At the Beach....

My mother's parents lived in Portland, Maine when I was growing up.  I thought I was incredibly lucky to have grandparents in Maine. 

I still do actually. 

Maine just seemed like such a magical place.  The houses were old....my grandparent's house had glass doorknobs and a screened in porch AND a fireplace and there were little teeny toads hopping around their backyard.  They had raspberry bushes and huge pine trees and my Grandpa would bury the lobster and clam shells back by the birdbath that Judi always helped him fill.  I thought it was the most amazing place....  Their neighbor was named Hazel and I had never met someone named Hazel and she had the most beautiful climbing little pink roses growing on the fence that divided their yards. 

Of course one of the highlights was going to the beach.  It seemed like we had to drive forever.  There were two routes, one would take you past a farm stand where we could stop and buy corn on the cob, and there were old gray houses with hollyhocks in front of them.  The other way took us across a huge bridge and if we were lucky we could see the Prince of Fundy ferry there.

(above) My mom and her three girls in 1963.  As you can see I was the baby of the family.....

For lunch at the beach my grandmother would make different kids of sandwiches:  egg salad, tuna salad and sometimes CHOPPED BOLOGNA (ahem...my favorite) and she would wrap each sandwich half in waxed paper.  I thought this was really cool...because you could choose two different kinds of half sandwiches and I thought the waxed paper was cool too because we didn't use waxed paper at home.  Then there would be hard boiled eggs and they were BROWN!  This was also really cool because at that point in time we couldn't buy brown eggs at the grocery store here and so it was something very, very special that you only got in Maine.  For dessert there were Lorna Doones and sometimes those coconut cookies that had ridges that made them look striped---and you could break them into little strips.  Oh, and there were peaches or plums too.  I always chose the plums.  The adults would drink coffee from a thermos which I thought was damned weird---drinking coffee at the beach.  I can't remember what we had to drink....but I remember the thermos.  It was red with black diamonds.  And all of this food (well, maybe not all but a lot of it) went into the picnic basket. I loved that picnic basket.  I still have it.

 
Mom, Judi and the picnic basket at Read's Park, July 1960 (above)

By the time I remember, we'd go to Crescent Beach which opened as a state park in the mid 60's.  We'd park over to the side away from the buildings and playground.  Everybody would carry something....a bag, the picnic basket, a thermos, a stack of towels or the beach umbrella.  I ALWAYS wanted to carry the picnic basket but I think it was Judi's favorite too so I didn't always get to.  We'd walk down the pathways toward the beach, lined with split rail fences with beach roses blooming through the openings.  And the smell of the ocean got stronger and stronger and stronger.  We'd choose a spot towards the rocky end, where there weren't lifeguards and as many people.

 

Grandpa, Debbie, Mom and Judi at Scarborough Beach, July 1960 (above).  Look how gorgeous my mother is.

My grandfather was 6'2" but he seemed even taller to me and he would always go in the water with us (unlike my mother and my grandma---it was SO exciting if we convinced Grandma to go in the water).  He and my Dad would hold our hands as we jumped in the waves.  Grandma always sat under the umbrella because she tanned so easily and she didn't want to.  Sometimes Grandpa and I would take a walk, through the meadow above the rocks to the other side of the rocky outcropping.  There was a spot over there where the sand was red.  I thought this was one of the most amazing things I'd ever seen.  So I'd say hopefully, "Grandpa, do you want to go see the red sand?" and he always would go with me.  One time I brought an old Noxema jar from their house and filled it with the red sand.

Being the most organized sibling, Judi had all her old family photos in a photo album that she brought with her when she moved in with us.  I'd gone through it and scanned some old pictures but it was just recently that I realized that the pages UNFOLDED and there were more pictures that I hadn't seen.  I was so excited when I saw these pictures of the beach that I almost cried.  "LOOK ERNIE.....there's the umbrella and the basket and the rocks....that's JUST how it was!"

I just keep going back to look at them.  And I pulled the old Noxema jar with sand out of the medicine cabinet where I keep it for some reason, and looked at the sand inside.  It brings me right back there.....