From My Post Road Window / Nicholas Troilo

Dateline: Ocean City, N.J.

Ocean City, N.J., has been my summer vacation spot since I was a child growing up in Reading, Pa. Although Ocean City has changed in many ways since then, it is still my favorite summer east coast beach town. Its beaches are broad and clean. Its streets are bicycle friendly. Its restaurants are family oriented.

Its boardwalk is only as gaudy or as exciting as any other beach town boardwalk. I wonder why the Jersey Shore gets such a bum wrap? It is nothing like the characterization currently popular on TV.

As I watch the sun rise over the ocean this quiet morning while the family sleeps I've been thinking about stereotypes. And I've been thinking about how difficult it is to break away from images that are created about a place or its people. We lock them in our minds and then we develop irrational attitudes. At least I know that happens to me.

I once had a writing assignment that required me to tell a story about an experience that was out of the ordinary for me. I could write about anything as long as it took me outside of my normal realm of behavior. I decided to make it an adventure.

On my "adventure" day, I used the 125th Street Station on Metro-North. I would go to lunch in West Harlem. I had in my head that this would be a place where I could sit in a restaurant, the only man with swarthy but still pale skin, eat chitlins, black-eyed peas, fried chicken and watermelon. After all, West Harlem is the heart of Africa-America just as East Harlem is the heart of Spanish-America. I brought that thinking to my day of behaving outside my realm.

If you've been to lunch is West Harlem lately, you'll easily understand why I didn't succeed with that writing assignment. The streets of West Harlem, a place of magnificent brownstones and broad boulevards, are dotted with more European style restaurants -- and by that I mean bistro type dining -- serving European-style foods then there are in Darien. I couldn't capture a story about being outside my environment because I was only outside my environment in my private thoughts. Not in reality. The only reality was my prejudices that allowed me to build a stereotype of the area.

And we often do the same thing with Darien. We've allowed the entertainment industry and the press to characterize Darien as a town of anti-Semitic WASPS and cougars and MILFS and financial industry execs who have raped the nation of its economic stability. That's certainly not reality but that is certainly how much of the world outside of Darien sees Darien.

In turn, in Darien we've characterized Norwalk as the big box store mecca and we've characterized Stamford as a place with a mall that we wouldn't go to, and Westport and the "artsy" town, and Greenwich as the haven for the ultra rich, and New Canaan as just a place for snobs, and Wilton as boring. All false, of course, when we examine those places with more then the intent to create a stereotypical view of the place that makes us comfortable with our own prejudices.

Well the sun has risen here in Ocean City, N.J. It will be a fine beach day here. All my family -- my wife, my adult children, my grandchildren -- are still asleep. I don't know how they do it. I can't stay in bed beyond 6 a.m. even on vacation.

I'm off to Dot's Pastry Shop to buy breakfast donuts before the line gets too long. Dot's has the very best donuts in the whole wide world. And this morning I'm going to buy sticky buns too. They are soooo good.

And I might stop at the Acme Market for some Philadelphia Scrapple. You've never eaten scrapple? You fry it with eggs and then kill it with maple syrup. It's really good -- just don't read the ingredients. And I should pick up a box of Tastykake Butterscotch Krimpets and a box of Tastykake Peanut Butter Kandy Kakes, too. I don't want to miss those.

I hope we can go to the boardwalk tonight. I can't pass up the caramel popcorn stand. We can decide that after lunch -- Philadelphia cheese steaks and Italian subs. You can't find a Philly cheese steak or Italian sub anywhere in the USA better then in Ocean City, N.J. I've known that since I was a kid growing up in Reading, Pa. That was when I didn't care about stereotypes or prejudices.

And I still don't today, but I know I have prejudices and I sometimes think in stereotypes. It's a challenging job to overcome. I'll try to work that out with a long ocean swim. It is a perfect day for the beach. Did I just stereotype the day?