By Bob Hill “Hey, Fred.” This is what Robert Connors said. He was buzzed, but not drunk, slumped alone over a barstool at the Firehouse Tavern around 2 AM. It was the second Friday in May, a week prior to when … Read More … Read More
1990s
Moving On: Every Road Leads Back To Wildwood
By Bob Hill Ernest Ingenito was a wayward seed, boy; a stinkin’ varmint void of core. Ernest Ingenito, who spent his adolescence spinning in and out of juvie, who was drafted during World War II; who was dishonorably discharged after assaulting … Read More
Moving On: The Season Finale
By Bob Hill It was just past 8 pm on a Tuesday when I received word that my grandmother was dying. She had been in a coma for several hours, and her vital signs were fading. Last Rites had already been … Read More
Moving On: Bob Barker (& The Legend of Tin Can Alley)
By Bob Hill And so it came to pass, somewhere in the deep weeds of August, 1992, that I began working nights along Surfside Pier. I agreed to take the job because I needed the money, and my buddy Mike needed … Read More
Moving On: In the Cold, Cold Night
By Bob Hill I am alone now, and I am shivering, mangled beyond all recognition in the rear pew of St. Ann’s Catholic Church. It is late now, well past 4 am, and all that’s left along the strand is … Read More
Moving On: Wild Bobby’s Circus Story
By Bob Hill I was working the microphone of an eight-player race game located on the corner of 24th and the Boardwalk. I was living in a one-bedroom apartment less than two blocks away. My roommates were a pair of potheads named … Read More
Moving On: The Things We Think (& Do Not Say)
By Bob Hill Twenty years ago in the side bedroom of a second-story shack on the 100 block of East Maple, two drunk kids set to wrestling at each other in the dark – he in a second-hand pair of Umbros, … Read More
Moving On: 10 Pounds’ Worth of Potatoes (Inside a 5-Lb Sack)
By Bob Hill A week after I left home, my parents put the word out they had taken the spare house key from its usual spot. They had fastened all the windows. They had secured all points of entry. It was … Read More
Moving On: I’m 18 (& I Don’t Know What I Want)
By Bob Hill I showed up drunk for my first day of college. I showed up barely coherent, waving like a buoy, reeking like a bad sock that had been bathed in turpentine. After 18 years spent sweating it out in Delaware … Read More