The Reminder In The Wind

For better or for worse, I am a man of the south. I was born in Virginia and have lived in the old Capital of the Confederacy all of my life except for three years which was split between New Orleans and a two horse farming town called Nicolsville, Alabama. Most of my vacations have been taken on the ocean in either North or South Carolina. My children live in Nashville, Tennessee and Columbia, South Carolina. But I am not just southern by geography, I am also southern by temperament. My attitudes and lifestyle were formed here. Its been a mixed bag. Everything about the south clings to you, the traditions, the food, the humidity. There is much about being a southerner that I’m proud of, but there are also things I’ve had to overcome, ways of thinking and being that borrow too much from the past. There is a tendency towards the provincial here, an us vs. them mindset. Down here, it’s either SEC football or nothing. It’s been said that you could blindfold a southerner and drop him anywhere in the country and in five minutes he could tell if he was in the south or not. I believe it. It’s in the atmoshere. It hovers. It’s a presence.

When I come to Maine, I am always aware that I am...away. It is, quite literally, in the wind. Since marrying a girl from Maine 35 years ago, I have probably spent nearly a year of my life up here now, mostly in June or July, but more recently in September and October. Everything about this place is different from what I know. But nothing is as unique as the wind. It will be difficult to explain. Mainers probably won’t know what I’m talking about because they have never known anything else. People from down south will think I’m exaggerating. 

Of course there are winds in Maine about which I know nothing. The howling gusts that savage these people over the five brutal winter months are something that I am grateful never having experienced. There isn’t enough money in the world to make me live here from November to March. In Virginia, we love our snow and brief relationship with cold. It is a quaint photo opp, a postcard scene that closes schools and sends suburban Mom’s scurrying to grocery stores to stock up on bread and milk. It’s delightful. Here, snow lost all romantic pretense about 300 years ago. No thanks.

So, basically I’m talking about the breezes of summer. There are so many different kinds of breezes in Maine and if you’re lucky you will experience all of them in a single day.

At 6 am, I wake up and walk out on the deck. Today it was 58 and the lake was drifting by from the west, the breeze gentle and forgiving. Still, I had long pajamas and a long sleeve shirt on. It was chilly. Other days when you wake up the lake is as still as glass. The trees hang motionless as the dead...but still you feel the occasional breeze in your face from out of nowhere. It’s the oddest thing. Around ten o’clock in the morning a mysterious thing happens, and it happens almost every single day...the wind picks up from across the lake and begins to stiffen. Soon the wind chime starts singing. This keeps up for thirty minutes or so and you begin the great anticipation, the answer to the question that each day presents itself...will it blow all day, or die back down? Forget the weather forecasters on the subject, they are like sorcerers from the Middle Ages, bumbling and stumbling about making fools of themselves trying to pretend they can predict the winds. Up here, the wind has a mind of its own.

The first two days we were here the wind blew all day with several gusts that sent the wind chime into musical orbit. It was nearly 84 one day, but the wind coming off the water made it feel so much colder. Yesterday it was 79 and the breezes that came were 
intermittent and surprising. But no matter what the temperature happens to be, there is always a startling coolness in the wind. It comes like a reminder to me that I am not in the south anymore. It’s Maine’s way of letting me know that I am...a guest.

There is also a distinct smell that is stirred by these breezes. Although we are a twenty minute drive from the Ocean, there is a briny ingredient in it, mixed with the deep woods aromas of pine straw, moss and balsam. Sit outside in it long enough and you become ravenously hungry despite the fact that you’ve spent all day doing nothing.

In the evening everything changes. The wind dies down, the lake settles itself, becomes like glass again. Then we wait for the sunset. It’s a long performance in several acts that begins around 7:45 and doesn’t finish up until almost 9:00. I’ve learned to never give up on a sunset here. You look at the dark, cloudy sky and are tempted to say, We won’t get one tonight. Too cloudy. But, you are almost always wrong. Some strange thing happens in the heavens...the wind stirs something up...and suddenly the show is on. It is breathtaking. You take photographs, to no avail. It cannot be captured, it seems, as if it is here just for us and no one else. We are, after all...guests. The wind reminds us every day.

