The Sons of the Beaches

 

They say you can never go home again. Yet, here I am, staying in an inn (a motel, really) on the bluff overlooking downtown Bandon, Oregon. We're maybe half a mile from the house I grew up in. Later I'll drive over to that house to wallow in nostalgia for the old neighborhood.

It looks way smaller than my memories of it. But realistically it was just a two- bedroom, one bath home. My older brother Bob and I shared bunk beds in a back porch area. My sisters, Lana and Birdie had one bedroom, the folks occupied the other. I could hop the back fence to go to Junior High and High school. Ocean Crest elementary school was a grueling half mile walk away. Just for grins, we looked up the address to see what it would go for in today's inflated real estate market. $460,000!!! But it is a 2 bathroom house now. Somewhere back in time someone got tired of yelling "aren't you done in there yet???" and tacked on another one. I didn't snoop, but I'd also guess the chicken shed we had in back is probably gone. I can still hear them clucking in my minds ear. 

Bandon has exploded, population-wise since my childhood of the 50's and early sixties. From a dying timber town to the home of one of the world's ritziest golf resorts is a drastic change. Our only golf course used to be a raggedy 9-holer my father referred to as "that glorified cow pasture out on the beach loop." California retirees moved to Bandon enmasse creating luxury condos where once were sand and gorse. It's not all bad of course. The new library alongside the city park is impressive. What used to be the library (with a 3 book check out rule for kids) is now a nifty little historical museum. 

The town still has a ton of charm. Much of what I loved growing up is still there. People still pick up their mail at the post office; the docks, the funky downtown, the jetty jutting out into the sea. I'm told whales sometimes come in to rub against the rocks. Hey, if you've got an itch, scratch it. And, of course, the iconic lighthouse. 

Another memorable part of the coastline near Bandon is the monumental assortment of big rocks. We spent a ton of time scrambling up and down them as kids. A fan fave is Face Rock. 

Sadly, I kept seeing the profile of my least favorite American president. Shake it off Mike.

We enjoyed a lovely early dinner/happy hour nostalgia fest with Sharon Ward Moy and Bill Smith, two people I've known since elementary school. Our spousal units were kind enough to allow us to wallow, while occasionally interjecting something nonhistorical. The food and conversation were both top notch and memorable. 

Ah, yes, I should probably explain the title of the blog "The Sons of the Beaches." My dad, Carroll was very active in the local Lion's club. And that was their nickname. They had the letters stenciled onto jackets and sweaters and wore them proudly around town. Here's my pop in action. 

And just so I can embarrass a living relative, here's my older sister Lana marching and spinning her baton as the high school band marches through town.

So Thomas Wolfe was wrong. You can go home again. And you can enjoy the memories and the places you hung out. To top off this wonderful trip, on the way home, my amazing wife wangled us a room with a jacuzzi at Sailor Jack's, right on the beach in Lincoln City. We ate take-out clam strips from Mo's, I luxuriated in a hot water massage and we watched an insanely beautiful sunset over the Pacific. 

Life is Good !!!!!

The Lure of the West

 

Carolyn J. Rose

 

My father, who was born and raised in the Catskill Mountains and lived there until he died, loved the West. As a child he read Zane Grey’s novels and other western adventures like those of the X Bar X boys. I still have a tattered copy of The X Bar X Boys Lost in the Rockies. It carries the scent of mildew now, but when I first opened it, perhaps 60 years ago, I was certain I smelled sage and pine, campfire smoke and scorching bacon.

 

There were always paperback western novels stacked on my father’s nightstand, books by Max Brand, Louis L’Amour, and others. If a western played at the local drive-in theater, we went. And he’d watch the programs TV had to offer in the 1950s—although he’d often point out the sameness of Hollywood-back-lot scenery. 

I don’t know if he’d ever intended to pull up roots generations deep, head west, and try his luck on the open range. Perhaps he did. But Pearl Harbor changed the trajectory of his life. He enlisted in the Army Air Corps and was sent east instead. He landed in the China-Burma-India Theater where he maintained planes and, as was required to insure the job was done right, went along on supply missions. Those missions took him over The Hump—the east end of the Himalaya Mountains. To say those missions were dangerous is a gross understatement.

 When he wasn’t flying or fixing, he lounged in his tent, swatting mosquitoes and trying to put aside fears about being shot at and shot down. He often imagined he was on the other side of the world, out on the plains, in the mountains and canyons. He passed the hours of boredom between flights by mentally living the kinds of adventures he’d read about. I imagine he saw himself herding cattle, shooting rattlesnakes, joining a posse, or simply gazing into the depths of a canyon or at the peaks of the Rockies.

