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My friend, the Philadelphia writer Thom Nickels, kicked up some sand in the Wildwoods recently. Seems he didn’t want to pay a trespassing fine and wiggled every which way to get out of it, and caught a lot of flak from the folks hereabouts for his squirming.
Thom stays in the cottage of some family friends in Wildwood Crest every year and early one morning he decided to go for a walk on the beach and came to a fish and wildlife fence blocking off the two mile bird sanctuary of the Cape May Wildlife Refuge. There was a no trespassing sign, but the fence was bent down and Thom saw another walker already on the sanctuary, so he stepped in and began to walk.
Turns out the other walker was a Fish and Wildlife Service officer and after some chitchat about Thom’s travel writing, the officer took his name and address and told him he’d be getting a $100 ticket in the mail for trespassing.
Thom told me all about this a couple days later when I ran into him on the Boardwalk and he went on to say that he’d called the officer’s boss and tried to cop a plea, saying that the sign should have said there’d be a $100 fine. The boss, Refuge Manager Howard J. Schlegel, stuck by his guy and told Thom the fine would stick. Thom said as a journalist, he’d have to write about the whole deal, and Schlegel got pissed and accused Thom of “a borderline threat to a federal employee.” The reason that’s in quotes is because its part of a long letter Thom wrote to the Wildwood Leader and the Press of Atlantic City about getting the ticket and why he shouldn’t have to pay it.
It generated several letters from readers in response, all but one accusing Thom of arrogance and disregard for the environment. There also was a long article in the same issue of the Leader as his letter headlined “Fish and Wildlife means business” with a big picture of the sign that says “Area beyond this sign closed” in all capital letters and “All public entry prohibited” in smaller letters. The article quoted Schlegel as saying a stop sign or a speed limit sign doesn’t warn of possible fines, “but that people understand there are consequences for breaking the rules” and that he’d instituted a zero-tolerance policy for those who enter the closed areas.
I’ve known Thom a long time and respect him as a brother writer, but I have to say that he was flat wrong and was mainly trying to weasel out of the fine by using his talents and his status as a writer to bully Schlegel into letting him skate with a warning. It didn’t work and he got the ticket and didn’t want to pay a lawyer to fight it, so last I heard from him he was resigned to paying it.
His next column in the Fishtown Star newspaper was an extended bad-mouthing of Wildwood, and I can’t help thinking it was sour grapes for the trespassing fine. I have to say, too, that the Fishtown Star is the wrong place to slam Wildwood. Hell. North Wildwood is called “Fishtown By-the-Sea.” And I have to say, too, that as an ex-Fishtowner myself, I love Wildwood, plain and simple, and don’t like to see it bad-mouthed because some pissed-off writer — friend or not — had to pay $100 bucks that he righteously owed.
I guess what bugs me about the whole imbroglio and the Fishtown Star column is that Thom seems to think that writers are somehow above the laws that other people have to live by and that writers can bend people to their will by threatening to write stuff about them.
When I got into the writing business many years ago, I thought it was an honorable and responsible craft that had only one master: The truth. To see it used to settle scores and to beat raps is just another reason people lump journalists with lawyers and politicians as among the leading sleazes of today.
I’d like to think we’re better than that.
