Atlantic City Comes Back After Sandy

Atlantic City

What a Great Place It Used to Be

Old Fashioned and Modern All At Once 

Since the middle of June this year I have spent about half of my time in Atlantic City, New Jersey.  Now I know that my readers are going to be saying that AC is kind of unfashionable as a beach resort but old Joe is maybe so out of touch he doesn't know it.  Actually, as my grandkids are prone to say over and over, I really do know that AC is a thing of the past.  Why go?  It was not nostalgia, I will assure you.  What it was and is is one of those old Roman maladies, Pro Bono.  Grace has asked me to see if I can rid myself of this chronic illness but it hangs on.

SCORE is a resource partner of the Small Business Administration (SBA).  It provides free counseling to small business people or folks who are thinking of becoming small business people.  SCORE's usual place to work is in over 350 Chapters spread all over the country, like the one I belong to in Fort Worth.  The Atlantic City task is something called the Sandy Business Recovery Project.  "Sandy"???? Wazzatt?  If you were paying attention you will recall that toward the end of October last year a Hurricane dubbed Super Storm Sandy hammered the Atlantic Coast from North Carolina to Maine.  New Jersey and New York were the hardest hit.

Some Plant Life to Hold the Dunes In Place

October 2012 was 9 months ago.  If they wanted to help the business people who suffered damage from Sandy shouldn't SCORE have saddled up and galloped into town before this?  That's a really good question but clearly whoever asked it forgot that SCORE works for the SBA and the SBA is an agency of the famous Federal government in Washington DC.   Do the terms Inter Party Infighting, Gridlock, Do Nothing Congress and the Best Congress That Money Can Buy resonate with you at all? If they do you will understand why it took our intrepid Washington Patriots until late April 2013 to give SBA and through it SCORE marching orders and a few taxpayer bucks to send out a call for non paid volunteers from all over the country to go to New Jersey to land a hand counseling and advising Jersey business people about taking advantage of the myriad local, state and federal sources of aid and money out there to get their businesses running again.

When foreigners learn a bit about America and Americans one of our national characteristics that amazes and impresses them is our readiness to help our fellow men.  They, the foreigners, can't believe that we drop what we are doing and go wherever the need is without being recruited and paid to do so. They always tell me that their countrymen would be at least reluctant and at most dismissive of a call to unpaid assistance.  

So, in spite of the outrageous denizens of DC SCORE put a team of volunteers together to base out of Atlantic City to beat the street and let Sandy victims know that there are still programs and other forms of help available and that SCORE will help them find their way through the bureaucracy to take advantage of the aid that their fellow americans have put in place for them.

By the way, in this age of razor sharp minds ready to label anyone by some kind of political curseword, be advised that my dislike of the political class is not limited to the District of Columbia  version.  Assemblies and Statehouses and County Seats and City Council Chambers and Mayoral Offices have plenty of once rational politicians who are more interested in the D's, the R's and the I's that follow an elected person's name than what that person has to say.  My disdain has no initials attached.

Pardon the slight detour.  I have a hard time staying on point whenever I think of our elected officials and their entrenched employees.  Forgive me.

I will throw in a few pictures taken by SCORE'S volunteers and make a few observations on Sandy, New Jersey and the incredible resilience of our fellow Americans in future postings.

A View to the Atlantic