OCEAN CITY -- Three women in sunglasses and flowered bathing suits sit side by side on folding chairs at the water's edge: Carol Romano, 69; her daughter, Karen Romano Young, 47; and granddaughter Bethany Young, 23 (yes, named for the beach). The golden crab dangling from a necklace at Romano's tanned throat glints as she gestures toward the Boardwalk.
"My parents' bench is right up there," she says. "Its plaque says, 'Thanks for the Ocean City memories, your loving family.'"
There are 152 dedicated benches on the 2 1/2 -mile-long Ocean City Boardwalk. Public Works maintenance superintendent Bruce Gibbs estimates that 95 percent of them bear the names of out-of-towners who spent summer vacations here year after year.
Romano's mother, Peg Spath, is typical of them.
She first came from Baltimore as a little girl in the 1920s, riding the train with her mother and siblings. She was here during the 1933 storm that created the inlet on the south side of the spit, separating Ocean City from Assateague and ultimately helping to develop the resort city. After she married Walter Spath and started a family, they continued to bring their kids from the broiling, pre-air-conditioning city each summer. When Spath's work forced them to move away from Maryland, "Ocean City every summer was still the constant," Carol Romano remembers. And when he died, the family dedicated a bench.
Peg Spath, however, is still coming.
"She's 91 now, and she'll be down next week," says Karen Romano Young, a children's author who makes her home in Connecticut. She illustrated her most recent book, Across the Wide Ocean: The Why, How, and Where of Navigation for Humans and Animals at Sea, with a drawing inspired by the 27th Street Beach. Her sister, Kim Battista, also on the way down for a visit, got engaged in the lifeguard chair here.
"We feel like we're seeing our family when we look at these people," Karen Romano Young says, indicating with a sweep of her arm the vacationers of all shapes, sizes and ages cooling off in the shallows. "This beach seems eternal."
"It gets under your skin," Bethany Young agrees.
Some people love adventure. They crave new tastes and new experiences and they plan vacations in pursuit of them. These are the folks who keep travel agencies and tour operators in business.
Other people don't like the unknown. They prefer to go to the same restaurants, eat the same dishes and see the same people. For them, the most important aspect of a vacation is relief from stress, and the more familiar things are, the more relaxed they feel. These are the people who are at Ocean City for the umpteenth summer in a row, staying at the same condo with the same people.
Betty Crovo, owner of Triumph Travel in Timonium, understands both kinds. When her children were growing up and money was tight, she did the summer-after-summer routine, gathering with other young families at the beach. But when her kids outgrew family vacations and her finances improved, Crovo let wanderlust take over and she started seeing the world.
For some people, that never happens, she says. "There are people who spend $3,000 every summer to rent in Ocean City. With that money they could take a cruise out of Baltimore with everything included, or fly to Florida and sail to the Caribbean. They could see the national parks or rent a cabin on a river.
"Sure, some of them take trips like this as well -- but for many Baltimoreans, Ocean City is it. It's easy, it's convenient, it's kid-friendly, it's relaxing. All their friends and family gather there, and they sit in the same spot on the beach every year."
These tradition-loving Baltimore families make openings in the Ocean City summer rental market something of a rarity.
June Regan, 67, has rented out the bottom floor of her vacation home on 11th Street since 2000. She has only one week from June to September that's not taken by regulars, and wouldn't be surprised if the new people who have booked it this year ended up staking a claim. "I look forward to seeing each family come back each year," Regan says. "I get to know them; we see their kids grow up.
"One family came here for the first time four years ago with one little baby; this year they showed up with the fourth."
Big families who live within driving distance of Ocean City are the backbone of its tourism. Doris Zimmerman of Lancaster, Pa., has been visiting every summer for 13 years with her family of nine -- the oldest are now in their 20s. "We're traditional people," she says. "We don't like change. And with a family of nine, we definitely can't afford to sleep in hotels and eat out every day." Every year, they look forward to the same amusements. They watch Back to the Future on the VCR. They play cards and have cookouts with the neighbors in the complex. "I wondered if you'd be here this year," her neighbors said when they arrived.
