Short Stories

This page of our website is for your enjoyment and entertainment, and has nothing to do with real estate. Douglas Jewell was a newspaper and magazine writer and editor from 1991 through 1999, having over 5,000 articles published during that nine year run. Here we bring you a few of Douglas’ favorite articles, plus a few written about us by other writers.

• Time Out - January 1, 1997
• Time Out - August 20, 1997
• Home is where the heart is
• So Long Summer
• Take a Walk on Jewell's Westside

This first article appeared in the Cape May County Herald on January 1, 1997 in a column Sports Editor Douglas Jewell wrote called “Time Out”.

For many folks, the holidays are a time to reaffirm their religious beliefs and history, and to make New Year’s resolutions. For other, it’s a time to get reunited with family or flee to a sunny climate or snowy wonderland.

Not exactly being a conventional person, the holidays are my time to reflect on the events that have shaped my life.

A near catastrophe in 1990 had a profound effect on my psyche. It’s been on my mind lately. Here’s what happened.

Immediately after Hurricane Hugo struck the Virgin Islands in September, 1989, I packed my carpenter tools and headed down to aid the relief effort and experience life in the Caribbean.

By late the following spring the reparations were winding down and it was time to return to the States. I decided that to make things exciting I would try to get a ride back on a sailboat (I had hitched a ride down to the island in September on a 68-foot yacht).

In no time I met a 45-year old man and his 18-year old daughter who had spent the past year and a half sailing around the world. They began in their homeland of South Africa, where he built the 45-foot sailboat in his backyard in 4 ½ years. They had spent a lot of time sailing around Brazil and the Caribbean, and were now destined for Florida, then the Mediterranean.

Tony and Lisa needed a third person on the ketch, and I needed a ride. Each one of us would have to take the helm for a three hour shift, then have six hours to rest. That would have to be maintained around the clock.

It was a 1,500-nile voyage that was supposed to take eight or nine days, according to Tony. It sounded fine. We struck up a deal to leave the next morning at 6am.

My friends threw me an all night going away party, which broke up at 5am. I immediately slipped my backpack on my back and hitchhiked across St. Thomas to get to Magens Bay where the sailboat was anchored.

We set sail from paradise and headed northwest toward Puerto Rico. This seemed like fun. It wouldn’t last.

About six hours into our trip, the combination of over-imbibing the night before and being a landlubber caught up to me. The rocking back and forth of the boat was too much.

“I’ll never drink again,” I said as everything in my stomach came up and found its way into the Atlantic Ocean.

I continued to heave with my head over the side when I notice a US Coast Guard cutter bearing down on us. They must have thought we were drug runners because the next thing I knew they launched a motorized raft and four of the soldiers were carrying machine guns.

Over a loudspeaker one yelled, “Prepare to be boarded”. Through it all I was laying prone on the deck, cursing everything my stomach was rejecting.

After coming aboard with guns drawn, one yelled at me, “Don’t move!”

“Please shoot me,” I answered. I think I would have preferred it to being that sick.

After they tore the boat apart in search of drugs, the Coast Guard guys mellowed out and we chatted for awhile. Naturally, each one had done his training in Cape May so we had a lot in common. Oh yea, they got a real kick out me being so sick.

For the next week the trip was rather uneventful. My seasickness lasted just that first day, and the beautiful sun and moon rises and sets brought an inner peace that escapes description.

Besides my seasickness, something else lasted just that first day – our electricity. For some reason the boat’s batteries wouldn’t recharge. That meant we had no running lights at night when those big ships that were 20 times bigger than us could squash us like a bug hitting a windshield. We would have to be extra alert on our night shifts.

It also meant we couldn’t use our global positioning satellite (GPS) instrument whenever we wanted. The ship’s batteries, if we didn’t use them for anything else, had just enough juice for us to use the GPS tool once a day for five minutes. We could only positively fix our position once a day.

The only other downside that first week was that the winds were not cooperating. Tony had expected to cover 150 to 200 miles a day, but at 4 knots we only logged 96 a day.

On top of that, the winds were in the wrong direction. We needed to head northwest, but in reality we were going almost dead north into the middle of the Atlantic.

On the eighth day, there was NO wind. The sea was dead calm. It looked like a tabletop, something I’d never seen before. The only thing breaking the surface was the thousands of flying fish who had accompanied us the entire trip, and three killer whales who were curious about our craft and kept rubbing against it. They let us touch them on each pass.

By midday, off to the north, we noticed ominous, black clouds. We were about to get the roller coaster ride of our lives.

