Editors note: This is the fourth installment of a multi-part series on our summer road trip to NJ. They are not in sequential order.  Some of this will be akin to eye wateringly boring home movies.  Anyway, you’ve been warned.

The title is a little homage to the old Tennessee Tuxedo cartoons, from way back in the day.  I think a lot of old toons used that format but the Tennessee Tuxedo opening always sticks in my mind for some reason.  The titles of those episodes never really seemed to match what the show was about.  This is not the case with Frank’s Place.  No sensational headlines here, we stay true to our readers… until we find it necessary to lie.  Then we tell some whoppers.

Anyway, I’ve decided I can stay true to the title and still make this one of those lazy posts with a lot of pictures.  Let’s face it, pictures of my kids are way more interesting.

So there is the happy family all on the beach.  Great looking group if I do say.  We rented a house with two of my sisters and my mom.  It was about 3 blocks from the beach.  Now my sisters roll to the beach in style. We grew up not very far from several beach towns so they know how to go beaching.  My wife and kids are all from the South. Tracy is from Huston Texas, although she did go to the beaches in Galveston.  But it’s not the same.  And of course my two kids are from right here in Knoxville, born right in the city.  Frank saw his first beach two years ago, and Anne Marie saw her first beach on this trip.

We were not sure how AM would react.  Turns out she loved the beach.  Also turns out she would only go to the beach if she was pulled in a beat up red wagon we rented from a local joint in Avalon.  She was adamant too.  There was no walking, no carrying, no riding in the car for three blocks.  She had to be ferried to the beach in this nasty red wagon.  And then she would sit in it for the first 20 minutes or so upon arrival.  She would get back in it to eat lunch, to have a snack, and when she wanted to signal us it was time to head back to the house.

The wagon was a great idea, don’t get me wrong. Tracy’s idea by the way. (And yes that was a blatant attempt at brown nosing) When it was time to leave the beach and she didn’t want to go, all I had to do was start pulling the friggin wagon. She’d come running like she was missing the downtown train.

It was just weird how she took to it the minute she saw it.  I thought we might have to hook a tow bar to it and drag it behind the van so we could get her back to Knoxville.

Bottom line is she enjoyed it so I guess we can’t ask for more than that.

Know what else she enjoyed?  Eating sand.

She ate so much she might be responsible for a slight shift in the Jersey shore line. I would check google maps before your next visit to America’s playground just to be safe.  Sorry Governor Christie, you may be Stronger Than The Storm, but you’re no match for the Tough Girl From Tennessee.

Since it’s her first sand eating experience I don’t know if she’s partial to Jersey Shore sand or just sand in general.  Hard to say, but she ate fists and fists of it.  Must of been like 100 grit sand paper coming out the other end.  This might be one of those times we’re glad she can’t speak yet.  A few dirty diapers into some sand eatin and she might have conjugated some f-bombs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

However, it’s probably not surprising to some of you, especially the posse on Montford Lane, that a few times she ate so much sand I didn’t need to feed her lunch.

That last sentence was just a hook to see if Mrs Frank’s Place actually reads these.  I like to do that from time to time.

Red Wagons and fists full of sand, it was a summer to remember for shore!

See what I did there. Try the veal and tip your servers.

One last shot of a girl and her buffet.