Growing Up In A Picture Postcard

It was an island, but not by the time we got there … missed it by about 15 years. Mother Nature created it as one, just offshore a half-mile, and even though some shallow-water swamp had been filled in to extend an airport, it remained visibly, and emotionally, cut off from the mainland. As someone said, when we built our house, "What are you moving OUT THERE for?"

I have learned that the vast majority of people do not have a lighthouse down the street and a large private beach a few hundred feet away. We didn’t think much about the light, because it was always there and, besides, how would we find our way home at night in our boat without it?

The “corner store” was just that: the store two streets away. At one time, there were several very small stores in two small buildings across the street from each other; now it’s just one general store with a post office in the back.

One Catholic and one Protestant church. The Catholics began in the roller skating rink near the sea wall until the diocese got around to putting up a building. The church office was on the west end of our dining room table. The Community Church was in a house until someone shipped a small Vermont church down, in pieces, and put it together. When it finally needed steeple repair work, the usher at the Catholic church ran the fundraiser.

We have a long, narrow road leading toward Bridgeport, with water on both sides. Toward the sea is a large swampy natural water system called “The Gut.” As we approach it, we can tell we’re close to home; outsiders generally get sick at the smell during low tide, while we think of it as the perfume of nature. I miss it greatly.

Yeah, we grew up in a picture postcard.