Better Vacations With Technology

As many of you know, my wife and I had a long and vigorous debate before this year’s Maine trip as to the disposition of Lucy. Should we bring her with us like we have twice before, or should we leave her at home with Becca the Dog Whisperer like we did least year? It was a tough call, since although she loves it here, leaving her in Short Pump last year did give us a lot more freedom. What it boiled down to for Pam was...I feel nervous leaving her alone for half the day in a strange house. What if she hears someone shoot a gun or what if a thunderstorm pops up and she goes all postal??

Obviously, Lucy is here. So what happened? Did my famous powers of persuasion overcome her arguments? Was I forced to resort to bribery? Did I fall on my knees begging? No, no, and no. What happened was...technology.

Allow me to introduce you to...Wyze Cam v2, the digital security camera which allows you to keep tabs on your hyper-neurotic dog from your cell phone 24/7. If she were to get into any mischief, you can even send a corrective rebuke through the ether to remind her that...we’re watching!!

Pam had visions of Lucy standing at the back door whining for hours after we leave to head into Camden, then once the poor thing realized we were gone, she imagined her sulking around the house, mourning our loss and looking for ways to lash out at her duplicitous humans. Instead, we got this...

Is this a great time to be alive or what??

Hard To Pretend I’m Not In Heaven

Every time I come up here I feel conflicted about...Facebook. Let me explain...

On the one hand, this is my favorite place in the world. Everywhere I look I see beauty and wonder. Here’s a very small example...

I mean, for heavens sake, I can’t even write a blog without being enchanted by it! So, naturally I feel compelled to share it with everyone. If there is a line between sharing and it’s notorious twin brother—Facebragging—I probably have crossed it. By posting so many pictures and writing so many blogposts about my adventures up here, will I run the risk of alienating the reader? Will all of this Loon Landing love start to grate on your nerves? Will I come off as just another privileged white guy bragging about his carefree life while everyone else is trudging off to work? Maybe. It’s certainly a possibility.

But on the other hand, I could be spending all my energy ranting about politics. I could be sending out cryptic coded messages about someone with whom I hold a bitter grudge. I could spend my time fishing for compliments by posting something like...Some days it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed..#ineedprayer. I suppose I could post recipes, or share my latest Map My Fitness running map. Maybe I could entertain all of you with my fascinating opinions on the national debt and the glaring errors of our fiscal policy.

What is Facebook and other social media for if not the dissemination of joy and happiness? I don’t know about you but I would rather see pictures of babies and puppies all day than participate in a single online shouting match between a Socialist and a Trump-loving evangelical. Speaking of puppies, meet my new Grandpup...Frisco Rutherford Dunnevant...

The family resemblance is uncanny, don’t you think?

So...while I will try to be sensitive over the next three weeks with regards to over-sharing this fabulous place with the world, I make no promises that I will be successful. I suppose you all can vote with your feet if I get too carried away. But, I just can’t pretend that I am not in heaven. When I drive down the long dirt road through the Maine woods that ends at this place, I am overcome with a desire to bring every single person that I love in this world with me...even if it’s only for one day. I want everyone to sit on this dock. I want everyone to hear the loons, breathe the clean air and feel the cool breezes in July. I want everyone to smell the barbecue chicken cooking on the grill while watching the sunset in a furious explosion of color through the pines across the way. I want all of this for everyone...even those who voted for someone else.

All Is Well.

We have made the drive to Maine using the western route many times now after years of trudging up that 21st century trail of tears known as Interstate 95. The western route is an hour and a half longer but far less stressful and the scenery is incredible. What’s not incredible is the Ramada Inn of Pottsville, Pennsylvania.

When traveling with Lucy, we have to find pet-friendly hotels in far away places sort of on the fly. Friday was one of those days. We left Hatteras Island at 7:20 AM for what ended up being a four hour drive to Short Pump. So far, so good. By the time we had repacked the car to accommodate Miss Lucy, eaten lunch, and rested a bit, we departed for Maine around 3 in the afternoon. I had no idea what the traffic would be like and how far I would be able to go without getting too tired...so Pam, my travel agent, was severely handcuffed in her job of finding the right hotel in the right town. To make a long story short, she settled on the accursed hotel mentioned in the first paragraph above that I simply can’t bring myself to type again.

