The organ up close. Five manuals (keyboards) and 10,000 pipes!
Upper right side of the auditorium, which seats 6,000.
Upper left side of the auditorium ...the peanut gallery.
Near the beach.
Soft colors along a fence. The picture doesn't do it justice.
24 comments:
That organ is magnificent...but where is the Phantom?
That picket fence with the flowers along the front...gorgeous! This is like a fairytale town, and close to the ocean as well! I would love to have a home close to the sea.
Living by the coast is definitely more comfortable in the summer. I really liked living out on the Bolivar Peninsula by Galveston - except for the hurricanes.
Those old organs are amazing - yes it immediately brings the Phantom to mind. We had a high school classmate - a small-boned, scrawny young man with a magnificent voice - that sang the role of the Phantom - I think it was in the Chicago area - sure would have loved to hear him.
That looks like a nice place, how long did it take you to get there?
I know who you mean, Biddie. He was also a great actor and composer. I saw him in Princeton, I believe, as Cyrano de Bourgerack (phonetic spelling). He was magnificant! In case you didn't know he played the Phantom on Broadway for a while. If I remember correctly he was the 2nd Phantom after the gentleman who played the Phantom first and the longest.
I just remembered that he also did one of the voices in the Disney movie Lion King.
I just looked him up in the old high school yearbook - Tim Nolen!!!
I just love those big old houses, we see them in Amsterdam NY on our way up to the house and in Lee MA, I always wonder who had the money back then to build such big houses, then they were so cheap to buy and now not so much but I would love to have one, the heat bill alone would kill my checkbook though
Right you are, Biddie! During HS he was better known as Tex since he'd moved to BH from Texas. He no longer answers to that name. I have a few email exchanges every so often just to keep in touch. He was one of a group 4 of us that I got together with in the summer after graduating from HS.
What is his current name - is it different from his stage name? Is he still active on the stage?
I'm thinking of getting a copy of the Lion King to see if I can locate his voice/character ....
Tim Nolen still has the same name. I've heard him on the radio doing comic parts in operas at the Chicago Lyric Opera. Do you remember him playing the trumpet in H.S.?
K...it took 3 hours to get to Ocean Grove from Stony Brook, LI, but we met some congestion on the Parkway so it could be quicker on a weekday. It's well worth a visit. The people who built those big houses had servants.
C...I didn't see any Phantom and I don't think there was a basement for him to lurk in. We also drove through Asbury Park, which is next door, a woeful scene of desolation and decay. I'll put up a couple of pictures. It's ironic that the straitlaced town that forbids liquor has survived, is beautiful, and is where people flock, while the wild amusement town next door has died.
Biddie,
He uses his real name, Tim Nolan. He's been active with the Chicago Lyric Opera (thanks, Priscilla. I couldn't remember the name of that group). He normally spends a good bit of his summer in Santa Fe, NM where he does some theater there.
I just remembered that I put a notice on our website about Tim being the 2nd Phantom on Broadway after reading it in the Sunday paper quite a while ago. I don't remember if I put it on the news page or the general interest page. I don't keep copies of the older ones so I no longer have the information. YES, I'm kicking myself for that one right now!
Oh, I sure do remember him playing his trumpet! I also remember him singing - it was always a little odd to hear such a great strong voice coming out of him because he was such a quiet person.
Now that you mentioned the notice about Tim playing the Phantom, I remember reading it.
And I realized that there just couldn't be a Phantom living there in Ocean Grove - O.G. is built mainly on a huge pile of sand - there couldn't be any basements there that would accommodate his needs....
I lived in Toms River a couple of years when in Jr High and even then Asbury Park was declining. It amazes me how our society "uses stuff up" and then just doesn't care about them anymore. A case in point, in town up here a building that belonged to a Girl Scout Summer Camp in the early 1900was recently torn down. I was speaking to a woman about our vanishing history in town and how I thought it was a disgrace that nobody stepped up to try to save this building. Her response..."what does it matter, it didn't hold any part in my life". I was stunned.
You might ask, if I cared so much why didn't I do something about it? All the proverbial ducks were in a row regarding the demolition of said building before we moved back to this area. I didn't have knowledge of the raizing event until I drove by and only the chimney was left standing. What bothers me most, is that there are many people in this town that feel the same as the woman I spoke to about the building...if it don't work, get rid of it. Sad.
Most times the property is worth more than the memories (money, money, money). In many cases the best you can hope for is that someone has documented it before it's destroyed. You really can't keep everything from the past or you wouldn't have anyplace for the future.
I agree to some extent about not having any room for the future, but the building was in good repair, on town land in a land trust (therefore, the land can't be sold), and a part of the town's history. It could have been modernized a bit and used as a senior/youth center. There are many pictures of the exterior, but not many of the interior. This camp brought many city people up to the hills and quite a few of them ended up purchasing summer homes in this area.
Probably the potential tax revenue from whatever would be built on the site caused the local officials to decide against preserving it. It's sad, but as Oppy says you can't save everything...if a person did that with his/her own possessions he/she would be called neurotic or crazy.
At least we're not like the Chinese who blithly move thousands of people out of an area so they can demolish everything and build an industrial park or a dam or a stadium, and there's nothing the people can do about it.
B...Re: Tex, I thought you were going to say "...because he was such a thin person." instead you said "quiet person". I remember him as being short and sleight with a big voice. We went to the same church for one year, Millington Baptist. Diane Van Wettering attended, too. She lived near him and told me he looked very skinny in his underwear, and how did she know that? She accidently came into his house once when he was half dressed. (I shouldn't have told that. Funny what sticks in your mind!)
You're right, P. It is funny what sticks in your memory or comes to mind after being triggered by a current event. A lot of what I remember come from trips in the "way back machine" with someone else. I've discovered/remembered a lot of secrets that I'd tucked away from "way back". [chuckle]
You can't just say that and not reveal a few!! that's cruel and unusual punishment.
(grin) yes, Tim was a small person - His big black-rimmed glasses always looked like they were going to fall off his little nose. I also seem to remember him wearing cowboy boots and hat ..... I didn't know that he was from TX.
I'm not sure if Tim was born and raised in Texas. I only know he moved from Texas to BH (NJ). Interesting that you remember him as being short. I never would have thought of him that way. Thinking now I would have considered him about my height + or - a inch which would have put him around 5' 10" to 6' 0" at graduation. He was slight and had some arthritis in his hands. In spite of that he played the piano wonderfully! And, yes, he played the trumpet also!
I've been meaning to do this for several days now - we've been talking back-n-forth about Tim so much that I scanned his high school yearbook picture and uploaded it.
Here's a link to his HS picture and his HS credits
Nice Biddie. Seeing that made me think we should have had this discussion on the class blog. It might have generated some interest from others who read it but couldn't comment yet.
Priscilla, I do keep secrets! You never know when "telling a few" can come back and bite you in your posterior. (see...no French involved)
How wise and adult you sound.
"wise and adult"..... hmmmmm Something tells me I'm up on my soapbox more than I should be for which I apologize.
Post a Comment