Within an hour, the winds had kicked up to 40 mph and the seas were wild. When we were in the trough between two waves, the tops of the waves were 40 feet above our heads. The rain came down (or perhaps sideways is a better description) with such force that it stung our exposed skin.

The power of the ocean and Mother Nature had earned my instant respect.

We had a big problem that had to be addressed immediately. Tony, not knowing how bad the conditions would become, had decided to leave the sails up as the storm approached. Now we had to get the sails down or risk losing them or our masts.

Since Tony was the sailing expert and the most necessary person aboard, I quickly volunteered to go out and reel in the sails. Snapping on a lifeline, I crawled along the deck as waves crashed over me. It was like being in a washing machine.

In what seemed like an eternity, but was probably 20 minutes, I got the sails down and secured and got back to the hatch. My heart was racing a mile a minute.

The storm continued all night and all the next day. We each took our three hour shifts in turn outside in the weather, although we really had no control over our craft. Or destiny.

On one of my shifts, outside alone with nothing but the roar of the wind and waves as company, a tune suddenly popped into my head.

“The weather starting getting rough, the tiny ship was tossed, if not for the courage of the fearless crew, the Minnow would be lost.” Where did the Gilligan’s Island theme sing come from? Was I losing my mind?

After about 36 hours, I was off shift and down below in the cabin that was strewn with the entire contents of the ship. Everything was soaking wet and the boat was rocking vigorously from side to side.

I was attempting to fix our location on a map and discovered an island to our west. I pointed it out to Tony and he decided we’d head for there. With the wind coming from the east, there should be shelter on the west side of the island.

We sighted a light two hours later (the first signs of civilization in eight days) and the wind pushed us just north of the island. We mustered all our energy and with partial sails pulled to the west side into a safe cove. It was 40 hours since the storm first struck.

As if an omen, the storm suddenly abated just minutes after we dropped anchor. The clouds spread and it was near sunrise. We had survived!

It had now been 10 days since we left St. Thomas. That was 10 days without a shower or anything cold to drink, 10 days of that constant rocking of the boat.

I had to get away from the rocking motion. My solution was to jump into the water, where I could also wash off the blood that was caked on my arms and legs from the hundred cuts and abrasions I had received in the storm. I turned the water pink.

The refuge we had found was Mayaguena Island, one of the southernmost islands in the Bahamas chain. It had about 200 inhabitants.

After a quick nap, we inflated our life raft (did I forget to mention it would only hold air about 15 minutes) and made a mad dash the 200 yards to shore. When we got there, I stood on the beach and then bent and grabbed a fist full of sand and yelled a victorious, “YES”.

I soon located a few locals who took us to town (actually, it was more a collection of shacks). On the ride, after relating our story about the storm, I mentioned that I washed my blood off in the little harbor.

Imagine my horror when my new companions told me that 14-foot sharks were so abundant there that it is off-limits for locals to swim. They said I was lucky to be alive to tell of my foolish act.

After five cokes, an order of french fries (they called them chips), and a call home to Joyce on a short wave radio, we were back at the raft three hours later. We inflated it again, and raced off to get aboard our sailboat.

We left Mayaguena and limped northwest in our battered craft. It would be another 10 days before I finally got to Florida. Another 10 days of nothing cold to drink and no shower.

My thoughts those last 10 days were of a great, big chocolate milkshake, of soaking in a bathtub, and of being on solid ground.

When I did get on land again I quickly took a shower in a marina and had to lean against one side of the stall to keep from falling over. It took me two hours to finally stop swaying because I had become so accustomed to the rocking of the ship.

Needless to say, I have not stepped foot on a sailboat since that fateful 20 day adventure in 1990. Once was enough.

But I have relived that trip a thousand times. I’ve swayed with the waves, heard the wind, felt the seaspray, and looked longingly at the sunrises, sunsets, moonrises and moonsets.

Back to top

This article appeared in the Cape May County Herald on August 20, 1997 in Sports Editor Douglas Jewell’s column called “Time Out”.

I was sitting at my desk typing sports scores (and daydreaming) the other day when a realization suddenly hit me. Exactly three years ago I was on a backpacking adventure in the Santa Lucia Mountains of California that would affect me forever.

My mind wandered back to that harrowing, eight-day experience. Little droplets of sweat appeared on my forehead, and my stomach churned. Let me share my tale with you.

The stage was set for my odyssey when I camped the first night on a knoll overlooking the Pacific Ocean and infamous Coast Highway 3,000 feet below. I was in awe of the breathtaking view and exhilarating mountain air.

