Ocean City on Saturday Night

The arrival of winter, for whatever the reason, brings out the moodiness in me. Probably because it’s colder, I get out less, and have mothballed the OC1 for the season, effectively ending all forays out on the bays or ocean.

Maybe too, it has something to do with the fact that my dad is no longer around—he’s been gone since ’04, when my mother discovered him on their kitchen floor, the result of a fatal heart attack, after returning home from visiting her 90 year old mother late on a Sunday night. I miss his conversation, his political observations, his marveling at the latest this and that scientific discovery or observation, and his rational outlook on life. Regardless of the source of my winter unhappiness, it is something that needs to be relieved. The best way I’ve found is to get outside and escape into nature, preferably the ocean, where the roar of the surf, the smell of the sea, the feel of the sand beneath my feet felt through even the soles of my boots, fills the senses and soul. It’s like listening to a heartbeat—in this case, the heartbeat of the planet—and knowing that all is well in the world.

Saturday night we babysat a friend’s little boy, so Billy and Julia were up later than they would normally be, even for a weekend. Sunday morning they slept till close to 11am, pretty unusual for them. Too late to get to church! After much procrastinating and debating about whether to go to the shore or not, and after a couple of runs—first me and then Carl and the kids and then Carl alone—we finally gathered our hats, the kids with three each, our heaviest coats and gloves, and hit the road for Ocean City. At 4:30pm.

We arrived at the boardwalk in Ocean City at 5:30pm. It was cold and dark and there was a pretty good wind kicking up from the South, kind of unusual for this time of year. Of course all the shops were closed with no sign of life, except for one where there were people inside busy with a project of some sort. Mack and Manco’s pizzeria was open at 9h on the boardwalk, but that was about it. Billy and Carl strolled along the boardwalk because Billy had no desire to walk along the beach. Julia opted to stroll on the sand by the surf with me.

Julia was a pretty funny little companion, running to keep up with me, as well as to keep warm. She made sure to pick up any trash she saw. Her sharp little eyes seemed especially tuned in to the many plastic wrappers and bags stuck in the sand. We collected a sobering amount, necessitating three detours to the trashcans on the boardwalk to unload ourselves of it. For only a 3-5 block walk on the beach, I couldn’t believe how much we accumulated—all of it some sort of plastic bag or wrapper. In a way, Julia’s determination to pick up everything she saw seemed to be a tribute to my father, someone she was born too late to meet, who, according to a fellow teacher at his memorial service, couldn’t help but pick up the lunchroom trash the kids left during “lunchroom duty.” Dad could never stand to just look at something that needed to be done when it was totally within his means to do something to fix the matter even when others might eventually do the job. And of course, this teacher couldn’t simply stand idly by while he did this. So she was thus recruited to help pick up the remains of lunch.

After we turned around we found more bags that we missed. I looked out at the surf and noticed an object, sort of block shaped, that was sitting in the surf. Getting nearer I saw that it was definitely a box of something-a plastic box of something. I waited for the next set of waves to come in and go out, and then dashed out, hoping I wouldn’t soak my feet, and dragged the thing back in. Surprisingly, my boots were waterproof, because it took a lot of tugging to get the thing to dry sand, and a rogue wave came up high, covering my feet. It turns out it was a hose and housing thing that was probably from a fishing boat or a dock. One bolt was still left in its hole. Billy and Carl eventually noticed I was dragging something pretty heavy, and they came down on the beach to help.

We set it down on the boardwalk by a garbage can, which happened to be across from the store with the people in it, who were either setting stuff up or taking stuff down. A mild skirmish of wills ensued with Carl expressing more than a little annoyance. Here these people were obviously busy, and I was gonna interrupt their efforts to see if they wanted a stinkin’ hose. It was in decent shape but there was no way we could fit it in Carl’s trunk, and I really hated to just leave it there—what a waste!

For the past couple of years I’ve been telling Carl that we need more bookshelves. In fact, the situation is so bad, that I’ve been begging Carl not to do any more projects around the house until we get some shelves made for our increasing number of books. Being acutely aware that we live in a world of diminishing resources, I felt we should look into getting the wood for the shelves from old buildings slated to be demolished. I didn’t think that we should buy new material. This is something we had just discussed prior to hitting the beach. With this mind frame of reduce, reuse, recycle, I figured I’d go to the little shop on the boardwalk where the people were busy working. When I asked if they were setting up their shop or taking it down, they explained that after 20 years on the board walk they had gone out of business. They were taking down the last things in their store—these beautiful hand-made, solid wood shelves.

This is the kinda funny part (obviously I have no shame or pride)…I had to ask what they were going to do with the shelves. Hey, you just never know, right? Pattie and Dave Hanson, the proprietors, told us they could recycle the plastic bins, and they were going to take the metal stuff to sell, but that they were just going to throw out the shelves. There was no place to take the wood to be recycled. In their eyes, we were actually doing them a favor by removing the shelves.

Thrilled with our “find,” and warmed by our conversation with Patti and Dave, we hit Mack and Manco’s for some pizza, where we found a taker—one of the pizza guys who lived on a farm—for the hose.