Laverty Hijinks, or Deck the Halls With Hunted Holly

Shore Fire Prexy Marilyn Laverty, away from her computer today, reports from the road on some recent hijinks:

Getting lots of cookies baked and presents bought.

Yesterday we traveled down to one of my favorites places, Barnegat, NJ, an antique bay town in the Pine Barrens which has buildings from the 1700's; you can look across the bay and see Long Beach Island and Barnegat Lighthouse.We had lunch at the Hurricane House, Ocean County's oldest restaurant and NJ's oldest ice cream shop (they serve Arctic Ice Cream -- made in Trenton, who knew? Never heard of it).

We also re-enacted a family tradition from my childhood of going 'holly hunting', which involves pulling over to the side of the road in your car, shears in hand, and poaching other people's holly (only if it has a lot of berries) while keeping a lookout for the police or landowner to come running. We found a deserted Pine Barrens road and some trees with berries that were not too high to reach (other poachers had beat us to it at several previous locations and didn't leave a limb low enough to get without a ladder.) My 77 year old Mom quickly jumped into the bushes and started breaking holly branches with her bare hands, and the cache of beautiful holly was thrilling.