A Young James Bertino on A Trip with John Weissner
by Jay Dubya 
I knew James Bertino several decades before he had blossomed into Hammonton town councilman James Bertino. Jim has a twin brother John, and their parents Anthony and Margaret Bertino owned "Twin Boys' Farm Market" on the White Horse Pike across from the Oak Grove Cemetery. My parents were proprietors of Pete's Farm Market in Elm, which is now owned by Dennis Donio.
From 1967-'81, I co-owned boardwalk businesses in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware and in Ocean City, Maryland. It was an April Friday evening in the mid-1970s, and I needed a healthy young body to help me install twenty re-conditioned poker-card' drums into Dealer's Choice machines at my Ocean City, Maryland' boardwalk arcade. My brother-in-law Ollie Paretti had done his usual excellent repair work on the electromagnetic devices that rotated inside the cabinets' windows.
I gave young James Bertino a call, and the teenager was quite anxious to accompany me on the 175-mile excursion down the Delmarva Peninsula to Ocean City. I picked Bertino up at his parents' home in my green Pontiac station wagon, and we were soon heading south toward the Delaware Memorial Bridge. I was already rather fatigued from teaching my grueling six English classes at the Hammonton Middle School, and I stopped at a McDonald's in Smyrna, Delaware where we could devour some much-needed carbs and enjoy mutual sugar rushes.
Soon Bertino and I were on our way to Rehoboth Beach where my boardwalk T-shirt store was located beneath the Star of the Sea Condominiums. We dropped off several boxes of decals and a new heat-transfer machine. It was then after midnight. Our next task would be to deliver the poker drums twenty-five miles down the coast to 410 South Boardwalk, Ocean City, Md.
I was getting a little giddy and groggy from sheer exhaustion, so I told Bertino a story John Rizzotte (the driver education teacher at Hammonton High School) had once related to me in the faculty room.
"John, what should I do if I'm ever stopped on the highway by a policeman?" I innocently asked the driving instructor.
"That's easy John," Rizzotte told me. "You have to simply take away his psychological advantage."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Well," Rizzotte continued, "as soon as you come to a stop, jump out of your auto and go directly to his car. Ask him why he had stopped you. Cops are usually so used to walking over to your car that most won't know what to do or how to react. Most policemen will then let you go without a ticket because you took away their psychological advantage."
I drove my green Pontiac wagon out of Rehoboth Beach onto the Coastal Highway. My station wagon was heading due south through Dewey Beach, Delaware, a summer college bar town like Somers Point in Jersey. Dewey Beach has a strict 25 mile-per-hour speed limit. I was telling Bertino the story that Rizzotte had told me in the faculty room.
Suddenly, a police car's red beacon light became visible behind me in my rearview mirror. Next my ears perceived a siren. Naturally, I had to enact what I had just told Bertino in the car.
I halted my Pontiac wagon, leapt out of the vehicle and briskly hustled toward the police cruiser. One burly Dewey Beach cop had jumped out of the driver's side. He thought that I was about to attack him, so he roughly grabbed me, threw me up against the rear of my station wagon and instructed me to keep my hands on the roof while he frisked me for possible weapons. As the cop was performing that act, another policeman stopped with a K-9 German shepherd, which began growling, snarling and ferociously barking at me while displaying a wicked set of fangs.
The first cop asked what was under the tawdry, old blue bed quilt in the station wagon's rear storage area. I showed him the poker machine drums with their new cards recently glued on. He immediately suspected that the mechanisms were illegal Delaware slot machines, which were also perfectly legal amusement gaming devices on the boardwalk in Ocean City, Md.
I dropped a few names of some big shots I knew in Ocean City. Bill Purnell was my landlord and Jim Mathias was a good friend who owned another amusement arcade. Both were prominent Ocean City' councilmen. After the Dewey Beach cops made several radio calls, those influential Maryland' names were verified as legitimate references. I was allowed to reenter my green station wagon.
The first cop apologized for the rough treatment he had administered to an honest, hard-working midnight-traveling teacher-businessman. "Mr. Wiessner," the cop said, "I'd like for you to do me one small favor."
"What's that?" I solemnly and respectfully asked.
"Please sign your name on the back of your driver's license. It's not valid until you do. And then I'll call ahead to the Bethany Beach and to the Fenwick Island' police so that you will not be inconvenienced again. I guarantee you safe passage until you hit Ocean City."
I fired up the engine and slowly pulled onto the highway. James Bertino was laughing so hard because a tough, brawny policeman had very efficiently manhandled his former teacher. I thought young Jim's appendages were going to fall off from excessive laughter.
"See," I said, "Mr. Rizzotte was right. I didn't get a traffic ticket after all!"
Bertino cackled and gasped for air in reaction to my timely comment. I imagined he was going to explode all over my dashboard and inside windshield.
Councilman James Bertino is employed in town by Garden State Color Film Corporation. I know he vividly remembers the Dewey Beach' incident. The man has a photographic memory.
, (Jay Dubya)
Copyright-The Hammonton (New Jersey)Gazette August 29, 2001 edition
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