Madden Mischief

Our beautiful beaches are often rife with treasure!  In fact, sometimes they’re a storehouse full of stuff we suddenly see and must have, from a plethora of plastic replicas to actual coins and currency, occasionally a pair of sunglasses, a wristwatch or two, and other jewelry or just curious pieces, toy pearls waiting to be picked up, and some rescued from the perils of the sea!

Yes, our beaches are bonanzas, windfalls of lost and discarded articles that can awaken and stir the collector in us or sometimes the kid still hanging out inside as happened to me the other day during one of our usual oceanfront hikes. 

Funny, how we start out in life playing with toy cars and trucks.  Now I collect them like Edward Joseph “Teddy” Morse III, CEO of Ed Morse Automotive Group, also does as I see sometimes on “Backed by Morse” TV commercials.  But the cooly sophisticated Cadillacs I buy from Morse in Boynton Beach are as far from a toy as you could ever get!  Thank you, Teddy! 

Walking along the sand I was struck one day by a magnificently constructed, well-designed, multi-wheeled toy excavator vehicle that looked right out of a James Deere® forestry equipment catalogue that some kid had apparently left behind and now there it was, still an attractive vehicle only now half buried in the sand at the water’s edge in dire jeopardy from a rising tide.  It measured a foot long and five inches wide, yet I could visualize it leading the mighty ensemble of toy cars, trucks and other vehicles in my prized collection of artifacts from my exhilarating beach walks that were especially productive during the COVID uprising.

“No, leave it,” my wife Rita said during our daily health-inspired, spirited walk as she could see how it was attracting the lifeguard still deep inside me ever on the lookout or perhaps the prowl for rescuing those poor stranded or discarded items, now potentially at risk of becoming high tide victims.

So, dutifully I got a grip on my yearning to save treasure in trouble and walked on by. 

Rita was right, as often she is, for even though it was late in the day there still were a few adults half asleep in beach chairs under umbrellas less than 40 yards away who could be parents, guardians or grandparents of this fascinating vehicle’s forgetful little owner.  So, I let it be.  And as in the lyrics of one of my favorite songs, I’ll walk on by.

When we returned to our condo about a half mile north from where the tempting toy lay in the rising tide’s path, I looked back but couldn’t see it, so I assumed its young owner or grandfather remembered to retrieve it in the nick of time before the ocean captured it and took it prisoner and now, thank the Lord, it’s safe and happily excavating in his grandson’s bedroom. 

Still there!

Upon returning to our apartment, I couldn’t help going out on our balcony with my binoculars just to check whether that endangered wheeled excavator was still there, and now low and behold, from an elevated angle, I could see it was and not that far from probably that grandfather still sound asleep in his beach chair oblivious to a toy in trouble. 

Yikes! Then I saw a couple of guys walking on the beach toward the excavator just a few yards ahead of them and I figured they would harvest this mechanical treasure for themselves.  But no, they walked right on by it, while grandpa was either now sawing wood or still just half asleep. 

Poor dear excavator, no one’s giving a damn about you or stopping to give you a merciful lift out of range of the thirsty sea barely inches away, thirsty to excavate a forsaken toy stuck in the sand.  As I was once a lifeguard in Atlantic City, NJ, I couldn’t help wanting to excavate myself this poor helpless sand locked vehicle out of harm’s way from a rapidly rising tide closing in!

Wait a minute!  Grandpa’s stirring. He’s awake and getting up. I could see in the binoculars he was grabbing his beach towel, then neatly folding it and putting it into a bag with some other things and starting to walk off the beach toward a condo from where a worker came out to collect the chair and umbrella.  OMG, could this be the moment when an ex-lifeguard, even though much older, and now semi-retired could still spring back into action and rescue that excavator on wheels from drowning?

Well, that’s exactly what I did!

I rushed down to the beach and started hurriedly walking southward toward that stranded, abandoned multi-wheeled excavator truck helplessly buried in the sand with waves now licking its wheels!   And soon I saved what would become another prize added to my collection!

And to pay for this gift from God, this magnificent excavator now part of my collection of lost toys I’ve recovered over the years from a most generous beach, I made donations to several non-profits in support of their charitable work in saving not toys, but the poor cancer-ridden or starving children who once played with them.  And my checks again went flying out to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, The Rosary Shrine of St. Jude, Sacred Heart Southern Missions and Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers.  God bless them all for saving children from a rising tide of cancer, poverty and hunger!

When not strolling the beach in front of his condo and rescuing toys, Tom Madden is doing publicity creating a rising tide of appreciation for clients of his public relations firm TransMedia Group, which he started when he left NBC in New York City where he was vice president, assistant to the president.  Today his daughter Adrienne Mazzone is president of the PR firm and he’s the CEO and her dedicated assistant.  Here below is part of Maddens collection of toy vehicles he has rescued from the beach in front of his condo in Boca Raton, FL.