Thirty Eight Years Ago

I found a picture one day recently, and it unleashed a flood of memories - the mothball smell of the bunkhouse, sand in my bathing suit, the sound of priming the water pump, making hand-cranked icecream, slipping through the sharp grass on the way down to the beach.

For several years in the early seventies, my family rented a friend's house out in Montauk. It was the perfect summer house - no phone, no electricity, isolated at the end of a mile and a half long dirt driveway, and right on an isolated stretch of beach. It had the basic comforts, all powered by propane - hot and cold running water, stove, refrigerator, and lights. No TV, just books and board games.

There were three little buildings on the property - a main house with the kitchen, bath and pot-bellied stove, and two bunkhouses. There were enough beds (bunkbeds, cots, pull-outs) to sleep 10-12 people. The bunkhouse we kids slept in had a whole wall of screens, facing the ocean; it was almost like sleeping outside.

We'd arrive for a week or two, with foot lockers strapped to the roof of the station wagon, and return home brown as berries, with sun-bleached hair, and sand everywhere. Heaven.

We spent all day, every day, on the beach. My father would fish in the surf; once he caught a sting ray. We'd gather seaweed and wear it as wigs. We picked wild blueberries and beach plums, and dug for steamers in a nearby brackish pond. Once each summer, we'd get dressed up and go to dinner at Gosman's. But most of the time, we ran around naked or nearly so.

And my mother? Three children and a huge abdominal scar didn't stop her from wearing a bikini. That's her and my four year old sister in that picture.

I'd love to go back there. But it's never to be. The property, even then, was surrounded by state park land, and one day the State took it back, by eminent domain. The State owns the land, but the memories remain mine.