Beach Week 2017 in the books

Beach Week 2017 is in the books. We made it back in a reasonable amount of time, despite the side trip to the Norfolk Airport to drop Patrick off. A few delays, but no interminable backups. Lucy was pleased to see us, and intrigued by all of the new smells and beguiling aromas we brought back with us.

It was a good week. I enjoyed being with my family. I only gained 4 pounds, probably because of the 15 miles of road work I put in for the week. Had I not done that, I would be on the north side of 200 once again!

One thing is disturbingly clear...Maine has ruined me. Spending a month up there last summer has flat out ruined the beach for me. Let me try to explain.

Our weather over the past seven days was very good for the Outer Banks in July. The only rain we got was at night. Five out of the seven days were mostly sunny. But...man was it hot. The presence of a brisk breeze on the beach almost nonstop didn't help in the slightest. It was like being in the sauna at the gym, only every few minutes you could get up and walk down to the surf to cool off. But, dang was it hot out there. Although Hatteras Island, compared to most beaches on the East coast, is not overrun with vacationers, there were still a lot of other people on the beach. Again, nothing wrong with that at all...but did I mention how hot it was?

By contrast, our month in Maine in July of 2016, featured a gorgeous fresh water lake with our own private dock and float. There was a neighbor on the float next to ours, roughly a football field away, but our only communication with her was a lazy wave of the hand as we kayaked by. Unlike the quarter mile hike up the hot sand mountain required to reach the beach in Waves, the walk to our lake dock was maybe a hundred feet. And although there were a few nights early on that were uncomfortably warm in an air-condition-free house, most nights felt like heaven with the fresh breeze  from the lake drifting through the opened windows. The morning's were actually a bit chilly.

Whenever it rained, which thankfully wasn't often, we would just hop in the car and drive the 15 minutes into Camden and tool around in that fabulous little seaside village, grab some blueberries pancakes, or shop for hidden treasures at the Smiling Cow. We could take a ride on a lobster boat, or take in a play at the local theatre. One thing we never had to do was...make dinner for 18 people on a gas grill that didn't work!

Of course, the Dunnevant Beach Week isn't the same thing as a month in Maine, so it's not fair to compare the two. But, fair or not, once you go there, you can't help but measure everything else that comes afterwards to its standard.

One very cool thing about our Beach Week vacation is the fact that because it only happens every two years, it's fascinating to see how much of a difference those two years makes in the little ones. In 2015 little Evelyn was just a baby, this year she was an adorable princess. Two years ago Ezra would freak out whenever anyone stated singing. This year he was making requests during singing night! Darcy shocked us by how tall she had grown in two short years, and Bennett wore his baseball uniform one night after dinner...is it possible that he is old enough to play baseball?? Generally, it was amazing to watch how well all of them played with each other this year, no where near as many fights and arguments as in years past. They are all growing up and maturing. Two years makes a big difference. We grown ups change too over two years. We are all older, maybe a bit slower. Two years hence we might need more bedrooms. There might be new members added to the family, perhaps a new grandchild. Our beach week vacations serve as measuring sticks, a chance to take pictures and compare them to the ones in the picture albums from 1999 and 2009. But, honestly...someone in this family needs to win the lottery so we can afford to have the thing catered. If I'm asked to make dinner for 21 people on a strange grill again, I might revolt.

In 54 days, Pam, Lucy and I will make the drive to Quantabacook Lake in Searsmont, Maine.

I'm counting the days...

A Beach Week Scorecard

It occurs to me that many of you might not know everyone in attendance at this Dunnevant Beach Week, 2017. Part of the reason for the confusion might be the fact that this particular event is ill-named, since not everyone here is a Dunnevant. To clear up the confusion, I have composed the following scorecard of all attendees with a brief description of their contributions for the week...

