Bearing Witness

I like the small stories of our lives,  the innumerable tiny stitches connecting miniature tableaus to create a tapestry that will one day bear witness to our joys, our sorrows, our lived love.  An open bottle of wine breathes on a 1960’s vintage Formica counter top. It sets the tone for a sensual Sunday afternoon.

A small pan of lasagna bakes in the oven. Three of the four eyes on the stove work and so does the oven. A bonus. The temperature dials on the oven have all been worn off except for 200 and 250. I guesstimate where 375 might be, and hope for the best.

 

 

 

 

A well-worn handmade bar stool in the tiny square kitchen is the perfect repository for a bright yellow edition of the PARIS REVIEW.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I suddenly remember leaving a container of chocolate frozen yogurt on the kitchen counter, and run back into the cottage to put it in the freezer. Returning to the dock, my breath catches when I see the silhouetted dog, man and waiting chair, there in the gloaming at the edge of all things solid.

There is mystery in the way found objects assemble themselves. I see nature, romance, woman, man, dog, and a multitude of tiny luminous sparks in the remarkable dark night of life.

Falling in Love Again (and again)

When Buck and I bought the Sugar Shack, we thought the real estate market was at its lowest point. On the surface, it looked like a great investment: inexpensive bay front property with a knockerdowner house; the property could be subdivided into two lots and sold. Sewer and other city services are available. Seemed like a no-brainer. Take out a mortgage, rent it for awhile if necessary, and then sell. Nothing personal.

Several things happened. The real estate market, even waterfront scarce as hen’s teeth, had farther to fall. It hit with a thud, and has stayed there, with barely perceptible upward movement. Many houses that have been for sale for more than a year (or two) have turned into rental properties, and so everyone is taking in each other’s washing, in a sense. So the Sugar Shack became, almost immediately, temporarily nonviable as an investment, either for rent or for resale.

Buck and I thought owning the old place on Perdido Bay would be a short fling. Then we gave it an affectionate nickname. And then, we fell in love.

We spent the day there yesterday.  The nice widow who sold us the home she and her husband had loved so much left almost all the furniture there. She remarried and moved to the mountains of Tennessee. We’re keeping what’s there, polishing, repairing, and where necessary, covering with a fresh throw. We cleaned, rearranged furniture, and replaced light bulbs yesterday, wondering what on earth we’re doing and having fun playing house.  I could almost imagine the Sugar Shack as a place for the assignations of a couple long-married, only not to each other: a love nest.

Buck watched his Florida Gators win a football game while lounging on a sofa and stealing glances at the white-capped bay.  We ate chili and tortilla chips. Maggie staked out a spot and snored the afternoon away.  I pulled out my black and white composition notebook and favorite blue pen.

At half-time and again at sunset, Buck, Maggie and I walked down the sloping old concrete sidewalk from the house to the new dock. Halloween. Full moon rising in the east, long red sunset in the west, and a chopped up bay blown to shore by a strong north wind. We wrapped our arms around each other, sunlight in my eye, moon glow in his. Maggie pressed close to us, her golden eyes seeming to read our hearts.

Dock Building

My late father was a builder. I loved to ride along in his pick-up truck when he checked on his projects. To this day, being on-scene of a building project flings open treasured old memory files. Even a small dock. There are hammers, nails, and the chatter of young men. Buck looks on, as the blue tin roof is almost finished.

The dock builders are part of a team of competitive speed skaters. It takes money for them to follow their bliss.

Back of the House

Something about this old place reminds me of a house in Bass Harbor, Maine where Buck and I have stayed several times over the years. It’s called “Captain’s Quarters.” A nice woman named Jeanne Fernald owns it, along with several other vacation cottages in the area. Bass Harbor is near Bar Harbor, but is known as the “quiet side” of Mt. Desert Island. 

In the bottom left-hand corner of the picture, you can see the large leaves of a fig tree. There are two of them in the yard, and they bear loads of figs. . . which the squirrels apparently eat as fast as they ripen. I have seen them green, and I have seen them gone.

The old hand-made picnic table looks too rickety to support me, but I’ve seen several of the dock building fellows sitting there to eat their lunch. They are part of a speed-skating team in addition to building docks, and so they are extremely fit. Even so, two of them doesn’t make one of me. I think the bench seats are safe for sitting.

Red Door

There’s something about a red door that draws me. This strange little storage building is made of concrete block, with a homemade coin effect at the corners. It has a flat tin roof, and this lovely, odd faded red door.  The hut snugs up against the glassed-in porch at the back of the house.

A large round rock is propped up against the door to make sure it stays closed. There is a hasp, but no lock.

The tiny room contains several old fishing poles, nets in disrepair, and a faded beach umbrella propped up  in one corner.

A child’s webbed beach chair swings slowly from a carpenter’s nail when the door is opened.

An Old Bay Meander

This post is a bit of history from the first day we saw the Sugar Shack in mid-2008.