First of all, the hotel was a thirty minute drive into the bowels of the Pennsylvania mountains from interstate 81. This particular drive recalled traumatic memories for me of the Deliverance variety, while Pam began shrinking in despair with each mile driven, the horrific memory of the Yokum Vacationland Motel debacle from twenty years ago. If you were in the Youth Group at GABC back in the day, you know of which I speak. If not, you’ll have to ask Pam about it one day. Our GPS wasn't impressed with our choice of accommodations either, since she decided to deposit us in the sketchiest, scariest section of Pottsville and then blithely declare...You have arrived at your destination...and frankly, I expected better. After some fancy footwork, I managed to finally find the place, a dismal brick building whose front entrance was roped off with what looked like police tape...not a good sign. The personality-free girl at the front desk offered this helpful explanation...We painted the steps today. Her next mono-toned words were...No, you can’t have a room on the first floor, we’re almost completely full. 

At this point, after ten hours of driving, hamstrings within mere minutes of full-fledged revolt, the only thing I could think of was...Wait a minute...this hotel, in this town, is sold out?? What...is there a sadists convention in town? Then, the charmless girl behind the counter showed signs of life...NO, its the big Yuengling Festival!! It’s their 199th anniversary celebration!! Oldest brewery in America!!

Actually, that explained a lot.

When we finally got Lucy into the loud and scary elevator and opened the door to our fourth floor suite, Pam was ready to turn around and drive straight through the night to Loon Landing, even if it meant she would have to drive. The place was 100 degrees...the air conditioner hadn’t been turned on all day. The dimly lit rooms gave off an industrial smell which, if bottled and sold as air freshener would be named...Inhospitable. It was the first hotel room I have ever stayed in which had not one single work of art hanging anywhere, the gray walls looking naked and forlorn. Pam immediately sat out stripping the bed looking for bedbugs. Finding none did not calm her nerves. She then gingerly stepped into the bathroom and determined in an instant that there would be no showers taken by either of us for any reason. Our strategy became crystal clear in my wife’s eyes...we would immediately fall asleep, and at the but-crack of dawn we would get the hell out of the Ramada Inn of Pottsville, Pennsylvania and never, ever speak of it again.

While taking Lucy out to pee in the giant parking lot across the street, I happened to glance at our credit card shaped room key. There was Ramada’s slogan emblazoned across it...Ramada Inn...you deserve this.

What, heinous crime against humanity was I or my descendants guilty of that would earn this hotel as its punishment?? As I watched Lucy deposit a prodigious pile just to the left of a loaded dumpster in a dimly lit corner of the parking lot, which was no doubt the scene of many a recent drug deal, I could think of no such transgression. We scurried back across the street and once again up the rattling elevator to our now 90 degree room. All three of us slept with one eye opened.

Yesterday’s drive was long and crowded. 

Lucy is thrilled. I am a new person. Pam had a wonderful shower.

This morning, I woke up to this...

All is well.

Finally.

Why Do We Do This?

When I tell people about the Dunnevant Family Beach Week, I often get this question...Have you taken leave of your senses? To be fair, this is not an entirely inappropriate question. Cramming 19 family members into a single beach house for seven days, for many, would be considered a violation of the Eight Amendment to the Consitution and it’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Indeed, there are times when the experience does test one’s patience. My comeback to this challenging question has always been a garbled, tortured mess, since it is sometimes hard to put into words the particular charms of this event.

Pictures help.

The first morning of the week I walked out onto the deck to drink my coffee and there was my niece, Darcy. I remember her first year when she was just a baby. Now here she was, a newly minted teenager, up before me, reading a book. Seems like two weeks ago we were all holding her in our laps reading her books.

Family vacations offer rare opportunities for generational interaction. My nephew, Bennett, is enthralled with my son’s video game playing skills. If Patrick is annoyed by his hovering, it doesn’t show. This is the sort of photograph that the two of them will look at years after I’m gone and smile at the memory.

...A rare gathering of the six of us under the same roof, rarer still since this is one of the only times all week where we all are fully clothed and free of sweat, sand and suntan lotion.

A quick side trip to Manteo to reenact Jon’s proposal to my daughter 5 years ago. It was in this exact spot, I’m told. I will resist any reference to how criminals always eventually return to the scene of the crime. Oops...

The women of the family, sunglasses fashionably in place, smiling for the camera on the top of the dunes at Jockeys Ridge. Evelyn, the youngest, already displaying advanced workin’ it skills. This, another photograph that will elicit many fond sighs for years to come. Aww, do you remember how gorgeous it was that night yau’ll?