 

He didn’t get to see the country he read so much about until the early 60’s when he packed us into the family station wagon, stuffed a small trailer with tents and camping gear, and headed that way. In six weeks, we saw the Mississippi River, the Great Plains, the towering Rockies, the Grand Canyon, and the geysers of Yellowstone. We saw the Painted Desert, Bryce Canyon, a cattle drive down the main street of a Wyoming town, and the Grand Tetons. We saw tumbleweeds and redwoods, bears and coyotes.

 

Oddly, the day we mounted up and went on a trail ride in the Rockies, the man who had imagined himself living a cowboy kind of life as World War II went on around him, didn’t come along. Instead, he waved us off and waited at the car.

Looking back, I like to think he recognized that riding a hired and tired horse with a dozen other tenderfeet would degrade or even demolish his dreams. So, he turned his back. And he preserved the images.

Pondering Lost Things and a Memory I Can’t Shake

Carolyn J. Rose

"You Can't Have Everything. Where would you put it?"

Comedian Stephen Wright

When I was about ten and visiting my grandmother, I fell in love with a tiny metal grooming implement—a nail file attached to a tweezers. It was small and cute, and I wanted it. Never mind that, in those days, I used my teeth on my fingernails and couldn’t understand why anyone would suffer the pain of plucking their eyebrows. The point was, as I said, that I wanted it.

So I did what most ten-year-old kids do, I cajoled and pleaded and whined. I promised to use it and take care of it. I promised not to hurt myself with it. After what seemed like hours, my grandmother caved and gave it to me.

I put it in the pocket of my shorts and took off to show it to a friend, my fingers touching the cool metal now and then while I trotted along the summer-baked asphalt county road. As I hoped, she had nothing like it. She was envious. She intended to ask her parents to buy her one just like it.

And so, mission accomplished, I jogged along a dirt road, climbed across a stone wall, and cut through a field on the way home for dinner. At the far edge of the field I slid my hand in my pocket. To my horror, I discovered my treasure was gone.

I checked my other pockets. I backtracked along the faint path, hoping to see sunlight glint off its silvery finish. I stooped low. I cocked my head. I riffled the grass with my bare feet. I crawled and combed it with my fingers.

Nothing.

I returned the next day and the next one after that.

Nothing.

I never told my grandmother I’d lost that little tool. I suppose I knew she wouldn’t sympathize or offer to replace it. And, when I got older and spotted similar items in stores, I never purchased a one. They no longer seemed unique and I never felt the need to experience the thrill of ownership.

In the past sixty years I’ve lost plenty of other things—money, tickets, papers, books, and even—now and then—my way. Recently I’ve spent far too much time hunting for socks gone astray, pens I was sure I put on my desk, and keys I was positive had to be in the kitchen where I “always” put them. Some lost things I’ve found and some I haven’t. Some I’ve replaced and some I haven’t. Most things lost in my youth I have only vague memories of.

But the memory of that tiny implement hasn’t faded. It flits across my mind when I see a field of tall grass or file my nails or declare war on the rogue hairs in my eyebrows. I have no idea why the mental video of my ten-year-old self searching for it remains so clear and firmly embedded.

The mind is a strange and wonderful thing.

You can't have everything. Where would you put it? Steven Wright
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/steven_wright

A Golden Walk for the Class of ‘65

Carolyn J. Rose       

 

Recently I received an invitation to return to Onteora Central High School in Boiceville, New York, and participate in the Golden Walk on graduation night.

My first reaction was, “Huh? 50 Years? That’s not right. I haven’t been out of high school for 50 years!”

But, yes, I have.

Fifty years ago this month I sweated with my classmates on a sunny slope in front of the school. The group photo shows us stuffed into gray chorus robes, caps on our heads, smiles on our faces. Some smiles seem serious, others goofy, others tinged with fear. 
We were, after all, going out into the wide world.

And, like now, it was a scary world. My high school years were marked by the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy’s assassination, the Berlin Wall, the publication of Silent Spring, civil rights marches and murders, the beginning of Nelson Mandela’s prison term, and growing concern about how deep we’d be sucked into the conflict in Vietnam.

I studied that graduation picture but, even with a magnifying glass, couldn’t make out which of the girls with brown hair was me. Caps shade our eyes, our images are tiny, and I have no memory of which row I was in, who I stood beside, and whether I left my glasses on.

I heard from a classmate I’ve been close to since we survived a second-grade teacher who, in our opinion, tortured more than taught us. She’s going, and hoping to persuade another long-time friend to come along.

