Everything was so simple then. Sun, sand, water, and family, in a little house where they all came together. No T.V., no MacDonald’s, no 7-11's. Fewer choices to make you crazy. Unlike these days of SPF awareness and skin cancer warnings, we used to burn our skin to blisters on the first day just to make our vacation official. By evening we would each be radiating enough body heat to make sleep difficult, our skin so sensitive that a single grain of sand in the bed felt like glass shards from a broken bottle. Judy and Kenny both appeared to have been painted with blood, their hair bleached white. Like my Grandfather's nose when he took his nitroglycerin tablets, their skin was so red and angry you thought it best to get a little distance. Walking wood stoves. No one really minded though, it was all part of the experience. Of course I may feel differently in a few years when the front half of my nose is removed along with the skin cancers started on those long ago summer days. Like Lon Chaney in "Phantom of the Opera" I'll have a hole in my face where my nose once was. I still get too much sun, but now I'm careful to use a sunscreen of SPF #15 or above. It's just not the same though and I even feel guilty about getting any sun at all. It's like I said, we have too many choices now, we are too aware of all the consequences. It was great being eight years old in 1956. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss.
Lots of tomato sandwiches were OK though. Mom made them with white bread, mayonnaise, and real tomatoes. Local summer tomatoes that you could eat with just a little salt, but the best way was with white bread and mayonnaise. We would sit around the table in the living area next to the kitchen and look out at the rolling waves beyond the breakers. I can still feel the anticipation of having the sandwiches put on the table and being given the word to dig in. I always believed that I could eat at least ten of them, although I guess I never did. Kenny was eleven then and he really could pack them in. It was a good time to sit together and cool down, escape from the sun, let our eyes adjust. Quiet, cool. Tall iced drinks sweating large liquid rings onto the table. Just the sound of the waves, our own voices, the chatter of ice cubes in the glasses. Damp bathing suits, legs sticking to the chairs, the gritty sand under our bare feet on the cool cement floor. We all took turns sweeping piles of sand out the door every day. After lunch it was back to the beach. One afternoon we changed the routine and went to climb a nearby sand dune; the highest peak in the area. At the top Kenny decided to roll back down. As he reached an unstoppable speed, nausea hit, creating a red halo as he continued to gain momentum. It was those tomato sandwiches coming back again to say "hello". At the bottom of the dune, where the curve flattened out, Kenny was finally stopped by the base of a cactus. He had managed to spray a red line down the last fifty feet of dune, a real credit to his ability to suck down those tomato sandwiches. A low flying pilot would have seen a long straight red line pointing to the bruised body of a skinny boy propped-up on his elbows and dry heaving under a cactus; proud of his run, and proud of the awesome volume of his vomit. Kenny lived for a dare, and now dared anyone to top that. I didn't want to.
Each new day was magic at the beach, not knowing what the sea had brought in at high tide and left behind. The watery invasion always left a changed neighborhood in it's retreat. New shells, crab claws, driftwood, just generally neat stuff. I found one fresh skate egg, all leathery and tough and I put it in a glass of salt water on the screen porch ledge. After changing the water several times a day for a couple of days, the egg actually hatched. It produced a perfect miniature skate. I stared at that thing for hours, fascinated, and then let it go in the surf. Interesting shells, surf rounded glass, dried starfish, all made their way onto our window sills and tabletops; any flat surface would do. I had a special fondness for a smooth brick that I found in the surf. Although it was just a regular construction brick, it had been sanded into an oval shape by the sea. It had weight and substance and held the heat long after I brought it indoors. I used to sleep with that brick under my pillow, just to keep my hands on it's smooth, almost sensuous surface. One night I was awakened abruptly from sleep by my Mother dancing on one foot, holding the other, and crying and swearing. She had briskly pulled my pillow off the bed to fluff it up and had received a flying brick attack on the big toe. I was surprised and delighted by the scene. Not that I wasn't concerned for Mom's well being, it's just that it was so special to see her dance, cry and swear all at the same time. I don't remember ever seeing Mom cry or swear and only remember seeing her dance once (This was years later in the paneled basement of our last Westfield house. It was the "twist". She and Mrs. Barns and Mrs. Nye had all gotten hip to Chubby Checker.) Anyway, to wake up to a show of such rarity, a display of behaviors so at odds with one another; crying and dancing and swearing. It was quite special. It seemed a little like Mom had decided to loose her mind and had been considerate enough to wake me up to see it. With no explanation to me, she danced out of the room and was gone. Over the next weeks and months the changing dark colors of her big toenail served as a reminder of a brief and exciting few minutes when Mom went nuts.
