Melinda: Today is Saturday, September sixth, 2025. I'm Melinda Allen-Grote, and I'm meeting with Karen Alligood-Finocchio at her home at 107 Heck Avenue in Ocean Grove. We're meeting as part of the Historical Society of Ocean Grove's Oral History project. So thanks for joining me today. [K:Sure]. Tell me what it was like growing up in Ocean Grove.

Karen: It was good! Yeah, I think most Almost everyone that grew up here enjoyed their childhood hoods here. It was a very protected, fun. An everybody-knew-each-other, place.

Melinda: Any memories pop out at you about growing up here?

Karen: Lots of memories. I think still being close with my sister, I think we've talked about so many of them over and over again and shared stories. Now that neither one of us live in town full-time or anything, I think we've shared them with outsiders who think it was a pretty... Sounds like a pretty odd way to grow up, but I don't think we ever realized it was odd until we left.

Melinda: What was odd?

Karen: Well, it was a commute. Well, other than the usual, the no driving on Sunday, the blah, blah, blah, those stories that everybody knows. It was your classic small town, but you were surrounded by the bigger town. You were this little isolated island where you were pretty much protected as long as you were, especially white and Christian, Methodist, make that Methodist. Well, there was a lot of acceptance here anyway, excluding race and religion. People were accepted here, I think.

Melinda: How did they rule people out? How did you get in? If you wanted to buy a piece of property, or did know that it was Methodist, or was there-

Karen: Well, yeah. When my parents moved in here, before they moved, well, the house was passed on to them, but before it could legally be turned over to them, they had to go before the board. And I remember my mother always shared this story that the word had gotten out that she went to some party, and we three kids were there, and we had orange juice, and someone spread the word that it was spiked, and they didn't want her to... They didn't think my parents might... They thought my parents might not meet the criteria until she explained that it was just orange juice.

Melinda: So that was a party here in Ocean Grove? Yes. So somebody was drinking?

Karen: They thought, yeah. Here, my parents, these new people came in and not only went to this party, or I don't even know how the story would have ever gotten out. It was a bizarre story. My parents weren't even really drinkers. But they did have to defend that they did not serve drinks to kids.

Melinda: How old would you have been?

Karen: Probably two. And my brother was three or five.

Melinda: So there was a rumor that they were giving it to you at two years old?

Karen: Yeah. I found that out as that. So I don't know whether it was someone who... I don't know why. I don't know what was behind it, but she always liked that story.

Melinda: And they moved here from where?

Karen: They had lived- My grandmother lived here. My father was from North Carolina. He always said that he was fighting World War II on the Asbury Park boardwalk where he picked up my mother. And she was at that time... She was living in Bayonne, but summered a lot in Ocean Grove. So that's how they met. And then after they got married, they lived in North Carolina a while. She didn't like it, and they came back. And after my brother was born, they moved in with my grandmother here in Ocean Grove.

Melinda: And so your dad and mom had a business here. Can you tell me about the business? Was it here in Ocean Grove?

Karen: My father was a part of the owner of the dry cleaners. He had a very small percentage of the dry cleaning business with three others.

Melinda: Tell me about school. What was school like here? So we're talking '50s and '60s, right?

Karen: We're talking... Here, again, I don't want to dwell on the race thing, but it was an issue. I remember when we had a new music teacher, and that was maybe third grade. I remember her name clearly, Mrs. Waxwood, and she was black. Before she started, she came in mid-year. Before she started, the principal went and met with every class to prepare us that our new music teacher was going to be black or a Negro, as they would have said, which we were all like, What I don't think to us it... I mean, I don't know whether it was our family or what, but it certainly didn't mean a single thing to us. But they felt a need to prep us.

Melinda: So this is like fourth grade?

Karen: Yeah, probably around fourth grade.

Melinda: And had you interacted with [using air quotes] "Negroes" between- Well, interesting you asked that because you never, of course, saw [using air quotes] "Negroes" in Ocean Grove other than at the cafeterias.

Karen: That's another story. But my brother, who was special needs, back then, of course, you use the R-word, which is not used now. But when he was five, he had a tutor at our house every day who was a black woman. So he was five. My sister and I would have been two. From an early age, all we knew was that my brother was- he had his limitations. He couldn't do math, but he could always read. We always chalked it up to her. This woman that came and sat at her little table every day, and it was never an issue.

Melinda: Do you remember what her name was by any chance?

Karen: I don't. Isn't that crazy? Actually, he was older than five, though. He was probably seven, and we were probably four. But no, I wish I did remember.

Melinda: You alluded to the cafeterias, and your face alluded to the fact that there's probably some stories there. Do you want to talk about that?