The next morning, rather than return to Big Sur Village with my friends, I decided to follow a hiking trail into the Ventana Wilderness. It was to be a one day in, one day out trip. Since it was only to be one night sleeping out and I wasn’t near a store, I didn’t bother to obtain food.

I hiked about seven hours that first day in the oppressive 95 degree heat, climbing farther into the wilderness. At the end of a dirt road I found a Forest Service water tank that was used in battling forest fires. Since it was the only source of fresh water I had seen all day, I camped there for the night.

By the following morning I knew I wasn’t ready to hike back out and rejoin my friends as we had planned. The scent of the manzinillas and the lure of the giant redwood trees was drawing me farther into the wilderness.

I hit the marked trail at dawn and traveled for hours, crossing three mountain ranges and three small creeks. By early afternoon I came to a small wilderness campsite, but the trees were covered in graffiti. Although I had expected to spend the night there, the thoughtlessness of civilization had turned me off.

It was then that I made my first near-fatal decision. I would leave the trail and cut cross country to the Big Sur River. Once there, I would follow the river back to the village. Who needed a trail?

Traveling downhill, I was at the river in a half hour. For the next couple hours I followed the river downstream, jumping from rock to rock in the narrow, canyon-lined waterway. I didn’t have a care in the world.

Bad decision No.2 was made when I came upon an impassable triple waterfall stretching 100 feet top to bottom. I hate to backtrack, so turning back was an option I hardly considered. But to bypass the waterfall I would have to climb a thousand feet above the river.

An unidentified force kept pushing me on. It took me three hours to scale up the 80-degree incline, with each step requiring careful placing of my hands and feet. Once I reached the top, I realized that returning that way was impossible.

I also discovered that sometime during the climb the strap that fastened my sleeping bag to my backpack had broken. My sleeping bag was gone, having fallen into the abyss.

With darkness coming, I got down the other side of the hill and back to the river below the waterfall. I quickly pitched my tent and retired for the night.

I woke up shivering in the middle of the night. The temperature had fallen to about 45 degrees and without my sleeping bag for warmth, I had to find another way to stay comfortable. My solution was to put on my raincoat and rainpants. That’s the best I could do.

I awoke at dawn on the third day, packed up my belongings, and headed downriver again. Within an hour, I came upon another 100-foot plus waterfall. But with this one there was no way around or over. I had to turn back. I had to find another way out of the steep-walled box canyon.

Heading back upriver toward my previous night’s campsite, I saw a small creek emptying into the river. Was this one of the three creeks I had crossed on the marked trail? It must be.

I clumsily climbed uphill along the manzinillas and pricker bush-choked stream bank as my skin was repeatedly cut and torn. The ascent was a real effort, and a couple times my tangled feet caused me to get dumped into the water.

After climbing a few hours along the dwindling stream, I emerged from the dense redwood and Douglas fir forest and came out above the tree line and realized that the creek was not going to cross the hiking trail. This was not the way out!

I descended back to my campsite at the river, set up my tent, and climbed inside to ponder my next move.

As the day progressed, the temperature soared back into the 90s. The river offered cool relief from the dry heat, plus it gave me a chance to soothe my hundred or so cuts and scratches.

The fourth morning I got up ready to try again to escape my wilderness prison. During the night, which was again about 45 degrees, a new problem had surfaced. I had poison oak rashes all over my neck, arms, and neck from the previous day’s climb. Boy, did it itch.

I found another creek and again traveled up it in an attempt to find the trail. Three hours later, with insects swarming my blood soaked cuts, I turned back. Another failure, this creek wasn’t taking me to my trail.

Back to my campsite, I set up my tent again. I spent the day alternating between soaking in the river and reading a paperback in my tent. All the while, an uneasiness about my fate slowly crept into my psyche.

On the fifth day I decided to try a different way out, this time heading away from the ocean in the hopes that I’d stumble across another hiking trail to the east. Since this was a longshot, I left my tent set up and my backpack inside it. I could move through the brush easier without my 50-pound load.

Once again I had no luck. I searched for a trail, but by noon headed back to my campsite for another day of soaking my cuts and rash in the river and reading my paperback.

On the sixth day, I gave my westward search for the hiking trail one more try. I climbed for hours, came up empty, and returned for my fifth night at what I now considered my base camp.

That night I ate the only food I had – one peppermint lifesaver – and spoke to my Creator. Although covered in cuts, insect bites, and poison oak, I knew that the next day I would have to go back upriver and go over the waterfall. There was no other way. I prayed for divine intervention to see me safely through this ordeal.

