A Place in the Country
When I was about ten, my parents decided to look for a “place in the country” where they could spend weekends and eventually some vacation time. The first thing you need to understand is that they only had a few thousand dollars to spend, the next thing is that my dad and mother were self-employed and worked together in a small insurance agency and my dad worked six days a week. Whatever they found had to be within reasonable driving distance and fairly cheap. And then there was the issue of seafood. My mother loved seafood, so she was most interested in finding a place where she could get oysters, clams, crabs and shrimp—preferably for free! We set out on a rainy February day to search for the place of their dreams.
At ten, my main interest was in the motel where we got to stay overnight. I recall slogging from one piece of property to the next in an unrelenting cold drizzle, roaming through musty-smelling cabins, and listening to a woman who talked about things I had no interest in like escrow and titles and tideland rights. But the individually wrapped bars of pink Camay soap and the little bottles of hand lotion back at the Drift Inn Motel were another matter all together! That was luxury!
At the end of the weekend my parents purchased, for $2500. cash, fifty feet of unimproved waterfront property on Hood Canal, a salt-water inlet of Puget Sound, about a 2 hour drive from Seattle. They were thrilled. I was unimpressed. The beach was covered with oysters, sharp and unrelenting, and featured a fifteen-foot high dirt bank that butted against the highway. At high tide the beach completely disappeared under several feet of salt water. It wasn’t quite what I had pictured as a lovely place in the country! I would have been much happier, I suggested, with a permanent unit at the Drift Inn Motel.
Initially, we had to synchronize our visits with the tides. We’d rush to the canal, scoot down the bank with our supplies, and set up a firepit on the beach. Mom gathered oysters and clams, both of which were undeniably abundant, and we’d cook them on a grate over the fire. I collected clamshells and made elaborate seaside manors featuring pools and verandas for the tiny rock crabs I caught. Our picnics ended abruptly when the incoming tide began lapping at the coals of our fire. Then we’d pack up our belongings and scramble back up the bank to the car, heading home for another week.
When I was in junior high my folks had enough saved to build a bulkhead on the property. This twelve-foot high wall, backfilled with dirt, gave us a flat area on which to park the car, set up our barbecue and laugh at the tide as it climbed up the wall, never reaching more than a couple of feet from the top. My dad couldn’t wait to find a used house trailer to park on the bulkhead so we could have a “real vacation place.” Over the years they added a deck that extended over the edge of the concrete bulkhead and, much to my delight, a motorboat! I spent most of my summer weekends during high school and college with friends at the beach. We water-skied, fished, swam, and ate tons of succulent oysters, clams, and Dungeness crabs dredged from the canal’s silty bottom. Even I had to agree it was a much better venue than the Drift Inn Motel!
After we married, my husband and I and eventually our three children all spent vacation time at the canal. The kids delighted in fishing, swimming, and finding shells to build habitats for little crabs. After some coaxing, they even acquired a taste for the abundant seafood on the shore. Shortly after my father passed away, my mother, concerned about maintenance responsibilities, gave us the property. The house trailer, about 40 years old, had seen better days but building codes in the area were extremely limiting. It took a creative architect, a fearless builder, diligent environmentalists, and unremitting patience, but we were finally able to construct a cabin on the same site where the trailer had stood for so long.
We are now retired and able to spend time at our cabin on a regular basis. We refinished the old gray Adirondack deck chairs and my husband and I often sit on the deck sipping glasses of wine, as my mother and dad did for so many years. Just like they, we watch the sunset and await the twinkle of the first evening star, reminiscing about the past. Over the decades my parents’ dreams have become my own and I love watching our grandchildren splash in the clear salt water. The beach is still covered with oysters and clams, the crab pot still yields its delicious bounty, and I suspect there are tiny crabs hiding under the rocks, just waiting for some little girl or boy to build a terraced manor complete with a clamshell stairway and a swimming pool at this lovely little “place in the country.”