A similar kind of giddiness struck only a few days later. We were all down at the water when Judy pointed up the beach to a large object thrashing in the surf. Whatever it was looked to be the size of a Sumo wrestler, but it definitely wasn't human. It's those next few minutes as I ran down the beach behind Kenny, Sue, and Judy that I remember most. My mind flashed images of just what we were to find. . A VW with arms and legs, an alien from space, a robot which fell over and couldn't get up. It was those minutes of pure exhilaration, when the body on the beach could be anything non-human from any world, that I still remember so clearly. The reality itself wasn't bad. A huge sea turtle had washed up, half dead from a head wound delivered by the prop of a boat. Not so great for the turtle, but pretty special for an eight year old. The fact is it would still be pretty special now too, but I would approach it differently. I would know it wasn't an alien.
We had a blue Ford station wagon in those days, with tastefully modest wings above the taillights. It had long flat seats in front and back like parallel vinyl sofas. Cars didn't have seatbelts to restrain kids then and the whole area behind the front seat was our gymnasium. It was normal to slide snakelike over the backseat, feet in the air, maybe lie in the far back and perform foot puppet shows for passing truckers. Boredom bred friction on the long drive to North Carolina, so Kenny picked on me and fought with Judy. We all blamed Sue for any bad smells in the car, and eagerly looked forward to going through towns with paper factories so we could insist that she had polluted the air for miles around. Mom and Dad told the story about the time Sue fell out of the car when she was a little girl. I stared at Sue's chin for evidence of the scars they said you could still see, but I never could. Sue got us singing rounds of "White choral bells" and Dad was visibly relieved to have the group activity turn in a more positive direction. He was always tied up in knots in those days, and a 300 mile car trip with four kids fighting and passing gas in the pre-air conditioned luxury of that hot metal box on wheels was no picnic. Dad sat on one of those woven plastic covered coil things that flipped up and down like a toilet seat. It kept you from being sweat glued to the seat. Mom didn't have one on her side but I don't think she sweat much anyway. At the beach, the car sat next to the house, unprotected from the elements. The only element that I remember was the sun. It would turn the car into an oven too hot to use. Metal parts would burn the flesh of careless passengers even after the car was declared safe and we were several miles down the road. Of course metal was metal then, not silver tone plastic, and it held the heat well. After baking in the sun for hours, making popping noises and launching blurry heat snakes skyward, that car was dangerous.
I realize now that it was Dad who must have lobbied to return to Nags Head each summer. He truly relaxed there, lying in the sun, burning off layers of New York City hustle. Dad got darker than any of us, although Sue came close. He got the color of our mahogany dining room table. Mom claimed this was proof that he was Mexican, as she had suspected when she first met the infamous "Mr. Miller". That was the alias he supposedly used when Grandma introduced them on a cruse ship in 1938. Of course Grandma had targeted and grilled Dad long before she forced him on Mom. She had found out the important things; who his people were, and what his future earning potential was. Dad had the highest security clearance possible, he had a background check by Grandma. Now with his own law firm and four kids later, Mom still claimed that Mr. Miller the mysterious Mexican, was up to no good. Dad took the kidding in stride, often singing and whistling as he lounged around in his maroon boxer swim trunks. It was great to be around when Dad was in a good mood. The best was when we got him to play a tune on his forehead with spoons. It was at those times that all was right with the world.
I called Dad the other day just to touch base and say "hello". We often trade bad limericks so I had one for him:
While growing quite old and quite wise,
A man with mere slits for his eyes,
Played his head with a spoon,
(A very dignified tune),
And encored with a two fork reprise!
Although Dad laughed politely, he's old and shutting down. I'm not really sure he understood what I said.
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