For a day or so I was almost nostalgic enough to book a flight and join them for the walk and the festivities to follow. Then I put the idea aside. Not this year. Maybe next.

Before I deleted the invitation, I read it one more time and saw participants would meet at the loading dock before the ceremony. I’ve always thought of my high school as a utilitarian brick building. Functional. Not fancy. The loading dock was probably the most functional and least attractive area.

And yet, it seems right that those taking the Golden Walk will meet there. High school graduation was, after all, the event that moved us from the classroom and onto the loading dock for the lives we’d lead.

You can’t lose it if you never had it.

Carolyn J. Rose

 

The bad news is that I was never much of a bowler. My high game is 150. My low games are better left unmentioned. The good news is—thanks to my grandfather—that 50+ years haven’t made me much worse than I was.

I was just a kid when the bowling alley went up near my home in the Catskills. I had vague ideas about what bowling involved, ideas gleaned from the duckpins we’d set up in the cellar on rainy days, and the trophies my grandfather won.

My grandfather was a wiry man who smelled like pipe tobacco and liverwurst sandwiches, garden soil and liniment. A natural athlete, he was good at swimming, skating, skiing, and other sports. But he didn’t trust to nature alone. He believed in practice. Lots of practice. Practice with the goal of steady improvement.

If my grandfather was at the bowling alley when I went to hang out there with friends, he would come over to critique my form. Frankly, there was a lot to critique. More frankly, I didn’t much care if I improved.

But my grandfather did. He saw that I lacked power and couldn’t manage a hook to save my life. So he tried to teach me to control the straight-on ball I threw. Often he had me start my approach at the scoring table and release the ball two yards behind the foul line. His thinking was that if I could control a ball rolling a greater distance, I’d do better when I released from the line.

When I couldn’t master the four-step approach he suggested, he agreed that three would do. He had me concentrate on getting low and laying the ball down as smoothly as I could.

It must have been painful for a man who could make the pins shake, rattle, and roll, to watch my ball ease its way down the alley, and make only a few pins wobble and fall. It must have hurt when I asked if he could just let me bowl for fun.

But I think he’d be proud that a few nights ago I went bowling with my neighbors. I would have been happy just to be there, wearing the shoes I got at a yard sale, rolling the ball I found at a thrift store, and listening to the thump and whump and clatter of balls and pins. But his lessons came back to me, and I managed, with my slow, straight-rolling ball, to lead the pack in the first game.

After that? Well, let’s just say I should have practiced a heck of a lot more than I did back in the day.

Bus Ride Back In Time

Carolyn J. Rose

 In early June I went along on a school field trip to a camp up the Washougal River Road. As the crow flies, the trip wasn’t a long one. As the crow rides a school bus, the trip seemed endless.

The road twisted, turned, and doubled back, threading its way into the hills. Signs warned of slide areas and the pavement dipped and rose like swells out on the open ocean. The bus rocked along, windows rattling, students jouncing and swaying with each bump or turn.

By the time we reached the camp, my head ached and my stomach roiled. I felt as if I’d been sucked into a cosmic wormhole and carried back more than 50 years to the bus rides of my youth in the Catskill Mountains.

I didn’t measure the distance from my home in Bearsville to Onteora Central High School in miles, but rather in landmarks. There was where Eddie got on while his mother stood in the doorway watching. There the road curved along a stream and crossed a narrow bridge with chuckholes at the end. There was the spot where the bus slid into a ditch one snowy day and the older boys were allowed to have all the fun and push us out.

Tedious and nauseating as the ride to school was, what I truly dreaded was arriving at that long brick building and beginning another day of what I thought of as drudgery verging on torture. But I really dreaded the days when we arrived to find the principal and assistant principal waiting with stopwatches and clipboards.

That meant a fire drill.

A two-door drill or a front-door drill wasn’t bad. I generally sat up front and could get off without being shoved down the steps.

Back-door drills, however, were something out of my nightmares. The back door was high. An ankle-snapping height. And there was no time to cut that distance by squatting or sitting, no time to turn and lower myself.

When the principal clicked his stopwatch, the older boys swung the door wide, leaped to the ground, spun about, and reached for the next kids in line. They gripped our arms and yanked us from the bus, flinging us through the air. The unforgiving asphalt rose to meet us.

For them, it was a competition. Could they empty their bus faster than the others? And, of course, speed was important. Never mind skinned knees and twisted ankles, if there was an actual fire, their technique would get us out alive.

But back then, I never thought of it that way. Back then I was more frightened of the drill than the fire. The drill, after all, wasn’t merely a possibility. It was inevitable. It would happen. And unlike fire, there was nothing I could do to prevent it.