When Will One of Those Promises Come True?

Promises, promises they are all we seem to get. When I buy a lottery ticket, I promise myself when I hit the jackpot and win big, the loot won’t change me one iota. Deep down inside, I know it’s a fib, but a nice one, and all it costs me is a buck. My Scottish side, wherever it is, chides, “Only a fool would waste good money on a no-win idea.”
Working in the Cape May County newspaper field for over three decades, I have reported promises by scores of people, most hoping to get elected or otherwise endear themselves to a populus which, in large part, is in dire need of decent jobs that last 52 weeks a year, that pay honest wages and benefits, and can be “banked” as having a future.
If there was a wishing well into which many have tossed their pennies, it would be the Cape May County Airport. The place hopes promise, like that in the hearts of a couple on their wedding day. There is nothing that cannot be done at that parcel of ground, or so it would seem.
The people rejoiced at the very thought of good, industrial jobs when Timme Fabric set up shop a rambling building that since has been known as “The Everlon Building,” (a second failed endeavor there). At least the joint is the proper color: white, as in white elephant.
There was more promise when a brainy bunch hatched the fishy idea of a seafood processing plant there. It was a deal that sounded great. Once again, the hope of good jobs and a business that would kick unemployment in the shins seemed a light in the wilderness. It fizzled, so much for that promise.
U.S. Overseas Airline was housed at the airport for a bit, but jet planes put that endeavor out of business.
At one time, Borden’s had a clam processing plant there, and it was a good operation, but then, business models changed, and the structure was vacant.
Look back far enough, and you may find blueprints for something called WABCO, Westinghouse Air Brake Co.
Then, for a brief, shining moment, there was a glimmer of more production for monorail-type cars at the same building which presently houses the Lower Township Police Department.
The last I recall, one of the doomed cars was at the county park, but that’s about the last I can recall of it.
Naval Air Station Wildwood aviation museum and the Forgotten Warriors Museum are two present facilities that are drawing people to the airport, but as far as creating those high-paying jobs, no, but then, museums cannot be expected to fill that roll.
There have been other aviation-related ventures, all of which have seemingly hit brick walls, yet all of them held promise for those elusive high-paying jobs with a future.
The latest mention of a venture for the old Navy air training field turned airport would be a pilot’s school. That surfaced at the April 26 freeholder caucus. Gordon Dahl, executive director, South Jersey Economic Development District, was outlining a $1 million project in the Salem River that would attempt to generate electricity with fiberglas turbines spun by the river’s flow.
Dahl was rattling off various economic ventures that would give someone training in a field with lucrative promise. He mentioned the pilot’s school. Seems Dr. Joseph Salvatore (NASW guiding light and founder) Barbara Tomalino (Paramount Air Service) and several others, have been looking into establishment of such a facility there.
Freeholder M. Susan Sheppard at first thought that meant a commercial pilot’s school, of which there are not that many in the nation.
That would not be the case, said Dahl. The school would be for private pilots, those bitten with an insatiable urge to soar aloft, and leave Mother Earth far below, and mingle with the southbound geese in fall and northbound birds in spring.
How much promise does it hold? I really try to live in hope. I ask “Is this the one?”
Face it, we’re too far off the “beaten path” to have any viable industry (read numerous high-paying jobs) except commercial fishing, and that’s a three-and-a-half hour ride up the parkway to the Fulton Fish Market. To make anything here, raw materials must be trucked in, dance around with insane environmental regulations during manufacture, then, truck it out again. How much money can that make?
Sooner or later, one of those promises has to pay off for jobs etc. If and when that happens, will the population be ready for a 40-hour workweek 52 weeks a year? That question is something that cries for an honest answer.
Until then, we’ll just hear more promises.