By the early 1970s Atlantic City, New Jersey had seen better days. Its
heyday was decades in the past, and the uncertain promise of casinos had
not yet become a reality. Shabby, rundown and even seedy were often
terms used to describe the once attractive seaside resort city.
Atlantic City was not without its charms, however. The ocean and the
steady sea breeze is always hard to resist. The famous Boardwalk with
its shops and the Steel Pier still drew visitors. It remained a
destination for mostly bargain vacationers. Once in town, travelers
mixed with the drug dealers, runaways, pimps, con artists and others to
create a strange tapestry.
It was vastly different than the small shtetl in Poland where Holocaust
survivors Harry and Sonia Golubcow once lived. That world had been
totally destroyed. When they became the proprietors of the Seacrest
Hotel on St. James Place, a small walk up hotel situated less than a
block from the Boardwalk, they brought their memories with them and
maintained their old world ways.
Harry would often say, "Hitler was a strange matchmaker" describing his
new life. Indeed, the hotel's colorful clientele became a sort of
family, with the couple demonstrating their incredible capacity to
interact with strange and quirky quests with empathy and understanding--
adapting to lifestyles so foreign and opposite to their strict Jewish
upbringing and alien compared to the horrors that they experienced.
Along the way, they became friends, substitute parents, teachers, and in
some cases, saviors to those who came to the Seacrest.
Observing all of this is Harry and Sonia's young teenage daughter,
Molly. The comings and goings of the Seacrest's unforgettable characters
unfold before her like a bizarre soap opera. Each person that passes by
Harry's front desk begins a new tale about a Seacrest Hotel guest who
made an impression on Molly. Some are sad and others dangerous, but they
all have a story to tell. And they lead Molly--and us-- into a darker,
misfit world of Atlantic City in those days.
Let's go to St. James Place and pay a visit to the Seacrest Hotel, as
Molly Golubcow vividly remembers it. It will be an unforgettable
journey.
