For many of my life, I’ve spent part of every summer season in Avalon, a seashore city on the Jersey Shore. As a child, I loved days physique browsing, rising from the water just for a bologna and cheese sandwich and a nap on an outdated sheet, repurposed for the sand.
Avalon, a barrier island on the southern a part of the shore, has all the time had a repute because the playground of Philadelphia’s extra moneyed set. It’s even wealthier now than after I spent my first summers “down the shore,” as we are saying. However its core id stays the identical: Avalon is informal. Nobody attire up. And when spending the day there, the one purpose is to not do a lot of something.
As a journalist, I’ve spent practically 20 years writing concerning the Jersey Shore’s meals, traditions and quirks, leading to two books concerning the space — and some articles for this newspaper.
When my father purchased a trip dwelling in Avalon in 2020, he gave every of his youngsters a school flag for Christmas — the flags, as is the custom in Avalon and the encompassing cities, have been meant to be displayed from the home. I didn’t know why individuals did it, however most everybody did. So my College of Tampa flag was hung from our second-floor balcony alongside flags representing my siblings’ colleges.
I reside in Avalon half time now. Throughout dawn runs, I prefer to take photos of all of the attention-grabbing flags I cross: sports-themed flags; Ivy League flags; even customized flags, lots of which have been stitched collectively from a number of faculty banners, representing the alma maters of a complete family.
I marked the flag-flying custom down as an area oddity that wasn’t value explaining. That was, till The New York Occasions revealed an article revealing that an “Attraction to Heaven” flag, a logo carried on Jan. 6, was displayed final summer season from the New Jersey trip dwelling of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. of the US Supreme Court docket, based on interviews and pictures. (The article appeared after The Occasions reported that an inverted American flag was displayed on the justice’s residence in Alexandria, Va., following the 2020 presidential election.)
I used to be working from the eating room desk in Avalon when the information of the Attraction to Heaven flag broke.
I bought two sorts of texts that day. The primary sort was from faraway associates: “What’s with you shore people and all of the flags?” And the second sort was from locals: “Why couldn’t he simply fly a school flag like everybody else?”
I couldn’t reply the second query, however I made a decision to look into the primary for an article that just lately appeared within the Types part.
I reached out to native historic societies, libraries and a handful of school librarians and archivists to attempt to study when and why the custom started. I poured over pictures in historical past books that I had dug up within the Avalon Free Public Library. And I talked to individuals with properties in different seashore communities, together with Rehoboth and Dewey Seaside, each in Delaware, who advised me no such custom existed of their cities.
The reporting grew to become a kind of treasure hunt. After I heard again from lecturers at 4 close by universities, all admitted that they’d no thought when the custom started.
One Sunday afternoon in June, the photographer Michelle Gustafson and I spent over 5 hours cruising up and down Avalon and the encompassing cities, on the lookout for one of the best, or oddest, assortment of flags. It was a fantastic, blue-sky day, so lots of people have been exterior and keen to speak. If we discovered flags we needed to find out about, we might knock on the door.
There have been faculty flags — one home had three customized flags representing 13 colleges — but in addition sports activities flags, Delight flags and even a Grateful Lifeless flag. Nobody knew when the custom had began, however everybody was happy with his or her banners.
I bought some solutions from vexillologists, individuals who examine flags. They advised me that in shore cities, flags historically have been used to sign between ships. However they nonetheless couldn’t pinpoint its begin in Avalon.
So I crashed the Avalon Historic Society’s month-to-month teatime, the place I interviewed a number of longtime residents. Although nobody had solutions, the company did share recollections. One 85-year-old resident recalled seeing faculty flags hanging from lifeguard boardinghouses in 1948.
Nobody fairly knew the when, however everybody felt assured within the why: Flying flags was a method to share pleasure — in a college; a children’ colleges; a staff; or, for a number of, political opinions.
I don’t write concerning the Jersey Shore as a lot as I used to. I discovered it sucked a few of the enjoyable out of being there, and as soon as I hung up the “Jersey Shore Jen” mantle (my first Twitter deal with), my head was not on a swivel, on the lookout for tales after I was purported to be stress-free. However now that I’m residing there half time, it has been a enjoyable problem to elucidate these hyperlocal traditions to a nationwide viewers.
My father, for one, was amused by the entire thing, and advised me to ensure our flags have been out when the photographer visited. Michelle took an image of me with them, regardless that I had humidity-frizzled hair, the results of an extended day of reporting on what was, for everybody else, an ideal seashore day.
Whatever the causes for flying them, my dad loves his flags. They have a good time the accomplishments of his 4 youngsters. And regardless that none of us went to an Ivy League faculty, he nonetheless hangs them excessive with pleasure.
