A Picnic Became A Lifetime … continued

As time went on  my friend  Fred, started joining us for lunch, it then became a three some.  One day he mentioned that Bob a friend of his from Boston was coming up for the weekend and  he hoped we might all get together and perhaps take a trip to Orr's Island.   His friend was from Illinois and was really in love with the ocean.  After our meeting Bob, he explained that not until he graduated from collage and had taken a job in  Boston had  he ever seen the ocean.  He explained how he had read about it and knew about the tides and etc. but he went on to say that until you see it first hand you can not really know the true meaning of such an event.  He told us that  he had written home to his brother John and said “you just have to come and see for yourself  how this really works”  and they spent 24 hours just watching the tides come and go.  It seemed that every weekend after that we four were visiting every beach from York to Wiscasset.

My family's home became our haven of rest and my parents enjoyed having all of us around.  One Sunday  morning after my mother had served breakfast, Bob started reading the Sunday paper, when all of a sudden he shouted  very loudly  from the living room, "This is it , I have found a cottage for sale on a beach right here in Yarmouth, it's at Whites Cove, do you know where  this might be ?”  Did I know where that was, you bet I knew where it was.  Back in the early forties, I'd say perhaps  in forty two or three my father rented a small cottage there for six dollars a week.  I can still hear him and my mother discussing whether or not they could afford it for two months or not , she thought they should only take it for one month, but my father won out.  It was a very small cottage, in fact as I recall  there was only one small bed room and a cot under the stairwell, no running water and a single holer outside  of the back door.  We had to get our water from a hand pump that was located half way down a steep hillside.  I remember my mother sending me down there with a  small pail to get water when my father wasn't around.  Those years were some of the best times that I can remember.

to be continued…