By CRAIG D. SCHENCK/Sentinel staff
OCEAN CITY — A budding author has written a book detailing the memories of his early days in Ocean City.
Jim Jeffries said he received the proof of the book from Amazon on Wednesday, Sept. 2.
“The Bay Rat Kid: Growing Up in Ocean City, New Jersey 1940s-1950s” is “about recalling some memories of things I did as a little kid,” he said, adding that publication is still weeks away.
The back cover reads:
“From blackouts in World War II to rocking out to Bill Haley and the Comets, Ocean City native Jim Jeffries recalls his “bay rat” boyhood on the Jersey shore with affection, humor and gratitude. This collection of vignettes from Jim’s childhood and teen years is populated by a cast of characters that might just spark your own memories of the people and events that helped form who you are today. So dangle your feet off the dock, dip your toes in the ocean and journey to the days when the icebox gave way to the refrigerator, the radio to the television and the town we thought we’d never leave took root in our hearts no matter where our destiny led us.”
“I used myself as an example of a kid growing up in Ocean City,” he said.
Jeffries was born in 1938 and lived at 1116 Bay Ave., where there were three boatyards that shaped his early years.
“That was my play yard,” Jeffries said. “I write a lot about that experience.”
He said he attended the Central Avenue School, the current police station, and the “different events that I experienced, friends I met.”
Jeffries, who has been retired for a dozen years, said he met Frank Esposito, who has written some historical books about Ocean City.
“Just by accident we lived in the same town (in Ocean Township),” he said. “I asked him how he went about (writing his books) and he said he had an editor who helped him.”
Jeffries got in touch with that editor and has been working with her for a couple of years. Jeffries said the editor told him he needed a catchy title, and he recalled a man working in the boatyards near his home calling him a “bay rat,” which really stuck with him.
He said this is the first book he has ever written but that he has written for fun most of his life.
“When I find something that interests me and I can put a story to it, I just go,” he said, adding that a lot of the stuff stays on the shelf, including a screenplay he wrote.
Jeffries said the inspiration for the book, which is about 155 pages long with “quite a few photographs,” came when he visited the website Ancestry.com.
“I got into that and got addicted,” he said. “I think, quite frankly, it was that experience that got me to start to write about growing up.”
He learned his family had come to the city around 1882 and his father, Leroy Jeffries, was postmaster from 1936-54. Before becoming postmaster, his father, who was born in 1895, operated Ocean City Market House at 860 Asbury Ave., on the north side of the building where Domino’s Pizza is now located.
“Because my father was postmaster, he had a number of friends, hunting buddies who took me offshore. A lot of friends of my parents’ were character builders. I learned a lot from them over the years,” Jeffries said.
Worshipping at Holy Trinity Church at 10th Street and Central Avenue was an instrumental part of his life. His mother, Florence Jeffries, was very active at the church and “an old-fashioned stay-at-home mom.”
The youngest of three children, he graduated in 1956 from Ocean City High School, where he met his future bride, Kathy Off from Linwood, whose family raised orchids at greenhouses on Poplar Avenue. They married in 1959.
He said her grandfather owned all of the property where Mainland Regional High School is now located and across street where Cornerstone Commerce Center replaced the Prudential insurance building.
After high school, he became a State Farm insurance agent in Linwood, then left the area to open an office in Asbury Park, where he has been here ever since.
He said his target market is older Ocean City residents but “I think and hope others will enjoy it.” He said he has a list of several hundred people he grew up with or went to school with, friends of family, who will like the book.”
Jeffries said the book will be available through Amazon and at Sun Rose Words & Music on Asbury Avenue, as well as at the city library and Bird’s Eye View at Stainton’s.