Karen: Well, I think people, you read now, you read it, they get into the discussion, the memories of Ocean Grove, you see it on Facebook or whatever. I think everybody unanimously loved The Sampler or the... What was the other one's name? The Quaker, not the Quaker. The Sampler Inn and or the other one. In fact, it was bizarre because all the help were young black men who came up for this summer, were housed in some sweaty place rooms or something. I am not even sure how, but we all knew that they lived within the building, or some of them, I guess, men lived other places. And they came and they carried your trays. I mean, even little kids, they, 'Yeah, I'll carry it over'. 'Let me carry'. 'Where are you sitting?' Blah, blah, blah. And you look back on it, it was very plantation. But nobody thought that. Everyone thought it was a great place. Isn't this great? These guys carry your trays. One place, you paid 10 cents. One place, it was free for them to carry it. Grand Atlantic. Grand Atlantic is where they sample it.

Melinda: Where was that?

Karen: Right there on Main Avenue. Both of them were on Main Avenue, caddy corner. Grand Atlantic is now where I think the retired nuns live.

Melinda: Okay. And so They came up from the south? Mm-mm.

Karen: Yeah, they were like cafeteria sharecropper type things, whatever. They just came up and worked, and then they disappeared at the summer, at the end of the summer, when the cafeteria is closed. They knew better than to walk around Ocean Grove, especially at night, which is just heartbreaking.

Melinda: Looking back at that, it was a very difficult time.

Karen: It was very, yeah.

Melinda: What was hard about living here? Was there anything hard about living here?

Karen: As young as? Mm-hmm. Up until, I would say eighth grade. No, maybe seventh grade. It was very, very easy because everyone knew each other. It was a very It was a very non-judgy town. If you met the color and the religion criteria, it was a non-judgy town. My brother was protected by the Ocean Grovers. Everybody knew everybody. Nobody said anything. He was always protected by them. In fact, the only time there were issues would be in the summer when the city people came in, which we were all on high alert. I remember one time when he was being really picked on on the beach, and he was down there by himself. He was picked on by a family that thought he was looking at their daughter or some bizarre thing. It was an Ocean Grove high school kid who stepped in and went head to head with the father and said, 'You don't know this guy'. And blah, blah, blah. To this day, Thank you, Dennis. [M:What?] Old-time Ocean Grove family. But he stepped right in.

Melinda: So when you said the city people came in, what does that mean? Who are the city people?

Karen: We told the New Yorkers wouldn't be as tolerant of him because I think they were more on guard because we were this little community where I say everybody knew each other. So everyone knew my brother wasn't going to hurt anybody. He wasn't doing... But then it seemed like you always thought that all of the summer people were New Yorkers. I don't know why. Maybe that was just my family, but that's what we always... So you always had to say, Oh, Then he shouldn't really go down there by himself because the New Yorkers don't know him.

Melinda: I'm curious. So these folks came in and rented.

Karen: Yes.

Melinda: Did they have to be Methodist?

Karen: No. A lot of them, what you did find was the women and children lived here all summer, and the husbands, you would see commuting on the train, worked in the city during the day, and either came in just for the weekend or they commuted every day.

Melinda: So they rented houses. Right. So was there a split between the locals and the tent people?

Karen: That's interesting. There definitely was with my sister and I. We never hung out with summer kids.

Melinda: Because you didn't know them?

Karen: Yeah, we just never had no reason to know them.

Melinda: Was that a different town?

Karen: Yeah. I would say, well, first of all, they were all caught up with the Thornley Chapel and stuff like that that we didn't do too much of. They had their little beach comber gossip column every Friday. It was very seldom the Ocean Grove native kids. It was usually always what 'summer kids', as we call, what summer kids were doing.

Melinda: So it was like an invasion?

Karen: Yeah. I won't say we didn't like them. Actually, the irony is today, I get so annoyed when people complain about the summer people because they keep these stores going. So that bothers me. But as a kid growing up here, we had such a little tight knit community. It was different in the summer.

Melinda: They were the foreigners.

Karen: Yeah. Just stirred things. It just made it a little bit different. I think the major issue would have been, I would say, because of my brother.

Melinda: Everybody was glad to see them go like they are now? Yeah. It's local summer.

