Creosote
Creosote is the preferred substance with which to waterproof the planks, beams, and pilings of the boardwalk and its piers. It is the odor of used motor oil mixed with turpentine, and it smells inflammable. The subway smells like it because they treat rail ties in the same manner, which is to soak the timber in the liquid, and let every fiber absorb it. The smell is more noticeable under the pier in Wildwood, where the go-carts race on the 15′ wide asphalt track that winds in and out of the columns made of logs that hold the boards above.
It’s an aroma that brings me back home while I’m 200 miles down the Jersey shore, and I’m standing on the sundeck of Raging Waters. Sometimes, the chlorinated air subsides and a whiff of creosote wind mixes in with the Atlantic salty mist, so when I look to the north along the coast, my nostrils fill with a smell that transports me to the jetty at the end of New Dorp Lane, where my dad has a fishing rod jammed in between a couple of barnacle-encrusted rocks while he takes a stroll along the shore in between Miller Field’s loose stone lot and the remains of the old Staten Island Area Station Hospital, where either some kids or the local beach bums have let a bonfire burn out over night and all that remaind at 2 p.m. in the afternoon is a fraction of the bulk of some wooden bulkhead that broke off a jetty or pier and floated from Keansburg, Sea Girt, or even Point Pleasant, across Raritan Bay and guided by the tides and a small warm air thunderstorm just to wash up along our beach amongst the ever-constant inundation of flotsam and jetsam, of crushed quarter drink containers, tennis balls that dogs could not fetch, tampon applicators of unknown origin, glass that had been blasted by brown harbor sand, straw that broke off the dead marsh plant stems during high tide, and the occasional message-in-a-bottle from children not expecting their messages to be returned to shore by a bay which only imports but does not export items that are fed to it from Staten Island because even the ocean uses the forgotten borough as a dumping ground.
My father strolls along, taking puffs from his cigar, passing a family which puts out a blanket in the same clearing of sand every day, its corners held down by beach chairs, a cooler, and the radio playing oldies on 101. WCBS-FM. He’ll head back to the jetty to find a rod without a bite yet again, but the goal of fishing New Dorp Beach is not to catch fish, and besides, who’d be dumb enough to eat them?
“501 to 511.”
The shoulder mic on my radio beckons me to send-out to give breaks to people on the rides, and I’m still in Wildwood, but I know how to get back home when I’m feeling like an alien down here. They’ve standardized the treatment of pilings and piers up and down the shore, that creosote smell might as well be home.
