Episode 11 – The Chatterbox and Ninth
Street Scene and the Party at the Seaview
Ninth Street and Central Avenue was
like Grand Central station in downtown Ocean City when Petula Clark's “Downtown”
song was a hit on the charts in the Summer of '65.
There was a take-out only hot dog and
ice cream stand on the Southwest corner, the Galley Sub shop across
the street, the Greek joint popular with the hippies and the
Chatterbox, which was Ground Zero of the teenage social scene.
The Chatterbox soda fountain and grill
had been there for some thirty years and had a storied history even
then, still run by the same family and was pretty much the same in '65 as it was when it opened in
the 1930's, not like it is today. Before they remodeled it - around
1969, the “Box” had a big stainless steel and formica soda
fountain that ran along the west wall, similar but bigger than the
one at Ready's Coffee shop on 8th street that's still
there.
There was a juke box, a dime a song,
three for a quarter, and maroon and white vinyl seat and formica booths against the other walls, booths that were moved to the
Varsity Inn when it relocated from the 14th Street boardwalk to
8th Street at the same time they renovated the Chatterbox.
The Chatterbox, where both of the mayor's
daughters worked, was famous for its celebrity alumni, as a number of
former employees went on to fame and fortune, including Grace Kelly –
Princess Grace of Monaco, popular TV commentator Chris Mathews, and
Pittsburgh history professor Donald Goldstein, best selling author of Pearl
Harbor books including “At Dawn We Slept.” Both Goldstein in the
fifties, and Mathews, in the sixties, flipped burgers on the
Chatterbox grill when they were still in college, with Mathews also
working at Watsons and nights as a singing waiter at Your Father's
Mustache bar in Somers Point.
Even after she became a famous movie
star and then a princess, Grace Kelly always came back to Ocean City
every Labor Day weekend to be with her family. Sometime while she was
in town she would bring her kids to the Chatterbox for lunch and a
ice cream float, play the juke box and fraternize with the waitresses
like she was just another shoebee.
This year however, word on Ninth Street
was that Grace Kelly's husband, his royal highness the Prince of
Monaco, would accompany her, and bring all of the international
rigamorale that came with him. It would not be a normal Labor Day
with the Prince in town and the Barbarians on the way.
In the Summer of '65 most of the high
school and college kids who worked as waiters, waitresses, short
order cooks, pizza makers and retail clerks either lived with their
parents, in a group rental house or apartment, or in one of the cheap
hotel rooms at the Biscayne, the Strand with its large wrap around
porch, or the Lincoln, next door to the Chatterbox.
The five story wood clapboard Lincoln
Hotel was pretty quiet most of the year, its conference room a
comfortable and secluded enough for the members of the private,
members only Riverboat Club to meet at noon for lunch each weekday.
While Ocean City was technically and
officially a dry town, its blue laws forbidding the sale of liquor,
there were some private clubs like the VFW, American Legion, Elks,
there was even a black Elks club on the West Side, and the Riverboat
Club, a lose confederation of local Ocean City businessmen who
enjoyed having a drink of beer or wine with their lunch. So they met
every weekday afternoon at noon and had food catered over from the
Chatterbox or Watsons, and ordered a shipment of beer, wine and booze
that was delivered in a white van from DiOrio's Circle Cafe in Somers
Point. Three trips daily, one in the morning, one at noon and another
at six, the Lincoln Hotel was the first stop.
There wasn't a problem in the spring
and fall but after late May, when the college kids hit town, they
occupied all of the 2nd floor rooms around the Riverboat's
conference room and they drank beer by the case and kegs on weekends,
and blocked the halls with their bicycles, surfboards and
skateboards, and on the whole, provided a stark contrast to the
straight, suit and tie businessmen of the Riverboat Club.
The College Kids formed their own
clique and called themselves the “River Rats” to mock the
RiverBoaters, but they all tried to get along.