Of course, all of you know the only actual Dunnevant's at Beach Week:

Doug Dunnevant...Commissioner of Pranks, Putt-Putt Champion, Taker of Naps
Pam Dunnevant...Organizer-in-Chief, Placecard Czar
Patrick Dunnevant...Designated Liberal, Hummer of Melodies, Professor of Video Games

My daughter once was a Dunnevant, but now she has lapsed into the wife life and has become:

Kaitlin Manchester...Ruler of South Carolina Middle School ne'er do wells, Whole30 Survivor
Jon Manchester...Mosquito Mogul, Identifier of all life forms coughed up on the beach

Then, there's the Schwartz contingent:

Bill Schwartz...Curator of Puzzles, Elder Statesman
Linda Schwartz...Mimi Maven, Cell Phone Whiz, and Grandchild Magnet

Matt Hawkins...Family Photographer, Undoer of Damage done to children by Uncle Doug
Jenny Hawkins...The Great Sleeping Chef who might not be able to get a decent night's sleep, but has
                            no problem dozing off while preparing a meal for 18

Paul Garland...Pool Monitor, eater of Pizza, Pasta, and nothing else
Christina Garland...Shusher of late night outbursts, Harmony Officer

Ron Roop...Building and Grounds Chairman, Kite Flying Foreman, Official Putzer
Paula Roop...Complaint Organizer, Person most likely to send husband to the store for something
Ryan Roop...Person most likely to end up on a milk carton..."Have you seen This boy? Last seen going for a walk on beach with soccer ball

The kids...

Darcy Hawkins...Soon to be Middle Schooler, Boss of the grandkids, wearer of turbans
Bennett Hawkins...Aspiring Prankster, Instigator of pool fights, up and coming left handed power
                               hitter.
Ezra Garland...Announcer of Intentions in clear, loud voice, Explaner of all things Transformer
Evelyn Garland...Princess of Cuteness, Redhead, Giver of side eye to Uncle Doug

Ok, there you go. That's everybody. So, it's actually the Dunnevant/Manchester/Schwartz/Garland/Hawkins/Roop Beach Week, 2017.

The Weather is here...wish you were beautiful.

Our Turn To Make Dinner

The Dunnevant Beach Week contains a bizarre tradition first started by my mother, who after a particularly trying day had thrown up her hands at the prospect of preparing the evening meal with the now famous exclamation, "I'll be John Brown if I'm making dinner for this bunch of hulligans tonight. Either somebody else makes dinner or they can all starve to death!"  Thus launched the ill-fated let's all take turns making dinner for twenty people at the beach and call it a vacation gambit of 1991. The fact that it survives today is a towering monument to the power of inertia. It has become a permanent feature of this trip...not a bug, a feature! Last night was our turn.

I've got an idea, someone foolishly once said, why don't we just make hamburgers and hotdogs for our meal at the beach? That will be easy. And baked beans...everybody loves baked beans. It will be a cinch!

When financial writers know even less than they normally know about the direction of the stock market...that is to say, when their non-existent crystal ball is more opaque than usual they often trot out that rediculous formulation...the markets are currently struggling for direction. However, this worthless declaration makes--hamburgers and hotdogs will be easy to prepare at the beach--sound like a Princetonian doctoral dissertation. Here's how it all went down...

By 5:00 the situation was well in hand. Pam had everything organized to within an inch of its life. The table was set with fake Fourth of July finery. Pies had been made, secondary dishes were lined up on the huge kitchen island with ruthless assembly line efficiency. All that was left to do was slip the baked beans in the oven and fire up the grill to cook the burgers and dogs. I exited the kitchen out into the deck where the suspiciously new looking gas grill sat, arms loaded down with 16 burgers, 16 dogs, and six brats. The tank was filled with propane. I had a sweating glass of sweet tea in hand and was ready to put my 'Murika face on. I turned the dial counter clockwise, waited for the click, then listened for the whoosh. I took a confident sip of tea, then paused to admire the setting sun as I waited for the grill to heat up.

It was a long wait.

While, the tank was filled with gas, and the four elements all emitted flame, the heat that all of this produced wouldn't have been enough to melt a stick of butter. I could have jumped up on that grill naked without fear of getting burned. After twenty minutes it became clear that if anyone wanted to eat hamburgers and hotdogs this evening, an alternate plan would have to be devised.

Meanwhile, inside the kitchen, the baked beans caper was in full swing. Despite knobs that indicated that the gas oven was fully engaged, the two dishes of beans looked fresh as daisies after twenty minutes in close contact to allegedly fatal temperatures. Perhaps the particular type of gas pumped to this address was of a timid variety, propane which feels guilty for the damage it is doing to the planet and has decided to not cook stuff when asked!! To make Pam's situation worse, here I came marching onto the scene commandeering the entire surface of the stove for the purpose of frying hamburger. The popping, spitting grease storm that ensued made flipping these burgers a test of will, courage and endurance...Stand back..I'm going in!!! Godspeed, man!!

