Tag: kids

Notes from the beach

My wife and I recently returned from our annual week at the beach. For four decades, we’ve gone to Kill Devil Hills, NC, site of the first air flights in 1903. At the start, we happened upon the Cavalier Motel — now called Cavalier by the Sea — on the beach road at mile post 8.5, and it has become “our place at the beach.” With the kids, we always went during their spring break. After it was just the two of us again, we shifted to fall.

We get an ocean-front room with kitchen. Until a tall building went up next door a few years ago, we could see the Wright Brothers monument out the back window. We share a porch with the other six rooms (two others with kitchens) in the same building. There is an identical building next to us. Depending on the weather, we sit on the beach, the porch or inside, looking at the ocean through our picture window.



This year, I made a few notes and will share them here.

–One day, as I tried to imagine the back story of many of the people walking by, I wondered if other people have similar thoughts while people-watching at the beach. Then I wondered if they ever don’t have such thoughts.

I posed these questions on Facebook: “When you sit on the beach, watching people walk by, do you ever try to imagine their backstories? Do you ever not do this?”

The first two responses led me to realize the questions would best be directed at people with active imaginations, such as writers and story tellers. I ran them by two friends who are bona fide fiction writers. Both said they also sometimes create in their minds stories for people they observe.

–Walking on the beach into a strong wind, bundled up, slipping around in loose sand is a workout. Walking the same beach barefooted and in shirt sleeves, on the terra relatively firma uncovered at low tide is a delightful stroll.

–As always, there were a few kids dipping their feet in the November surf. On one walk, we passed two pre-teen girls doing so. The one with long legs executed a pirouette each time a wave hit her feet and ankles.

–And the dogs are always a delight. You can see them smile as they jump over or into the waves. Golden Retrievers never encounter a person who isn’t their best friend. We also saw one little dog that appeared to about the same dimension in three directions.

–I watched two people in wet suits take their surf boards out into the water to wait hopefully for a wave to ride. I mention this merely to use the word “hopefully” correctly.

–There were two groups of friends there this year while we were. I had two reactions. One was some envy because there have been past years in which we had a group of friends with us. The second was wondering if each group had been in a bubble prior to arriving. They didn’t practice social distancing and no one ever wore a mask.

–One guy was there for a couple of days, one room away from us. He began each day with a cigarette or three, sitting on the porch with a “No Smoking” sign staring him in the face. I wondered how he felt about law and order.

–One afternoon, there were four and twenty black birds, plus quite a few more, on the beach. You usually see just a few here and there among the more numerous seagulls. I don’t know if they were local or just passing through, but when they left altogether, they flew south.



–I took a lot of photos and posted some on Facebook, noting the location. Soon my phone would ask, “How was Cavalier by the Sea?” Was. Past tense. If the phone is so smart, why didn’t it know I was still there?

_________________________________
A year ago, I shared photos of sunrises from the 2019 trip.
https://johnbecton.blog/2019/11/13/five-days-of-beach-sunrises/

Diversity 101

The house my parents bought the year before I was born had a dirt-floored basement, usually called a cellar. Many houses were like that at the time. I think it must’ve been 1956 when we had it concreted. I tend to remember that I was 9. It was summer time.

The man hired to do the work was African American, though that term would come into use decades later. The polite term then was Negro. The derogatory corruption of that word was used by some, though not in our family.

This man brought his son, who was about my age, with him. At first — I don’t remember if it was part/most of one day or parts of two days — the kid just hung around while his father worked. An afternoon rain changed that.

There was a garage-sized space under our front porch. Perhaps it was intended as a garage-without-doors, though we never used it as such. The door into the basement with within that space. Even with our junk, there was plenty of room for the boy to stay reasonably comfortable while sheltered from the rain.

Yet, up in our living room, watching TV with one or more neighborhood friends, my sister and I concluded it was ridiculous for the workman’s son to be under the porch, probably bored out of his mind. She went out and invited him in — with his dad’s permission — to watch TV with us.

He was pretty quiet, but I think there was a little interaction around whatever we were watching. The next day, as my friends and I played, we included him. It was a good fit.

One play-time activity popular with boys my age at that time was to reenact scenes such as those we saw in movies and TV shows about World War II. Armed with toy weapons, we would sometimes track and fight an imaginary enemy. Just as often, we’d divide up into Americans and Germans. One specific memory I have of playing with our visitor was an afternoon in which he and I were on one side versus two boys from the neighborhood.

At first, he and I were the Americans. Later, we switched up, and he and I were the Germans. None of the four of us thought about — and maybe weren’t aware of — the reality that a white soldier and a black soldier would not have been in the same platoon in the U.S. Army in WWII. And we were completely oblivious to the irony of his joining me in portraying German troops. We were just a bunch of typical 7- to 9-year-old boys in the USA, mid-’50s.

At the same time, my parents were having a new, modern tub put in the bathroom. The old one was in the yard awaiting removal. My friends and I had a great time crowding in and pretending it was a boat. Our visitor joined us in this activity as well.

A few days after the concrete job was finished, the workman came back by to make sure all was OK. This time he brought not only his son, but also his wife. I was in the “boat” with one or two other boys when they drove up. Their son hopped out of the car and ran toward us, shouting “Wait for me!” We made room for him to climb in. His parents seemed amused. In the short time his dad was inspecting his work, we kids were zipping along the water in a speed boat.

This was, as I said, 1956. Black people and white people lived in different parts of town. We went to different schools and churches. Opportunities for personal interaction were limited by the way society was structured. Taking advantage of that particular opportunity seemed and proved to be the right thing to do.