Kim Battista, Karen Romano Young's sister who got engaged in a lifeguard chair, has been making Ocean City friends all her life. When she was small, she played with the little girl whose family rented next door, and the two became pen pals. Later, when she began bringing her own family, she saw her three kids doing the same thing. They would play with the children of a family who always came the same week and rented a unit in the same house as the Battistas.
Over time, Kim and her husband, Lee, found that they enjoyed the company of neighbors Ruth and Tony Gorski as much as their children liked each other.
"About eight years ago," she says, "we started sitting near them on the beach, but not with them -- we made it look like we were just doing it so the kids could play. A few years later, we started making dinner plans together. Soon we discovered all these odd coincidences: we'd gotten married on the same day in 1986, within an hour of each other, and our youngest children have the same birthday."
Though they've never seen each other in any other location or at any other time of year, the Connecticut Battistas and Maryland Gorskis exchange Christmas cards -- and, in recent years, a couple of phone calls as the time for planning summer vacation arrives. "There have been times that one couple or the other says they're thinking of changing their week," Kim Battista says, "but in the end we never do."
"It just wouldn't be the same."
Probably because I'm a relative newcomer to the area, I visited Ocean City for the first time this year. But I came with a repeat visitor who rents from a repeat visitor, and quickly felt myself drawn into the web of longtime relationships and rituals that are the O.C. trademark.
My daughter, Jane, 7, and I came with Kim McGowan and her three girls, Whitnee, 11, Madison, 9, and Camryn, 8. During our drive into town, McGowan pointed out the landmarks of her own memory lane -- "This is where my mom always stayed with her girlfriends. ... This is where we were drinking Hurricanes when the hurricane came. ... This is our favorite place for crabs. ... This is the dive we ate at when the good place was closed." She thought a minute. "It wasn't bad, either."
The girls demanded a speedy return to their own favorite spot: the Fractured Prune, a shop that serves fresh-fried doughnuts dipped in syrups, sprinkles and crushed toppings. They read me a plaque that explains that the store is named for Prunella Shriek, a 19th-century resident who was an ice-skating, skiing, tennis and ping-pong champion, famous for returning to town on crutches after her competitions.
After doughnuts, we headed back to the little condo McGowan rents for a week each summer from her friend Linda Hare. Hare is another Baltimore native who's come to Ocean City all her life, usually with members of a group of eight girls she's been close friends with since first grade in Medfield. A collage of vacation images on the wall of the condo attests to the years of sun and fun.
"Back when our kids were young, we all used to rent at the same place every year the last week in July," Hare told me. "We did the same things each summer, fishing for the guys, Jolly Roger for the kids, then one day the guys would take the kids and give the moms a day at the beach on our own."
Hare bought her condominium on the bay side of town in 1997. "We all got our own places around then. One of the girls is right next door to me here in the complex."
Though they all still try to come at the same time for reunions, the crowd isn't quite as energetic as it once was. "Now we might go for a happy hour somewhere," she says, "A nice sunset, and we're all in bed by 9."
"Some people say we could all go to Disney World for what we spend here," Hare says. "But we're happy here."
Though it doesn't have the attractions of Orlando, Fla., Ocean City boasts its share of rides and amusements: Trimper's, Jolly Roger, Frontier Town, the Pier and a plethora of miniature golf courses.
After a few days of building sandcastles and boogie boarding, McGowan and I decided to take the kids to Jolly Roger's Splash Mountain water park. We'd been rushing from slide to slide all morning when a bolt of lightning split the sky and the park closed for the day. As we joined the line to pick up our rain checks, I wondered aloud whether there was a time limit for using them.
No, they're good forever, we learned from the guy behind us. In fact, his family had been there on a pass last year when it started raining. They were using that rain check when the lightning bolt closed the park, and if the weather didn't clear up in the next two days, they'd be back to try again next summer.
And if Ocean City tradition holds, we'll be right here with them, and we'll greet each other like old friends.