Before I turned in for the night I wrote out my last will and testament on a piece of paper, put it in a plastic bag, and put that inside a bright red onion bag I had and hung it from a tree. I left instructions for whoever found it to call the Forest Service, then my wife Joyce. I explained that I was going to climb over the dreaded cliff.

I was up before first light on the seventh day, packed up my belongings, and headed out to tackle the waterfall. It took three hours to climb from the river to the top of the cliff where the 80-degree descent awaited me. It was about 1,000 feet down to the river and safe passage.

For hours I zigzagged my way down the cliff. Each step had to be carefully planned, but despite my caution disaster still struck. A landslide began and I was swept down with the rocks and dirt. With my eyes closed, I dug my hands and feet into the hillside until I finally came to a stop after 50 feet or so.

Collecting my senses while trying not to move too much, I opened my dirt-caked eyes and surveyed the damage. My ring finger was bent back to my wrist and I quickly snapped it back into position. My ribs hurt a lot (it turned out I broke four) and my arms were covered in blood after being scraped on the rocks.

My heart just about stopped when I looked toward my feet. I had stopped sliding just three feet before I would have gone over a 200-foot sheer cliff. I never would have survived.

The slide actually got me past the worst part of the descent, and I now felt assured that I could get to the river safely. To make it interesting though, the straps had been torn off my pack in the slide, so I couldn’t wear the backpack anymore but instead had to awkwardly carry it.

Within an hour I was back to the river above the waterfall. Fully clothed, I jumped into the Big Sur River and shouted a triumphant “Yes” as I pumped my fist into the air. I had won!

I made myself a walking stick and limping along I backtracked my route of a week prior. I got to the graffiti campsite, then pushed on to the middle creek of the three on the maintained trail. I pitched my tent there at dusk, drank some water, and climbed into my tent and fell asleep.

After another cold night in my rainsuit, I was off at first light on the eighth day since I still had three mountain ranges to cross.

The going was slow. I would count out 20 steps, then stop and either lean on my walking stick or sit down. My aching ribs left me constantly short of breath.

Poison oak now covered 20 percent of my body and the five varieties of insects that were harassing me seemed to take pleasure in my discomfort. Despite it being 95 degrees I had to wear a longsleeve shirt, gloves, a cowboy hat, and a wet tee shirt wrapped around my neck to keep most of those little buggers off me.

By mid-afternoon, I was back to the Forest Service water tank. Another half mile and I came out to a dirt road. Exhausted, I laid down beside the road under a bush to wait for a vehicle to come by.

Five and a half hours later, nearly at dark, I heard a sound and a pickup truck came around the corner. I was rescued.

I rambled to the middle of the road and waved down the driver, who obligingly turned around and took me 12 miles back to town. My ordeal was over.

So here it is three years later. My broken backpack sits propped in the corner of my office as a reminder of my brush with death. It also symbolizes my perseverance and willpower.

It’s really great to be able to sit at my typewriter now and pound out sports stories. But you’ll have to excuse me if every once in a while I can be seen staring out the window with a tear in my eye.

Back to Top

This article was published in the Press of Atlantic City in April, 2002 and was written by Debra Rech in her column called “Neighbors”. The article is titled, “Home is where the heart is”.

MIDDLE TOWNSHIP - Douglas Jewell, of Swainton, has held more than 30 jobs and worked in about 12 different occupations. He has lived in ten different states, hitchhiked across country twice, had three brushes with death, and says he would not change a thing about his life.

“I had this restlessness inside me,” he said. “I wrote a list of ten things I wanted to do in my life. I’ve done seven of them. I’ve milked cows on a dairy, lived without electricity and plumbing, worked as a caddy on the Professional Golf Association tour, been a chef, a construction foreman, land surveyor and so much more.”

After leaving college, Jewell caddied for the PGA for two winters. Then he did what he called “the back-to-nature thing”, working as a dairy farmer in Oregon and Maine.

“I got married in 1975 and delivered my own two children right in our bedroom,” Jewell said. “I cut my own firewood, milked goats and lived without electricity and plumbing.

“People ask me now how I could have lived that way, and I say it was a great experience. I wanted to live as many different lifestyles as I could, and that was just one of them.”

When Jewell came to Cape May County in 1989, he worked as a hotel carpenter during the day and as a maitre’ d at night. That is when he met his present wife, Joyce, and fell in love with both her and Cape May County.

