dental hygiene school down south. Jenny insisted I had to meet them.

It sounded interesting enough, but once work got busy, I completely forgot about it. Later that night, Jenny came looking for me. “They’re here,” she said, practically dragging me across the room.

Picture the scene.

The DJ is spinning disco—maybe "Rock the Boat" by the Hues Corporation, or "Dancing Queen" by ABBA. The dance floor is packed with girls in platform shoes, bell-bottoms, halter tops, and enough polyester to light up the room. Everywhere you looked, people were dancing, laughing, and celebrating the holiday weekend.

Then, across the room, I noticed three girls who looked like they had wandered into the wrong bar. They didn’t look like Jersey Shore girls at all. I can still see Amy exactly as she looked that night.

She was wearing jeans, Topsiders, and a blue denim shirt tied in a knot at the waist. While everyone else looked like they had stepped out of Saturday Night Fever, she looked like she’d just climbed out of a pickup truck somewhere in North Carolina.

She was different. She was a breath of fresh air. Jenny introduced me to Amy, her sister Joan, their cousin Tonya, and Jenny’s brother-in-law, Eddie. I honestly can’t remember what I said. Probably something as original as, “Nice to meet you.” The bar was so busy that we only had a few minutes to talk before I had to get back to work. Before they left, though, they invited me to a Fourth of July party at the house where they were staying.

Without hesitation, I told them I’d be there. Looking back, I guess that’s the real reason I never saw the Tall Ships.

The Best Night

July 4, 1976.

The biggest weekend of the summer had finally arrived. I was working that day, and the Osprey was as busy as I’d ever seen it. If I remember correctly, the Fourth fell on a Sunday that year, so the Boat Bar closed around 10:00 p.m. After cleaning up, I was finally off the clock.

I had somewhere to be.

The girls from North Carolina had invited me to a party at the house where they were staying in Colts Neck, about thirty minutes away. I couldn’t wait to meet them again.

When I arrived, the party was winding down. Most of the guests had already left. Paper plates, half-empty cups, and leftover food covered the tables—the telltale signs of a good Fourth of July celebration. But Amy, her sister Joan, and their cousin Tonya were still there, laughing and talking as if the night wasn’t ready to end.

After chatting for a while, I asked if they’d like to go out for the rest of the evening. Their answer was an easy yes.

Tonya had another guy tagging along who obviously had his eye on her, so we piled into our vehicles and headed to the one place I knew better than anywhere else—the Osprey. Amy climbed into my old green Ford van.

Calling it a van is generous. It drove more like a school bus than a car. It had a three-speed manual shifter on the steering column and a big engine cover—what we called the motor mount—between the front seats. It wasn’t fancy, but I loved that van.

Nothing beats walking back into the bar where you work when you’re finally there as a customer.

I knew everyone. The bartenders knew me, the musicians knew me, and I was determined to show these North Carolina girls what a Jersey Shore summer was all about.

We laughed, danced, and even did layback shots—where you’d lie back across the bar while the bartender poured two different liquors into your mouth at the same time. Looking back, it sounds completely ridiculous, but in 1976, it was just another fun night at the Shore.

Around midnight, we headed over to the Bamboo Room at the Sea Girt Inn. Somewhere along the way, Tonya lost track of the guy she’d come with, so now it was just the three of us riding together. The Bamboo Room had something I’d never seen anywhere else.

The bar sat in the middle of the room like an island, while high above one corner was a glass booth where the DJ spun oldies all night long. Throughout the evening, the bartender walked around taking pictures with slide film. A week later, those slides would be loaded into a projector mounted above the bar and displayed on a giant wall near the dance floor.

Long before cell phones and social media, it was the closest thing we had to seeing ourselves online. Whenever the bartender picked up his camera, everyone wanted to be in the next week’s slide show. That night, Amy and I made sure we were.

Chuck from Salvation wandered into the picture. Brian, the singer from the Sand Bar next door, jumped in too. Before long, we had captured a handful of snapshots that froze one perfect summer night in time. The following weekend, I came back to the Bamboo Room and watched those images appear on the wall.

There we were. Our first pictures together.

I convinced the bartender to climb up and retrieve the slides for me. I think it cost me a twenty-dollar tip, which felt like a fortune back then.

Nearly fifty years later, I still have those slides. They’re the very first photographs ever taken of Amy and me together.

When we finally left, we all squeezed back into my van. Since there were only two seats up front, Amy sat on top of the engine cover between us, holding onto the dashboard as we bounced down the road. It was 1976.

Seatbelts weren’t exactly a priority. Besides, we’d been having too much fun to worry about things like that.

The drive back to Colts Neck took about half an hour. Amy kept laughing in that Southern accent, talking about the “grips” she was holding onto while riding on the engine cover. Tonya had fallen asleep almost as soon as we pulled away.

Years later, Amy joked that if Tonya hadn’t fallen asleep, maybe I would have ended up with her cousin instead. Not a chance. I’d had my eye on Amy from the moment Jenny introduced us. We pulled into the driveway around 3:30 in the morning. Tonya headed inside, leaving Amy and me alone.

We wandered around to the back steps of the house and sat talking for what felt like forever. Somewhere along the conversation, we started making out—which is what everyone called it back then. She wanted to tell me all about her camera.

I had other things on my mind.

She looked like she’d stepped right out of a country song—jeans, Topsiders, and a simple tank top. She was completely different from anyone I’d ever met on the Jersey Shore, and that was exactly what drew me to her. After a while, we moved to a bench in front of the house. We talked until the eastern sky began to lighten.

I think it was around five o’clock in the morning when she finally stood up and said she had to go inside.

