A ghost of a landmark | Scene Through the Lens

I have driven past that old ice cream stand before, both back when it was a family fun park and also when it had been abandoned after closing in 2002. When open, it boasted six different go-kart tracks, bumper boats, mini golf and batting cages, and, as the sign says, refreshments.

But I never stopped there — until this summer.

Longtime travelers to Wildwood will remember a 25-foot gorilla statue that towered over the park.

I’m not one of them. I don’t ever recall seeing “George,” as he was called. And I guess I never drove past the park after it closed, so I never saw the sad creature when he was left standing all alone in the marsh grass. (I also didn’t include him in a photo essay I did on giant roadside attractions.)

But I’m happy to tell you he was saved, restored, and has been on display in the Pine Barrens in the years since at Mighty Joe’s Gas, Deli and Grill, on Rt. 206 in Shamong, as a tribute to the owner’s deceased son.

(Wildwood visitors from a little farther back might recall a different big gorilla — known then as Kongo-Pongo or Magilla — that was on Morey’s Piers until it fell apart in the late 70s. The fiberglass gorilla, not the piers).

By virtue of where I live, on the New Jersey side of the Delaware River, I tend to get more “Down the Shore” assignments at the beach communities there in the summer than my co-worker photographers who live in Pennsylvania.

That drive is always a great opportunity to take back roads to the Shore, looking for new sights like that old ice cream stand.

So I was excited to see the story this past week where my beach-going reporting colleagues held a race to see which way to the Jersey Shore would be fastest. They left from our newsroom on Independence Mall on a Friday afternoon and took different routes to the Ocean City Boardwalk.

It is a really fun read.

I worked with two of the racers on preview stories before the summer tourist season kicked off. Tommy Rowan and I visited four rest stops on the way to the Shore and reviewed them, answering the question, do they live up to the people they’re named after? Jason Nark wondered whether boardwalk T-shirts are getting more wholesome.

Nark, taking the most direct route on the Atlantic City Expressway, revealed his secret hack — what he calls the Triple Loop — to get on the Garden State Parkway. He skips the often backed-up southbound exit to the Parkway, taking the Parkway northbound ramp instead. Then he immediately gets back onto the AC Expressway again, headed west, before looping around a third time to get on the Parkway going south.

I love the beauty of his hack, especially because it reminds me of my dad. He loved math and order and logic. He liked driving and especially appreciated our interstate highway system and the way what is officially known as the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways was organized. Odd-numbered interstates run north–south with numbers increasing from west to east, like I-95 here, while even numbered ones run east–west with numbers increasing from south to north (as with our I-76).

When I learned to drive, my dad took me on an interstate cloverleaf and had me “circle” it, doing what Nark might call a “Quadruple Loop.” So after driving all four of the “leaves” in the “clover,” I ended up in the same spot as when I started. Then he had me do it again.

Since 1998, a black-and-white photo has appeared every Monday in staff photographer Tom Gralish’s “Scene Through the Lens” photo column in The Inquirer’s local news section. Here are the most recent, in color:

» SEE MORE: Archived columns and Twenty years of a photo column