A spot on the map tickled our curiousity, and Buck and I — looking for an excuse on a pretty day– packed up a lunch yesterday and meandered down to a part of the local coastline we hadn’t seen for years. We landed at one of the local bays, found the abandoned-looking house for sale that we had seen online at a realtor’s site, pulled into the old shaded drive and parked the car to wander about and look at the water.

The old, ramshackle house sprawled all over the place — looked like it was built in stages on an “as needed” basis. It was clear a lot of happy living had gone on around there. Old pots with plants crawling out of them competed with Confederate jasmine and other creeping vines and plants, mixing and mingling with huge Sago palm trees, blooming old magnolias, fig trees loaded with ripening fruit, loquat and banana trees, gargantuan rounded old hydrangeas in full blue-flowered bloom, thick trunked pine trees, cedars, camelia bushes and English ivy inexplicably running everywhere, even down to the sandy beach where the ruined dock lay in pieces, abandoned from the lick it took from Hurricane Ivan in ‘04.

 

 

 

Most waterfront lots around here these days have lost their “old Florida” character. The lots have been scraped off and landscaped within an inch of their lives with ubiquitous big box hybridized plants that could be plunked down most anywhere in the country.

The hodgepodge old house and lot we saw yesterday was firmly rooted in its place in panhandle Florida, and in the last century. Its history was writ large in rusted old crab traps, a wooden swing facing the sunset in a decrepit screened in porch, ancient fishing tackle hung on nails seen through the open door of a storage shed along with a child’s small life jacket at rest on a shelf.

 

We frightened away a lime green Chameleon from a failing, splintery bench , sat, and took in the

 

At First Sight

Buck and I had been hankering for some little piece of water for some time. We liked the idea of a lake or even a river. We drove all over nearby Alabama looking. We thought about North Carolina  and the possibility of finding a lot or cabin on a lake in the mountains. Lake and mountains sounded like heaven. The places we saw in Alabama were either crowded playgrounds for the jet ski set or desolate outposts in the back of beyond. North Carolina mountain lake prices are still higher than the altitude.

I idly looked through offerings on the different bays and bayous closer to home, not really expecting to find anything promising. When I ran across the Sugar Shack listing, Buck saw it on my computer screen and said, “What’s that one?”  The rest is history. We made a ridiculous offer, thinking it would be an opening gambit. Nope. The owner signed the contract, and we became the astonished owners of a sweet little place on a lovely bay, only 30 minutes from home.

A New Dock

We bought the Sugar Shack in June of 2008, and rented it shortly thereafter to a friend who needed a place to hide out during a tough divorce. The nice widow we bought it from had fallen in love and moved to the mountains of Tennessee. She left furniture, towels, sheets, dishes and even a pair of eyeglasses and a toothbrush. She was ready to go.

Our friend fell in love with the old bay, and found a little hideaway of his own about a mile away. This area is a small enclave where the waterfront lots haven’t yet been scraped clean of old houses and 1950’s style trees and shrubs. Thank goodness, it is still unfashionable.

It’s a funky fish camp with an old Maine coast feel, just right for two vintage honeymooners. It’s only a half hour drive from home, but a world away. No television. No phone. We’ve decided to keep it and love it for awhile.

The house itself is high and dry. It sits 25 feet above sea level on almost an acre, with 140 feet on the bay. Hurricane Ivan tore up the  dock in September of 2004.

But soon, there will be a new dock. A couple of weeks ago, we gave the What’s Up Docks crew the okay to clean out the old pilings and debris in preparation for the new one.  The project will be completed at the end of  hurricane season.

 

The pilings are beautiful, and the tree limbs the guys cleared out really opened up the view.

The dock will be 144 feet long with a 12 x 16 “t”-shaped terminus at the end, which will be covered in a nautical blue hip roof. 

 

The old birdhouse wasn’t damaged in Hurricane Ivan. Buck and I agree it adds character to the view.

Fire and Fin

A dolphin’s fin and a fool’s gold lump of sunset. Remember to breathe. Remember to breathe.

Knockerdowner

That’s what the lanky realtor calls it. He is a laid-back old pro, but apologizes for the  age, condition, home-made look and the air of abandoned neglect  – of sadness – that permeates the old house. “Well, it’s a knockerdowner, that’s for sure,” he says. “What you’re paying for is the water.” He casts one whole hand toward the water, as though it were a net.

Somebody started building the  house in 1947. As families grew and owners changed, do-it-yourself add-ons combined to produce a certain rabbit warren effect in some parts of the house. But the screened in porch has two wooden swings suspended by chains from the ceiling. The house has been on the market for more than a year. We are the first people to come look at it.  I can tell the realtor is not optimistic, but he is cheerful and seems to enjoy our company in this season of slow business and no business. He says, “You folks call me if I can answer any questions for you.” We tell him we’re going to walk around the lot and think it over. “Stay as long as you want,” he says and backs out of the drive. The screened porch isn’t locked, so Buck and I head straight for those swings. We drag our feet on the floor like kids and look at Perdido Bay through the Spanish moss hanging in long silver gray strands from a huge live oak tree.

The realtor calls it a knockerdowner. Buck and I call it a dream come true.