“I love this place so much,” Jewell said. “I have lived in a lot of places, but can honestly say the people here are the ones I like most.”

Jewell was a sports announcer for a local radio station, and covered sports for two weekly newspapers. He started his own paper, called the “Sports Tribune”. He is currently writing a book called “Just One More Mile”, about his hitchhiking experiences.

Now a realtor with offices in Swainton and Wildwood Crest, Jewell is a leader of the Concerned Citizens of Cape May County. That group began with the Swainton Civic Association’s fight against a proposed mall in their town.

“As a realtor, I am into redeveloping areas like Villas and Wildwood,” Jewell added. “I feel the legislators in Cape May County feel the county is the poor stepsister to Atlantic County and that we should aspire to be like them. I say what we have here is wonderful and let’s not overdevelop it. We’ll ruin the reason why people come to Cape May County – to escape overdevelopment.”

Jewell says he has no regrets at this point in his life.

“I decided that from age 20 to 40 I would work at different things, then walk away and never look back,” he said, “I will be 50 in April and can honestly say that I did that. Now I’m settled, but will never retire. I can’t possibly be inactive. I still get up at 4am like I’m a dairy farmer, but I don’t have to milk all those darn cows.”

Back to Top

This article was published on the front page of the Living section of the Press of Atlantic City on September 20, 2000 and was written by food writer Cindy Nevitt. The article is titled “So long, summer”. The annual bash, which has grown to 400 folks, is being held this year on Saturday, June 10, 2006.

Douglas Jewell spent the last weekend of summer doing what he’s done for the last four years. Having a barbecue. For 225 people.

Since 1996, Jewell, of the Swainton section of Middle Township, has spent what he calls “the middle Saturday of September” cooking burgers, hot dogs, and filet mignon on a $5,000 custom-made grill for a well-behaved crowd of friends, neighbors, business clients, politicians, and activists. Called the “End of Summer Barbecue”, the all-day event celebrates both the passing of a season and the Jewell’s wedding anniversary.

“The first one was the day I got married,” says Jewell, 49, a realtor and environmental activist who traces the origin of the End of Summer Barbecue to the September, 1996 wedding to Joyce, 53. “That one was for 275 people.”

Joyce, who has known Jewell for 11 years, wasn’t taken aback by the groom’s decision to cater his own wedding reception. Rather, she encouraged him, and contributed meatballs, sausage, and Italian sauce to the 12-hour reception that followed their three-minute ceremony.

“I always make the meatballs and sausage,” she says. “Even for my own wedding.”

She insists her meatballs, sausage and sauce are better than Jewell’s, saying they have to be because she’s “100 percent Italian”. He, though, is the better cook, she concedes; she comes home every day from her real estate job in Wildwood Crest to a cooked meal. She will not share the secret to her meatballs, not even with her husband, and says she isn’t interested in how he makes the endless array of foods he does.

“I don’t even know how to work our new convection oven, and I don’t want to know,” she says.

He, on the other hand, is borderline obsessive about food and its preparation. The reason he catered his own wedding reception, he says, is “I feel no one can turn out food like I can. I’m very critical and I knew we could do better than anyone we hired.”

Throwing a barbecue for 225 takes four 12-hour days of prep work and a budget of $2,000. This year, the Jewell’s started on Wednesday, making Italian tomato sauce, 649 meatballs and 20 pounds of sausage, then cooking eggs and potatoes. Thursday, Jewell, a former chef at a University of Maine campus, made four gallons of chili. Then he and Joyce made potato salad, tuna-pasta salad, ham salad, and vegetable-pasta salad. Friday they made 80 pieces of tarragon-flavored chicken breast and 50 hamburgers. Saturday, they tossed a garden salad and grilled to order 123 filet mignon steaks.

“We’re not really big on vacations,” says Joyce, who delegates dessert duty to those guests who feel obligated to bring something. “We enjoy our home.”

“We continue to hold these barbecues because it’s a unique opportunity to get together lots of people from diverse walks of life,” Jewell says. “While many people take a cruise or vacation in Florida, our yearly tradition has become this barbecue.”

The guest list, which consisted of 400 mailed invitations this year, evolves more frequently than does the food lineup. Many of those in attendance Saturday were environmental activists, such as Jeff Tittel of Lambertville, Hunterdon County, director of the New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club; Dick Colby of Egg Harbor City, a professor of biology and environmental studies at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey; and Jeanne Swift of Ocean City, president of Citizens for Historic Preservation.

