Those Summer Nights

October 30, 2005

Like a beacon in the night calling me home, a lighthouse to a wayward sailor – Jersey Mikes, the new “sub shop” on 170 in Okatie provides the taste of my old hometown. So, allow me to be selfish for a bit.

The pit stop to Jersey Mikes was my husband’s brain child as he remembered hearing something about it earlier in the week. So, with a car full of groceries and ice cream melting in the trunk, we had ventured up 170 looking for a sign of home.

Stepping into the newly opened Jersey Mikes evoked a lot of memories and emotion for me. (I know it is only a sandwich, but bear with me). The original store was in Point Pleasant, NJ, and was a quick bike ride for me along the Metedeconk River, over the Beaver Damn and Lovelandtown Bridges. A picture of that store graces the walls in the Okatie shop, and my husband and I were brought back home, if even for just a minute, when we saw it.

Jersey Mikes subs were a staple for summer concerts at The Garden State Arts Center. And, summer nights at the Arts Center were a staple for any NJ teen. Jersey Mikes was located right at the exit 91 Parkway entrance (a joke among New Jerseyians is that everything in NJ can be found based on a Parkway exit and when you meet a fellow Jersey guy or gal you ask “what exit?”) and there we would load up on sustenance for the night.

It didn’t matter who was performing each night as the fun was always in the parking lot. The Arts Center gates would open in the afternoon and would ultimately be packed with cars by 5:00 p.m. The parking lot was a place where summer loves were found, lived, and lost until everyone clambered back in their cars at the end of the summer and headed in opposite directions on the Parkway to their hometown.

Just standing at the counter last weekend – and this is going to sound sappy – but I could remember myself standing in the same spot, 800 miles north, ten(ish) years ago, with high school friends preparing to get on the road to the Arts Center.

Once I snapped back to reality, we ordered the Club Sub to go. With sub and hand, and barely out the door my husband pulled back the wrapper, nudged me and we inhaled. And, suddenly we were transported back to summer nights at the Jersey Shore. Our minor bout of homesickness cured, we eventually snapped out of the Jersey Mikes fog and spent the afternoon in the yard with the neighbors - the benefits of a Lowcountry fall are quickly growing on me.

Next time you need a quick taste of the North, you know where to go.

Enjoy!
Courtney (formerly exit 91)