This tradition, now in it’s 16th attempt, is a historical marker of sorts. Each year is compared to the one before. The locations change, the houses change, the experiences mount and are archived in our collective memories. Where one’s memory fails, another’s fills in the gaps. Still others just make stuff up...using creative license to help the history along. Soon, history becomes myth, and we delight in it.

The Waiting...(is the hardest part)

Tonight after dinner, I entertained the family with the blogs I had written upon the occasion of our arrival at the three previous Dunnevant Family Beach trips...in 2013, 2015, and 2017. It was pointed out by the assembly that I had not yet submitted a similar edition for 2019. Truth me told, I needed a day to decompress. It was quite the arrival.

Salty Paws, this year’s beach house, was rented from the Sound and Surf Realty Company, an organization committed to the twin principles of the customer is always wrong...and anything bad that might happen to the customer is merely the nature of the business. For example...according to the company website, check-in time for their properties is 6:00 pm. Despite this late hour, they assure the customer that should the property become available earlier, a text would be sent to the renter and early entry granted, Indeed, in 2017, when we rented from the same company, we received such a text at 1:00 pm. This year, we decided to shoot the gap and plan on arriving around 3:00. Bad decision. When Pam and I pulled up and discovered that the house had not been cleaned and it was already nearly 4:00 in the afternoon, my sister Paula was already rehearsing her finger-wagging tirade for the first company hack who had the guts to show up to face one of the infamous and dreaded hip-sisters. At roughly 6:00, our guaranteed check-in time, a hapless flunky pulled up in the driveway, and pulled a pack of bed sheets from the trunk of his car! His response to Paula was something about the fact that his company was understaffed, a fact that was definitely not our problem, but most certainly the problem of the Sound and Surf Realty Company...which after Paula’s tongue-lashing should have been renamed the Sound and Fury Realty Company.

By 6:25, all was well, and all 19 of us were allowed to enter the house, right after the wide-eyed cleaning crew had slunk away through a side door. I’m quite sure that these overworked and underpaid folks gave it their best shot, but when you’re pretty sure you can tell what the last family had for dinner last night from the crumbs still on the kitchen counter, you kinda know you’re in trouble. This morning, the first attempt to retrieve a coffee cup from the cabinet yielded a handsome white ceramic mug with a charming lining of fried-on scrambled eggs around the circumference of the interior. My reaction was first frustration at the poor cleaning job, but second and more importanatly...confusion at the question that immediately lept to mind, ie. who eats scammbled eggs out of a coffee mug??

But, time passes and eventually you get over the sanitation issues. I mean, what’s Lysol for if not for this occasion? So, I find a clean mug, pour my coffee and sit down on one of the comfortable but stained rocking chairs when this catches my eye...

Now, normally I’m not the kind of guy who pays much attention to...rules. But, this list of regulations for the use of the hot tub were alarming on many fronts. At the top of the form we are instructed that Hot Tub use is NOT for everyone. What it should have said was...Hot Tub use is not for ANYONE. For instance, how many people in this family over the age of 25 don’t take any prescription drugs? And I had no idea that hypertension and high blood pressure were, in fact, two different ailments?! But, assuming we pass the first prohibited list, the list of rules for use raise several disturbing questions... Take the third item on the list for example...

No use of hot tub if bottom cannot be seen clearly.

What in the Sam Hill is going on at the Sound and Surf Realty Company? I mean who are these people? Are they trying to tell us that we cannot enjoy the hot tub unless we are naked? You would like to give them the benefit of the doubt, but then three bullet points later comes the declaration: Do Not Use Alone. So, they are cool leaving us a filthy beach house, but gleefully encourage lascivious behavior in the hot tub!!

But, now that we all have the first 24 hours under our belt, we are warming up to the place. The air conditioning has been stellar, the plumbing, heroic. The performance of the electricity has been faultless. And although any exploration into a random drawer in the kitchen is liable to produce evidence of previous meals from perhaps years ago, for the most part we are happy with the place.

It’s a shame about that hot tub though...

I Miss These Guys...

What follows is a conversation I had last night with the two guys I recently mentored for 8 months as part of the Mentoring Ministry of Hope Church. I really miss these guys!!