For many of my life, I’ve spent part of every summer time 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a child, I loved days physique browsing, rising from the water just for a bologna and cheese sandwich and a nap on an outdated sheet, repurposed for the sand.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 at all times had a repute because the playground of Philadelphia’s extra moneyed set. It’s even wealthier now than once I spent my first summers “down the shore,” as we are saying. However its core id stays the identical: Avalon is informal. Nobody clothes up. And when spending the day there, the one aim is to not do a lot of something.
As a journalist, I’ve spent almost twenty years writing in regards to the Jersey Shore’s meals, traditions and quirks, leading to two books in regards to the space — and some articles for this newspaper.
When my father purchased a trip residence in Avalon in 2020, he gave every of his kids a university flag for Christmas — the flags, as is the custom in Avalon and the encompassing cities, had 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 dwell in Avalon half time now. Throughout dawn runs, I prefer to take photos of all of the fascinating flags I move: sports-themed flags; Ivy League flags; even customized flags, lots of which have been stitched collectively from a number of school 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 Instances printed an article revealing that an “Attraction to Heaven” flag, an emblem carried on Jan. 6, was displayed final summer time from the New Jersey trip residence of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. of america Supreme Court docket, in line with interviews and images. (The article appeared after The Instances 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 acquired two sorts of texts that day. The primary variety was from faraway buddies: “What’s with you shore people and all of the flags?” And the second variety was from locals: “Why couldn’t he simply fly a university 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 not too long ago appeared within the Types part.
I reached out to native historic societies, libraries and a handful of school librarians and archivists to attempt to be taught when and why the custom started. I poured over images 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. Once I heard again from teachers at 4 close by universities, all admitted that they’d no concept 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, searching for the perfect, or oddest, assortment of flags. It was an attractive, blue-sky day, so lots of people had been outdoors and keen to speak. If we discovered flags we wished to study, we’d knock on the door.
There have been college flags — one home had three customized flags representing 13 colleges — but additionally sports activities flags, Satisfaction flags and even a Grateful Useless flag. Nobody knew when the custom had began, however everybody was happy with his or her banners.
I acquired some solutions from vexillologists, individuals who research flags. They advised me that in shore cities, flags historically had 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 couple of longtime residents. Although nobody had solutions, the company did share recollections. One 85-year-old resident recalled seeing school flags hanging from lifeguard boardinghouses in 1948.
Nobody fairly knew the when, however everybody felt assured within the why: Flying flags was a option to share delight — in a faculty; a youngsters’ colleges; a workforce; or, for a couple of, political views.
I don’t write in regards to the Jersey Shore as a lot as I used to. I discovered it sucked a number 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 now not on a swivel, searching for tales once I was presupposed to be stress-free. However now that I’m residing there half time, it has been a enjoyable problem to clarify these hyperlocal traditions to a nationwide viewers.
My father, for one, was amused by the entire thing, and advised me to ensure our flags had been out when the photographer visited. Michelle took an image of me with them, though I had humidity-frizzled hair, the results of a protracted 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 fun the accomplishments of his 4 kids. And though none of us went to an Ivy League college, he nonetheless hangs them excessive with delight.