She was flying home to North Carolina later that day. We exchanged phone numbers, promised we’d stay in touch, and said goodbye.

As I drove back toward Long Branch, I wasn’t tired at all. I felt like I had just walked off a football field after winning the biggest game of my life.

Around six that morning, I turned onto my street and passed my dad as he was leaving for work. I gave him a quick wave. The look on his face said everything.

“What in the hell have you been doing for Christ's sake?” That was normal for him. 

That was my life back then.

I’d leave Long Branch on Friday afternoon, spend the entire weekend working, partying, and sleeping wherever I could find a couch, then roll back home Monday morning just in time to start the week all over again.

I had no idea that one holiday weekend—and one girl from North Carolina—had just changed the course of my life forever.

Looking back, my biggest mistake was waiting three or four days before I called Amy.

According to her, she figured I wasn’t going to call at all. From my perspective, life simply got in the way. I was working nonstop at the Osprey, and if I had to blame anything, I’d probably blame my ADHD. My schedule consumed me.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about her. There was something different about Amy. I couldn’t quite explain it, but I knew I had never felt this way before. When I finally called, we talked for hours.

That first phone call turned into another, and then another. Before long, we were writing letters almost every day. I still remember how excited I was every time one of her envelopes arrived in the mailbox.

Meanwhile, I was working as many hours as I could at the Osprey. I had one goal in mind—I needed enough money to drive to North Carolina and see her again. About a week after we met, I went back to the Bamboo Room at the Sea Girt Inn to watch the weekly slide show.

There we were. Our first pictures together.

 We finally made a plan.

I was heading south. I talked my dad into letting me borrow his van instead of mine. It was newer and a little more dependable. Once I got my hands on it, I turned it into what I proudly called the Love Wagon.

I hung curtains in the windows, threw down a shag rug, packed a large trunk with everything I’d need, and loaded it up for the trip.

I was ready.

Of course, I couldn’t exactly tell my parents that I was driving nine hours just to see a girl I’d only known for a month. So I came up with a better story.

I told them I was going to visit my Aunt Helen in Florida and planned to make a quick stop in North Carolina to see a friend along the way.

Technically, it wasn’t a lie.

As I pulled onto Interstate 95, I had no idea that highway would become one of the biggest parts of my life. Over the years, I’d traveled it more times than I could ever count. That first trip was the beginning of my lifelong love affair with road trips.

The drive felt endless.

These days it takes about nine hours, but back then it seemed like it lasted forever. I had a cooler full of food and drinks, a stack of eight-track tapes, and nothing but highway stretching out in front of me. About an hour from Tarboro, I pulled into a rest area and caught a quick nap.

Amy had arranged for me to stop by her friend Jimmy Lou’s house in nearby Enfield until she got off work.

Think about that for a minute. No cell phones. No texting. No GPS.

Everything depended on letters, phone calls, and trusting that everyone would show up where they were supposed to. Somehow, it all worked.

Jimmy Lou welcomed me in, and I waited there until Amy finished work. As I sat there, I started wondering.

Do I really remember this girl?

Was she really as beautiful as I remembered?

Did staying up all night together somehow make everything seem better than it really was?

Then she walked through the door wearing her white work uniform.

One quick kiss erased every doubt I’d had. She was exactly as I remembered.

Maybe even better.I followed her home to meet her family.

Looking back, she had to be at least a little nervous about bringing home some guy who had driven all the way from New Jersey just to see her.

I spent about four days with Amy and her family in Tarboro. One morning, we decided to make a day trip to Ocracoke Island on North Carolina’s Outer Banks.

There was no chance her dad was going to let his daughter spend the night away from home with some strange guy from New Jersey, so we settled for a marathon day trip instead.

We left around 5:30 that morning. Her dad thought we were crazy.

He was probably right.

Ocracoke was beautiful—my first experience with a North Carolina beach. We spent the day exploring the island before making the long drive back, finally arriving home around nine that night. It was one of those days that seemed to fly by while somehow becoming a memory that lasts forever.

Eventually, it was time to continue my cover story. I left Tarboro on Monday afternoon, promising Amy I’d be back soon, and headed toward Florida to visit Aunt Helen.

There was only one problem. She wasn’t home!

My mother had always said, “Your Aunt Helen never goes anywhere.”

Apparently, this was the one week she decided to visit Disney World.

After explaining my situation to a few curious neighbors, I settled in for the night in Aunt Helen’s driveway with a medium pizza, a six-pack of beer, and my van. It wasn’t exactly the Florida vacation I’d imagined. The next morning, I realized I needed a new plan.

I wasn’t ready to head north just yet.

Then I remembered Patty, a friend from Leonardo, New Jersey. We’d dated briefly years before, and I knew she was living somewhere nearby in Florida with her boyfriend. It was worth taking a chance.

When I showed up at her house, everyone was surprised to see me. Her mother insisted I stay the night.

That evening, Patty, her boyfriend—who later became her husband—and I went out for drinks and caught up on old times. The conversation kept circling back to Amy. I couldn’t stop talking about her.

The next morning, as I was getting ready to leave, Patty’s mom smiled and said something I’ve never forgotten.

“I think you’re over the moon about this one.” She’s a keeper.” 

I climbed back into the Love Wagon and pointed it north. Leaving Hollywood, Florida, around eight that morning, I drove straight through and pulled into Tarboro just after midnight. What a ride. I spent a few more days with Amy before finally heading back to New Jersey.

Her dad joked later, “He didn’t leave…he moved out.” By the middle of August, I was back at the Osprey, working as many hours as I could so I could save enough money to head south again. I lasted until October.

Then I packed up my life in New Jersey and moved to North Carolina.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Nearly fifty years later, we’re still traveling this road together.