Dinner was eventually served, albeit forty minutes late. Everyone was complimentary. The burgers were actually pretty good. My blood pressure sat an all time record for the systolic reading, Pam's hands eventually stopped shaking, and we both take comfort in the knowledge that we won't have to do this again for two full years!

Off To A Rousing Start

The thirteenth iteration of the Dunnevant Beach Vacation has gotten off to a rousing start. Saturday, travel day, was a lost day of angst, frustration frayed nerves, and therefore will never be spoken of in this space again. But, yesterday, our first full day, was a blissful delight.

First, the house. This place has no pretentious name like 2015's Absolutely Fabulous. But this house actually is. The bedrooms are huge. The kitchen is sprawling, although oddly...has no pantry. The house is dominated by a freakishly large family room:

There's an entertainment center that is so ponderous, it's hard to imagine how the thing could have gotten inside the house. We have come to the conclusion that it was either built in place, or lowered by crane before the roof was built. It's the kind of entertainment center that Louis XIV might have had at Versailles if they had had big screens back in the 1600's. The only problem with the room is the furniture. Again...grotesquely huge pieces of furniture have been thrown about the place, sofas,  love seats and ottomans all designed and built for the long since extinct race known as the Pygstilt people...that strange tribe of humans known for their stubby torsos combined with seven foot long legs. If the Dunnevant clan was so built, we would all be raving about how comfortable the sofas are. Since we aren't, here we all are...awkwardly splayed out on these too low to the ground pieces, feet dangling weirdly mid-air, heads sticking high up with nothing to lean against like the stilteyes of sand crabs.

But, enough of the obligatory complaining. This place is beautiful, and we are all happy with our purchase.

Yesterday, in the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal, there appeared an irksome piece which turned its journalistic nose up at the family vacation with this condescending turn of phrase:

Family vacations often mean bad food and slothful habits...but it doesn't have to be that way.

It's written by some nerd-king dork who begins his piece complaining about how the first day of his family vacation was spent desperately searching for WiFi so he could submit his latest column to his editor. The fact that his accommodations didn't provide instant, reliable and free internet service was a source of great consternation to the writer. My response to this idiot would have been...Ok dude. First of all, why didn't you finish your column before you went on vacation. Poor planning on your part does not constitute a vacation internet crisis on anyone else's part, moron! And secondly...what are you talking about with this bad food crack??

And, slothful habits? Are you kidding me?

Do you have any idea how much work it is to haul this many chairs all the way from the house to this beach every morning?? Slothful habits..pphhssttttt! I have to climb 49 steps just to get to my bedroom. We are a thousand feet from house to beach here, so if you want to call that slothful habits, be my guest. 

So yeah, if this guy wants to take a couple weeks off every summer to train for a marathon while eating twigs and berries, then he can help himself. As for me and my house, we will lounge around on the beach all day making fun of each other while eating five meals a day plus snacks.

Can I get an amen??

Anyway, things are going swimmingly. Last night's meal was a triumph. Kaitlin, Jon and Patrick offered up spicy chicken fajitas, some sort of delicious corn salad thing and sopapilla cheesecake for dessert. Linda, inexplicably found a rubber snake in her shower, and had a fake mouse jump out at her from a small wooden box.

Everything right on schedule...

Here's How it Went Down at the Bank

I'm sitting in the parking lot of Wells Fargo at 8:50 am, desperate to be the first order of business for the Pump and Three Chopt branch brain trust. I'm quietly rehearsing my pithy takedowns when I see a post from my wife reminding me of the money verse from last Thursday's bible study...James 1:19
My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry...

Great, I thought. What a lousy time to have gotten involved in a small group bible study at Hope. Now, on top of bank problems, I've got the specter of spiritual accountability hanging over my head!

