Where Harry Met Sandy

Porta-throne

Above-ground pool.

An acquaintance's home, most likely no longer inhabitable. 

A beach in the back yard is always good, except when 

the ocean is in the front yard.

I don't think they'll end up saving that pool.

The house that survived the new inlet.  An otherwise fairly

unremarkable structure, until you consider the owner's foresight

to build high in case of an unthinkable event.

Too late!  

We rode our bikes down Barnegat Lane on Saturday, stopping to gaze

 at the still unbelievable carnage, and to snap some photos to be 

shared a couple days later.  It's still quite a somber scene there;

  residents were in their yards, quietly raking gravel, picking up 

debris that I assumed would've been picked up months ago.  There

was a distinct smell of lumber in the air, the smell you get when you 

go to the back of the lumber yard to pick up your 2X4s.  I'm sure 

that the smell was not only of new lumber, but of splintered and wea-

thered beams and joists, blasted apart by the rush of the Atlantic as

 it flowed over and through the narrow strip 

of sand they call Mantoloking.

Outsiders like us tend to be detached from the reality of agonizingly

slow progress when it comes to disaster-stricken areas.  We hear

that aid has been granted to such and such towns, so as far as we're

concerned, everything's hunky dory.  Not so for so many of these 

shore folk.  The process continues, very slowly.