My mother would take us to a portal to her own memories: Laffing Sal at the Ocean City Life-Saving Station Museum at the southern tip of the Boardwalk. The papier-maché mannequin presided over Jester’s Fun House during my mother’s childhood.

“The boardwalk, in particular, loomed large in my imagination as a child. I spent fistfuls of quarters on sets of scented jelly bracelets. I wandered dazed among the crowds and spinning lights at Trimper’s. I felt a shiver of fear when the coffin doors at the Haunted House clapped shut behind me.”