Both camps enjoyed drinking however,
and the college kids were surprised but happy to learn from the
Riverboaters that they didn't have to drive over the causeway to the
Point to buy more beer, but could just pick up the phone and call Joe
at DiOrios and get on the shipment list for one of the three
deliveries of the day.
Eventually the Riverboat Clubers would
get tired of the College Kids and their silly antics and move into
more permanent quarters in the big old rooming house on the southwest
corner of 8th and Wesley, where it is today.
But in the summer of '65 the Riverboat
Club was still meeting at the Lincoln Hotel, and putting up with the
college kids. The ranks of the Riverboat Club included the Mayor, Bob
Harbough of Bob's Grill, Roger Monroe the bookstore owner and Michael
Rozet, who owned a hip cheese shop that was wedged between the
Chatterbox and the Lincoln Hotel. Rozet was friends, and later
business partners with Bill Hamilton, an Ocean City high school
teacher who also owned the Rock Box record shop on Asbury Avenue, and
coached soccer and taught a summer school literature class.
Harry Anglemeyer was a member of the
Riverboat Club, until he was murdered, and the other members of the
club tried to keep up with the latest developments in the case, but
after awhile, they stopped talking about it.
On this particular mid-week afternoon
in late July 1965, as the Riverboat Club met for lunch at the
conference room of the Lincoln Hotel, surrounded by a motley crew of
River Rat college kids, most of the Chatterbox waitresses piled into
a couple of cars to go to the Seaview Country Club on the mainland
for a surprise 18th birthday party for the eldest of the
mayor's daughters.
The mayor had learned, from Elwood
Kirkman, that John B. Kelly had a special Sweet Sixteen birthday
party for his daughter Grace in the Rainbow Room at the Seaview, so
he arranged for a similar party for his daughter Kate, a move he
would come to regret.
The exact circumstances are a bit
blurry today, but from what can be pieced together from those who
were there, a dozen or so teenage girls had lunch in the Rainbow
Room, played some popular 45 rpm records on a little square record
player and were dancing among themselves when they heard, from a
busboy cleaning the tables, that the Rolling Stones were guests at
the hotel. In fact, it was Mick Jagger's birthday too! And at that
very moment Keith Richards was throwing a birthday party for Mick
downstairs in the basement Game Room.
Katie was led downstairs by the bus
boy, and introduced herself to Mick and told him it was her birthday
too, and asked him if he would come up and meet the girls at her
party upstairs.
When Duncan, who drove some of the
girls to the party, checked in the Rainbow Room, he found a group of
giggling girls standing around Mick Jagger.
“Is that Mick Jagger?” he asked a
passing waiter.
“Yes, sir it is,” came the reply,
and Duncan rolled his eyes and walked over to the lobby bar and
ordered a rare shot of whiskey and sat down.
It later came out – you couldn't keep
such a thing secret, it later came out that Mick invited the girls
downstairs to his party, and so as not to cause suspicion, one by one
the girls meandared down the steps to the game room where they played
pinball and pool, drank beer and smoked cigarettes and pot with the
Rolling Stones.
The mayor's daughters thought that was
the greatest thing after a Bay Shores rainy day matinee, and knew
they were going to be grounded for the rest of the summer, but were
quite surprised at their father's reaction.
They were in the other room and could
hear him talking with Mister Kirkman, yelling at Kirkman - “How
could you let my daughters, and the daughters of my best friends
drink and smoke pot with the Rolling Stones!?”
They couldn't hear Kirkman's excuse or
what he said, but in the end, in no uncertain terms, could either of
them leave the house on Labor Day weekend. The party they had planned
was off, and they couldn't leave the house.
And they knew why. It wasn't because
they partied with the Rolling Stones at the Seaview, it was because
the Barbarians were coming, and the mayor didn't want them out on the
streets when the bikers were raping and pillaging the town.
Next : Episode 12 Conway Twitty Returns
as King of the Point -
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