What Goes Around, Comes Around

We’ve all heard that expression of how cyclical life is, so it should come as no surprise to me that what I hope is the final rung of my career ladder has such similarities to the first one.
I began my newspaper career in Connecticut more years ago than I like to think about, and this was the time of year we always took our vacation….in Cape May County, of course. In the newspaper business in New England, high summer – July and August – were our slowest months. Next to January, of course. That was mostly because summertime, once school was out, was vacation time for many New Englanders, except those in the more touristy areas along the shore.
Remembering fondly those days of a summer vacation at the beach made me realize that, for some of us here at MAC,
summer also has a different sort of pace than, say, the spring, fall and holiday months. Let’s face it: just as I did with my family all those years ago, the majority of people coming to Cape May want to go to the beach.
And who can blame them? Naturally, we have more scheduled tours of the Physick House. The Lighthouse and the World War II Tower are open longer hours, and there are more trolley tours, but we use a lot of our creative energy for those “shoulder” season events and festivals that span a weekend or more during times of the year when we need to give people another reason to come to town other than that big, beautiful beach.
Not that we don’t come up with new summertime tours, such as some of the Actors Offstage trolley rides new this year. And we certainly don’t work any fewer hours. On the contrary, the extra tours and attraction hours designed to offer an alternative to sand and sea fill our days to the brim. But, for some of us, it’s a more consistent pattern than that demanded by creating and implementing those special events and tours for the shoulder seasons. All the summertime planning and blood, sweat and tears of scheduling was done weeks ago and now it has to run like the proverbial well-oiled machine.
We know that no one can compete with the glory of a day on the beach but everyone has to (or should) get out of the sun for awhile for the sake of a healthy, burn-free vacation. That’s where we try to fill the breach with trolley tours and other activities that are not only fun, but showcase the wonderful history of the town and help make for a memorable vacation. But, for the sake of our planning, we know we can count on midweek days being busier than weekends and our tour schedule does not always look like something only a rocket scientist could figure out: I have been here for most of a decade, and my respect for those who juggle these schedules continues to grow. For me, there is just a marked comfort level in knowing that a certain trolley or house tour will be offered every day at a specific time, and that knowledge usually allows for enough relaxation to let the memories of shore vacations bubble to the surface.
This is obviously not a pattern shared by our local business partners who must prepare more meals, serve more drinks or change more sheets and towels. I now appreciate them from a perspective I didn’t have all those long years ago as a tourist.
And so, life having come full circle, I find myself once again thinking about a summer vacation. Now if only I were not so busy!
Barraclough is director of marketing and communications at MAC.