Actually, the real pioneer was right next door at 723 Cookman Ave., operating Joe Travers TV.

On days when neither of us saw a single customer (and there were many), Joe would stop by with offers of a loaner TV and a beer "so you won't be bored," and I could always tell when he was swapping tales behind the counter with life-long friend Neal Dent by the unmistakable aroma of cigar smoke wafting through our adjourning wall.

The fading "For Sale" sign in his store window was as familiar as the hand-lettered cardboard sign advertising used electronic equipment, so it was a shock to realize last month that he had actually closed up shop after more than 60 years as an Asbury Park entrepreneur.

Such a record shouldn't go unnoticed, so here's my brief tribute to the Joe Travers I swapped stories with during my five years on Cookman Avenue:

Joe's business career started back in the 1930s, while he was still in the Bangs Avenue Grade School, catching muskrats, possums, skunks and foxes for the New York City fur merchants who paid him $3 to $5 for the animals that then ran wild near the West Bangs Avenue city dump.

He also specialized in removing furry pests from local attics and chicken coops -- a sometimes hazardous job that once landed him in a bathtub full of tomato juice when he was outwitted by a chicken-snatching skunk.

Joe, who shared homes with his parents, three brothers, and grandfather on Comstock, Summerfield, Langford and Sewall avenues over the years, was the son of an Italian-born father and a Hungarian-born mother. The Great Depression was raging, and his dad was unable to find work until a friend helpfully suggested that he drop the "o" from the family name "Traverso" to mask his then-unpopular Italian name.

By the time Joe was in high school, he had taught himself to repair irons, toasters and lamps, and he rented a small shop on Langford Street for the outrageous sum of $15 a month.

Then one Sunday, he got into an argument with his dad at the dinner table.

"When you make more money that I do, then you can be head of the household," his father told him, with the annoying parental logic that most kids recognize.

Joe, however, did something about it.

Again while still in high school, he took an additional job fixing mechanical rides at the Palace Amusements, and came home one day bearing a pay envelope with the unimaginable sum of $165.

"Pop, I have something to show you," he cockily declared.

His dad reached into the envelope and extracted all but $15.

"There, that's yours. Your mother needs a new washing machine, your brother needs shoes, and the family needs clothes," he said, delivering an economic lesson that Joe never forgot.

Joe spent five years maintaining the Palace ferris wheel, merry-go-round, scooter, haunted house and fun house, but that career was abruptly and dramatically interrupted one day while he was perched on top of the merry-go-round.

"I was up on top, checking it out, when the fellow who operated it turned it on," he recalled. "I'm up there shouting 'Shut it off! Shut it off!' but the organ was so blasted loud that he couldn't hear me."

Joe decided that it was better to jump than to be thrown off, but he wound up landing on the merry-go-round turnstile -- a feat that resulted in four operations and almost cost him a leg.

Shortly after graduating from Asbury Park High School in 1948, he received a "greetings" letter from Uncle Sam, and found himself in the army, preparing for Korea. A .50-caliber machine gun blast exploded by his ear and popped his ear drum, leading to five more operations.

Returning to Asbury Park in 1951, he opened a shop at 500 Main St. to fix appliances, radios, and that brand new wonder known as the television. Joe spent 15 years at that location, a year on Bond Street, and 15 more on Mattison Avenue, before buying his Cookman Avenue shop.

He also reaffirmed that appliance and mechanical repair weren't for the faint of heart.

One time, he was asked to mount an antenna on the Steinbach's department store clock tower, which jetted perilously high above the then five-story building.

"I was young and dumb, and I said 'I can do it'," Joe recalled, despite the vertigo caused by his injured ear.

He scrambled up the rope ladder, but made the mistake of looking down on his way back to earth.

"I froze right there, and it took me about 1-1/2 hours to come down," he recalled. "The next month, a big storm took out the antenna, and they called me to put it back up again. I said, 'Noooooooo way!'"

Joe also discovered a few other business hazards closer to ground level. There was the suspicious elderly woman in Ocean Grove who wouldn't let him in to repair her television until he swore that he never touched alcohol or cigarettes.

Then he glanced in her trash can and discovered it was full of wine bottles and beer cans.

Another resourceful woman in Bradley Beach phoned him to set up a house call.

Joe was routinely checking out her television set when he realized that the woman was cheerfully and systematically nailing the door shut behind him.

"I grabbed my tools and jumped out the window," he recalled.

The mailman saw him and asked, "You too?"

"Yeah," Travers responded, and hurried down the path.

Of course, not all of his customer encounters involved hazardous duty. One day, a young woman named Lydia, vacationing from Brooklyn, brought in a broken radio for repair. Fifty years later, she and Joe are still married.

Now that Joe's retired to spend more time with his wife, kids, and grandkids, Cookman Avenue is a bit duller -- particularly since he removed the custom-designed, ear-splitting, light-flashing alarm system that jump-started my nervous system every morning. But, somewhere over in Ocean Township, I know that Joe is still getting into mischief.

Here's to a real Asbury Park pioneer.