Our first real trip to a beach was almost our last. My mother planned the trip after some friends offered us the use of their house in St. Petersburg, Florida one summer in the early 60’s. It was a long, tiring drive – the
only good part was occasional stops at Stuckey’s where they sold cool souvenirs like rubber alligators, ashtrays in the shape of Florida, tomahawks and pralines which tells you what kind of a drive it was. Just across the Georgia/Florida border, we all perked up when we saw actual palm trees right there at the Welcome Center. Well, all but my Dad who started muttering, “What the hell am I doing here? I don’t like sand, I can’t take the sun and I hate orange juice.”
Technically Florida wasn’t our first beach experience, but it was the first
one without overtones of ookiness. Lake Erie’s beach had brown sand, brown water and dead fish floating around. Virginia Beach had brown sand, murky water and jellyfish floating around. Their tentacles stung you in the water and their dead bodies were raked into giant piles on the beach that looked like my Dippity Doo hair straightener. Florida was a refreshing change. We had a wonderful two weeks cooking breakfast on the beach, fishing from piers and bridges and swimming in those warm, gentle breakers.
In the end, Dad enjoyed that Florida vacation too although I don’t know how. He never learned to like the feel of sand, or anything else except black socks, between his toes. He wore a heavy terry cloth beach robe, a sun hat and a plastic nose protector every time he ventured outside. And, orange juice never passed his lips; he had a checkered history with fruit in general, including a neighborhood luau where a close encounter with a vodka-infused watermelon caused him to abandon his grass skirt on our front doorstep and spend the rest of the weekend in bed.
After Florida, my parents discovered the Outer Banks of North Carolina and, from then on, all of our family vacations were beach vacations. Initially we stayed in the “My
Blue Heaven” cottages owned by Willie and Piccola Sawyer who lived with their little, crabby, red-eyed poodle, Miss Buffy Fifi, and about 4,000 hand-crafted doilies, lampshades, shell collages and driftwood sculptures – sort of a personal Stuckeys. “Yew lahk thaaat? Ah maaade thaaat,” Piccola confided anytime one of us looked closely at her décor. She mistook shock and awe for admiration.
Even when my parents built their own cottage, The Kill Devil Hillton, our beach vacations remained pretty much the same. We fished early in the morning and ate Moon Pies and Twinkies for breakfast because that was all they sold at the bait shop. We took morning and afternoon naps and spent the rest of the day reading in hammocks or beach chairs. We swam in the ocean where the water was
cold and “clear as gin,” according to my Dad. If you got caught up in a big breaker, you knew just how a load of wash feels. We walked along the shore and sometimes I sketched the dark-shingled, rickety looking cottages that looked romantic and intriguing from the outside although they were probably moldy and buggy on the inside. We ate tons of seafood – shrimp, snapper, flounder, clams and every possible form of crab –soft shell crab, whole blue crab, devilled crab, crab cakes and shrimp-stuffed crab – all things that we couldn’t get at home. When we
could stay awake after dinner, we played Hearts, ate salt water taffy, and breathed in the summertime aroma of Solarcaine, the cure for both sunburn and bug bites. We fell asleep to the sound of breaking waves - just one perfect day after the next.
After we were married, Paul and I had a few North Carolina beach vacations ourselves. When my parents lived full-time in the Outer Banks, the boys visited them there and immediately fell in love with the beach - John observed, "Sand is the snow of summer." We had some memorable Outer Banks get-togethers with my whole family and squeezed in a few vacations on the beaches of Florida and Lake Michigan when the boys were younger. A trip to the Dominican Republic with our dental school friends offered lots of relaxing beach time besides being educational – we practiced our Spanish language skills by ordering “una Cervesa and uno vino tinto, por favor,” although one friend got in trouble when he tried to request water for everyone and unwittingly asked for a round of something that made the servers blush.
On our recent trip to Nova Scotia, we took several beach walks and the smell of the sea brought back lots of memories. Of course, I’m not sure the Energizer Bunny I live with would buy into the slow-paced,
nap-laced, food-based beach vacations of the past. I wonder if you can get fat-free Moon Pies or organic Twinkies and if you would want to eat them even if you could get them. I know for sure salt water taffy would not be in the picture for me unless I wanted to add a few more crowns to my smile. Still, it would be fun to build sand castles with Willem and to see if I’m as good as my mom was at keeping my bare toes away from live crabs skittering across the kitchen floor.
P.S. I recently found this poem that John wrote when he was in grade school -I hope he doesn't mind my sharing it.
The Water
And so to the Grandparents' house
My brother and I traveled each year,
They lived by the sea,
Its belly was full of fish.
And so we would go
To the beach on mornings
To fish, to flop, to flit
Among the waves.
Probably my favorite part was when
We would drive the old metal boat on the canal.
My brother and I were permitted to drive the boat,
The water sifting against the sides like a million blunt twigs scratching.
We caught crabs in that canal,
The canal loved them but still gave them to us.
The crabs were helpless swordsmen
Who thought they threatened us by shaking their claws.
Our visit was like happy dreams,
It was over too fast and we looked forward
To when the sea would flop us, sift under us,
And give us presents of happiness again.