So, I take a couple of big, deep breaths, slap on the phoniest smile I own and boldly walk through the doors with great expectations. Just my luck, Clarise has the day off, so the assistant manager listens to my case and leads me over to the desk of an eager young man with a broad smile who will help me get everything cleared up. The assistant manager explains the situation of the double mortgage payment debits to my new smiling friend, who promptly picks up the phone and calls someone in the bill pay department. When he begins to speak, my spirits dropped considerably. This eager young man had the thickest Pakistani accent I have ever heard. I was sitting less than five feet from the man and could hardly understand a word he said, how was someone a couple of states away going to decipher his gibberish across a phone line?? My suspicions were confirmed when it took him three attempts to communicate my account number to the poor sap on the other end..

...No no...dhat was V as in Rickter, not B like in DOB...

Despite this setback, I remained confident. Surely, my bank would be able to correct so obvious an error as this in no time. My fake smile was positively beaming at this point.

Then, it all went wrong. Very. Very. Wrong.

Without wading deep into the weeds of bank-talk, let's just say that in modern finance, the efficiencies of electronic banking are very much a one way street. Ever since the advent of the internet it seems that my bank has been hounding me to go electronic! I have been told of the many benefits to be had from leaving old school paper banking behind. Why, Mr. Dunnevant, imagine the speed with which transactions would fly from one of your accounts to the next without having to wait on the US mail? And, think of the trees you'll be saving?! Think of the children, Mr. Dunnevant. You want our planet to be healthy for your children, don't you??

But there's always a catch, always some absurdity just around the corner anytime somebody pleads with you to do it for the children. In my case, it became apparent after poor Rashid spent thirty minutes on the phone translating my problem into fluent Urdu for not one, not two, but three separate bank functionaries, that while the bank recognizes their role in this situation, and has ever intention of making this customer whole, unfortunately, the second mortgage payment could not possibly be returned to my balance until the passage of ten working days.

Now, upon receiving this vexing news, things began to go in slow motion. A seed of righteous fury had germinated inside my brain and was morphing rapidly into what very easily could have become a raging spittle-spewing tirade. But then...just like Tom Hanks' character in A League of Their Own, when Evelyn, his right fielder who keeps missing the cutoff man, and he gets ready to unload on her but then remembers that the last time he did she had burst into tears, and he had had to remind the entire team that there, in fact, was no crying in baseball!!!!...yeah, just like that, a weird, strained calmness came over me. The entirety of my response is as follows:

Rashid, is it? Yes, Rashid...let me see if I'm understanding you correctly. You're saying that despite the fact that Wells Fargo can remove money from my account in literally a nanosecond, it will take two entire weeks for them to put the money back into my account. Is this what you are saying, Rashid?

Rashid nodded in the affirmative, as his eyes took on a deer in the headlights look.

There was a time in my life when this might have triggered what people in the banking trade call a situation, as in...Hey, Fred, we might have a situation over here with this Dunnevant guy...But, today was not that time. I lowered my head, shuffled my feet a little and replied with all of the sincerity of a politician...

"Listen, I really do appreciate all of your efforts here, and I know that this isn't your fault...but Rashid, this is exactly why people hate banks."

That was it. I didn't even raise my voice. It was almost like a miracle. The branch manager then stepped into the void left by my unanswerable factual statement with a workable plan to work around the rules blah, blah, blah, and get this fixed by no later than Tuesday of next week. They begged my forebearnace and assured me that once the dust had all settled, I would be charged absolutely nothing for the trouble caused by their mistake.

So, there you go. As it turned out, I was, in fact, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. Apparently, there's something to this bible study thing.

The Joys of Banking

This morning, 48 hours before I depart for the beach for a week, I was alarmed to learn that my checking account at Wells Fargo had a balance of only $31. By my calculations, the number should have been many multiples of this paltry sum. Upon further investigation, I discovered that the overdraft protection feature of the account had been launched, whereby the deficient sum is summoned from my equity line in order to cover the overdraft. What fresh hell is this?..I thought. A few more clicks of my iPad revealed the problem...my bank had decided to draft my account for my mortgage payment...on two consecutive days. 

The conversation that I intend on having with my banker this morning could go two ways:

Possibility number 1

Clarise: Good Morning Mr. Dunnevant. What can I do for you this fine morning?

Me: Hello, Clarise. You are certainly looking well his morning. I was wondering if you could help me with a little snafu that I have discovered in my checking account. I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for it, but somehow my mortgage payment was drafted two days in a row. Since I was not expecting the second draft, the overdraft protocol was initiated, costing me $100 along with much embarrassment. Is there some way you can have this reversed and my account credited properly?