Karen: Yeah. I think people were. They were glad to see them go. It's a tough... I mean, that's the thing because the Ocean Grove... That the Ocean Grove native people, and again, I don't know whether my family was a little more liberal, which I don't think, certainly my father, I don't think was. My mother was definitely more liberal than a lot of the people. But you could be... If you met, like I said before, the religion and the color guidelines, they were non-judgy, and you could be a character. Character is made But nobody... You could be a character in Ocean Grove and be a legend and a hero. It was never a big deal. Nobody called the police on the characters. They liked it. It was part of the whole fabric of Ocean Grove. But I'm sure some of those people, the characters, probably had a tougher time in the summer. The other thing, which is you never, growing up in Ocean Grove, I had never, ever heard the word gay, never, ever knew that there were people who like the same sex or whatever. That was something. I don't know whether that was just Ocean Grove or whether it was the way the world was then, or America, or the United States, whatever, was then that they just didn't talk about it. But we never... We had great friends that I can think of, too, that were, quote, tomboys. But 50 years later, you Google them and you find out, Wait, why didn't I know that? But we didn't. Nobody ever. Which also brings me to one of my favorite stories. The woman we lived across the street from a woman, Jane. Jane was an older woman, and every summer, her nephew came to visit, and he would stay a week or two. Every day, he swept her sidewalk wearing a dress. We see him out there, he's sweeping. Nobody thought anything. So one day, I said to my mother, just out of curiosity, Mom, why when Jane's nephew comes to sweep the sidewalk, why does he wear a dress? And my mother said, Well, everyone knows it's more comfortable to sweep wearing a dress. And that was the end of the discussion. Nobody ever... Well, it made complete sense. And that was, I think, I think she knew. She probably knew. And it wasn't even that she was, Oh, I don't want to tell them about it. It was simply that was her explanation. She didn't care about the why behind it. She just wanted us to know it's more...And basically, how naive are you to even ask the question? Anyway.

Melinda: So there was an influx in the '90s when we deinstitutionalized the state hospitals. What did it impact Ocean Grove?

Karen: I was living here. I was in the '90s? Yeah. No, I lived... I was out of state, one of the state.

Melinda: Do you have any sense of what that did to the city, to the town?

Karen: Oh, yeah. I certainly came and visited enough that it was a major impact. And there, it was a tough call there because here we were We were, my mother, and I think my sister and I, we were defending the mentally ill people. Who are we to say the mentally ill people shouldn't be living here. And in fact, our anger was all at the landlords who were making huge money, renting to these people. Nobody was checking on their meds. So you had all these people. But But yet, when I come and bring my kids during that time, I remember my daughters, they had to stay with me because there was the story of the girl who got punched in the face on Main Avenue or something. And you can be as much as you want for a cause or whatever, but when it comes to your kids, you protect them. That was my feeling when I would be here. Everybody saw their values going down and all that. Yet, at the same time, It brought a mean spiritness out from people that you didn't want to see be that way because they were looking at it from a financial. I think people were probably glad when they were moved out, but at the same time, morally, you had to say these people were victims.

Melinda: And there are still boarding houses in Ocean Grove?

Karen: I think there are..I can't imagine that they'll last much longer, though.

Melinda: Yeah, with a price of property.

Karen: But it was all because of that one girl. That was the whole thing.

Melinda: And then when did the gay population start moving in? That was the '90s, too, probably.

Karen: I honestly don't know. Yeah, I'm thinking. I think after they I moved the mentally ill people somewhere, who knows where? It's like when the homeless disappeared from New York City and no one ever knew where they went. No, I'm not sure where the mentally ill people that had been living here went. But the values went up, and gay people could afford to start buying here and did beautiful things with the properties.

Melinda: And so in Ocean Grove now, you don't have to be Methodist to buy, correct?

Karen: I think- I think that is the rule now. Yeah. Which is interesting because one of my very favorite families in Ocean Grove. She married a Jewish man, and they bought a house, and probably one of the nicest husbands I've ever known. The house could only be in her name. You just went along with, Well, yeah.

Melinda: It was just the way it was. Yeah.

Karen: But fortunately, there was some progress in civil rights and stuff that couldn't pull that stuff.

Melinda: All right. There's some legacy involved in your family here.

Karen: Oh, yeah. We go four or five generations.

Melinda: Then there's legacy going forward. Your kids, your grandkids- Yeah, they all have a sense of here.

Karen: Yes. Love coming here.

Melinda: Any final thoughts? Any final impressions of where you see Ocean Grove now?

Karen: Well, Ocean Grove is an entirely different place. Even- I went down on the pier, When I looked, I was looking at all the fish that the people have, the dedications. I knew two names out of all the fish.

Melinda: Wow. No.

Karen: Fifty years ago, I would have known every fish. I just don't know them anymore. Part of it is that I live out of state, but I'm here enough. I think I keep up on... I have my Coaster subscription, but I don't know the people. But I think maybe that's a whole trend in the country, that people don't... For better or worse, people aren't in each other's business as much, although here, actually, hear people put things on Facebook that I'm appalled at. I don't know.

Melinda: Still a good place to live?

Karen: I think so. I would not have wanted. I don't think I would now want to raise my kids here. I think right now, there's I don't know. There's too much of... There's some far-right Christianity people that are Christians that I think, or call themselves Christians. I don't want to really deal with. No, I don't think I would want my kids to look at her. Okay. Or my grandkids, actually.

Melinda: That- That it?

Karen: It could be. You feel like you're- with chest of notes. Yeah, I think that was... Yeah, I think that's pretty much it.

Melinda: Okay. Thank you.

Karen: You're welcome.