Tittel gave a thumbs-up to the meatballs; Colby said the chili, with the addition of 20 drops of hot sauce, was good; and Swift said her 3-year-old son Joshua, most enjoyed his hot dog.

Many of those attending the barbecue were there for the first time, including Mark and Cyndi Bohn of Lower Township. They met Jewell a decade ago, when, as sports editor of a Cape May County newspaper, he covered over-30 and Atlantic County Baseball League games.

The Bohns share something more than a passing acquaintance with the Jewells. They too celebrate their anniversary in the middle of September. They just don’t invite 200 people over to help do it.

“We’re people people,” Joyce Jewell says. “We love every minute of it.”

Back to Top

This article was published in At The Shore magazine, an entertainment and dining supplement of the Press of Atlantic City, on April 24, 2003. It was written by food writer Cindy Nevitt and titled “Take a Walk on Jewell’s Westside”. We sold the tavern in May, 2005.

Dude, do not call Douglas Jewell for takeout or delivery. Because he is not coming.

He appreciates your compliments: however, no matter how much you praise his Dagwood-sized sandwiches, he will not make one for you unless you are seated inside Jewell’s Westside Tavern in West Wildwood.

The gigantic sandwiches, containing 12 ounces of meat and cheese (all $6.95, except corned beef, which is $7.95), are the backbone of his ultra-simple menu. Lobster bisque, clam chowder and Maryland crab soup (all $4.50), plus pepperoni and cheese platters ($5.95) make up the rest of the menu.

Jewell, who calls himself “the assembler” rather than a cook, serves his two-fisted sandwiches with red-skinned potato salad and, if you’ve ordered roast beef, Italian roast pork or turkey breast, a small vat of au jus or gravy for dipping purposes.

And because it takes a Jewell-sized appetite to finish a Jewell-assembled sandwich, he keeps a stack of to-go boxes in the kitchen for those who want to take half their meal home.

Jewell, who owns Jewell Real Estate Agency in Wildwood Crest and Swainton, found a good buy last year in the defunct Bridge Café. The building, empty for a dozen years, had a leaky roof and rotten floors. “Most people felt it was a teardown,” Jewell says. “But we redid it.”

The knotty pine walls received five coats of polyurethane. The bar received five coats of marine varnish. The storage room became the kitchen, the package goods refrigerator became the kitchen refrigerator. The men’s and women’s rooms were swapped, and both redone in knotty pine boards from floor to ceiling with wicker-framed mirrors hung over the new pedestal sinks.

The building, built in 1954 in a triangular shape to accommodate the railroad tracks that once ran behind it, was spruced up outside, too. Jewell perked up the gray, cinder-block exterior with new stucco and bright blue trim accents, installed raised flower bed planters and put an old horse-drawn carriage on display. That, too, is painted a vivid blue.

The tavern which reopened last week for the summer season, will be open 17 hours a day on weekends until Memorial Day, at which time it will be open daily. Last day of the season is the day before Labor Day. Jewell likes to refer to the operating hours as “happy hour 17 hours a day”. He says his low drink prices ($1.50 for a 12-ounce frosted glass of beer, $2 for a bottle of domestic beer, $2.50 for an import) justify the “happy hour 17 hours a day” slogan.

Jewell is fanatical about cleanliness in his establishment. He attended bartending school last year when he bought his bar and has implemented many of the things he learned. For instance, frosted beer glasses are never allowed to touch the tap nozzle, because that will introduce bacteria to the equipment. Draft beer is drawn from kegs directly beneath the taps instead of traveling through long hoses that can harbor bacteria.

The same with soda. Jewell does not have a soda gun attached to a 50-foot-long hose, again because of concerns about bacteria. Also, he says, “With a soda gun, one time it’s too carbonated, one time it’s too syrupy, one time it’s too flat.”

To ensure consistency, he uses bottled sodas, which costs him three times as much as soda made from syrup would. But, he says, knowing his customers will get the same consistency time after time is worth the money.

He keeps his bottled beer refrigerated at 34 degrees and says, almost seriously, “We have the coldest beer on the planet.”

When Jewell bought his tavern last year, he wanted to establish an identity apart from the typical noisy shore bar. A sign by the door says, “No Kids”. The interior isn’t tacky with nautical accents; Jewell and his wife, Joyce, spent Wednesdays in the winter antiquing and buying thousands of dollars worth of early American knick-knacks.

“We wanted to have the cleanest place, the biggest sandwiches and the coldest beer,” he says.

Mission accomplished.

Back to Top