Possibility number 2

Clarise: Good morning Mr. Dunnevant. What can I do for you this fine morning?

Me: What can you do for me? What can you do for me????!!! I'll tell you what you can do for me...your bank can stop being the most incompetent enterprise in America, that's what you can do for me. Your bank can stop taking two mortgage payments out of my account when I have only authorized one, and then you can reverse this outrageous overdraft charge, then beg for my forebearance and thank me profusely for agreeing not to make a scene!!

I'm thinking that the real conversation will probably wind up being something in between...formalized politeness and bile-churning venom. When confronted with bank shenanigans I usually start as Dr. Jekyll, but withing five minutes get transformed into an enraged Mr. Hyde. This transformation stems from the arrogant position universally assumed by the banking class in matters of their own errors. It can't possibly be our mistake, Mr. Dunnevant, we have done studies and have discovered that 99.9% of these sort of conflicts are a result of customer error, that sort of thing.

But then, I set my jaw in that certain way that my children can recall with crystalline precision, that expression that possesses my face just before I launch into a withering takedown. My children referred to it as simply...the look. It gives off a certain vibe that suggests the possibility of madness, the very real chance that I might be capable of virtually anything. Of course, I am not a violent man...but sometimes it helps if other's don't know that.

By 9:30 this morning, the charges will be reversed. Hopefully, an apology will not be needed from me an hour later, when wracked with guilt by my performance, I will drive back over to the bank, flowers in hand, begging Clarise's forgiveness.

Beach Week Prep

Preparations are at a fever pitch for Dunnevant Beach Week 13.

Meals have been planned. A grocery list has been made. All but one of the six prank gags I ordered from Amazon has been shipped. On cue, a tropical storm has begun to form out in the Atlantic Ocean somewhere and brings with it the possibility of a midweek weather event. Andrew Freiden=Satan.

Of course, a big part of pre-trip logistical planning involves the actually drive to the beach. In our family, this means six vehicles leaving from four different places, plus my son who will be flying into  the Norfolk airport for pick up by his Mom and Dad. To make this year's voyage just a bit more difficult, our rental agency has come up with a 6:00 pm check-in time. Here's the controversy:

Two schools of thought have emerged. One, championed by my brother-in-law, is that we should leave as early as possible to beat the worst of the traffic. If this means we arrive six hours before check-in, so be it. The second idea seems to be, why not chill at home for a while, eat a leisurely lunch, then hit the road later, and if we need to stop for dinner on the way down, fine. Since Pam and I have to pick up Patrick at the Norfolk airport(arrival time 12:30, assuming no delays or hijackings), we have no choice in this matter. So the debate has become...do we all plan on eating dinner on our own, or do we wait until we all arrive and order pizza at the house?

We have spent the better part of two days debating this topic on the Dunnevant VACAY 2017 Facebook page...yep...and after all the back and forth, the conclusion we have reached seems to have been:

Everybody leave Richmond at whatever time you like, and we can either eat dinner on the road or maybe order pizza if the trip goes better than expected and we all find ourselves at the house at 5:00 and the rental agency allows us to check in an hour early, which may or may not happen.

In other words, Shakespeare had the Dunnevant's pegged pretty well when he wrote, It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Our "debate" produced a thunderous maybe. But at least we didn't venture into the murky waters of trying to decide on pizza toppings...are you kidding? That would take a second Council of Trent!

Anyway, the day is fast approaching, and everyone is putting on their game faces...especially my nephew, Bennett, who offered this 24 carat gem to his mother the other day...

...I hope I find another shark tooth at the beach this year. That would be cool. I lost my other one. Or, I might find some buried treasure. I could. And then Pops could figure out how to open the box with his knowledge. Or maybe Uncle Ron. But if I find some, I'm keeping it. And everybody will be like, "can I have some of your gold?" And I'll be like, "no way--gold doubloons are expensive!" You know, cuz they are--I'm not going to be giving away my gold doubloons and diamonds and stuff....

Kid is eight years old and already understands the relationship between scarcity and price, the productive division of labor, and has come out steadfastly against wealth redistribution!!

One last thing...here's a teaser shot of the prank box...

Be afraid, people. Be very afraid...