Friends at the beach…
(photo credit: https://www.capegazette.com/article/partially-open-beaches-work-well-lewes/201824)
Lewes, DE is a small town on the Delaware and proudly claims to be "The First Town in The First State. When I was growing up it was the perfect little town to walk around in, not to much trouble to get in around there.
During one of my first vacations there we met some local kids. There was a boy and a girl around my age unfortunately I can’t remember their names. I think the girls name was Bernice and they had an older brother that was around my sister’s age, I believe his name was Broderick. Whenever we would go to Lewes after getting myself settled I would run off in search of these kids. We would go on made up little adventures and explore around town. One thing we would always do was go down to the beach and race the ferry. The Cape May-Lewes Ferry would go back and forth between Lewes, DE and Cape May, NJ . Whenever it would pull out we would jump on our rafts and pretend that we were a ferry racing out on the bay to shuttle people back and forth from town to town.
I remember their mother had to work so they would be alone during the day and we would just hang out all day. My grandmother would always invite them in for dinner I guess she thought they were starving or something.
I’ll never forget when I couldn’t find them anymore. It must have been somewhere between elementary and middle school. I went looking for them as I always did and they were just gone. I kept walking by their house but there was no trace of them.
Too bad I don’t have any photos with them, in fact I don’t have any photos at all of when I brought my friends to the beach.
By this time I was allowed to bring friends to the beach and I was SOOOOOO excited. I picked my first friend and we were to stay at my godparents house and then my mother was going to pick us up the next morning to go to the beach. We were having fun and laughing and I was telling her all the things we could do at the beach. The closer we got to bedtime though I started noticing she was acting a little strange, getting quiet and not talking. She then revealed that she wanted to go home. She had a bad case of home sickness and we were still in Virginia. I kept trying to tell her she would feel better in the morning once we got on our way to the beach but she insisted that she wanted to go home that night. No matter once I got there I knew all would be right because the ocean was always a salve to my hurting soul.
The next friend I brought to the beach was one I met in junior high and to this day is still my best friend. I just walked up to her on the first day of 7th grade gym class and introduced myself (something I had never done before) and the rest is history. Now I had no problem with her coming to the beach because she didn’t have the ideal home life and jumped at the chance to get away from here house.
(photo credit: https://www.tripadvisor.com/LocationPhotoDirectLink-g34028-d1498283-i151965687-Dairy_Queen-Lewes_Delaware.html)
We had so many fun and crazy times at the beach. We would spend our days at the beach, at the Dairy Queen and hanging out with boys. Some of them were locals and some stayed at houses that their grandparents owned just like me. Sometimes we would see the same ones and sometimes we would meet new ones. Too many stories to share here and I’ll keep those memories safe for us!
One of Joleen’s favorite memories to talk about was my Uncle Sonny and how he would make us getting him ice cream and popsicles so he wouldn’t have to leave the beach.
My Uncle Sonny at the beach.
This right here is Uncle Sonny and this is the position he would hold while visiting us at the beach. He would get his chair and lay in the sun and get a tan that’s it.
Then when he woke up it would never fail he would send me and Joleen to the house to get him a popsicle or up to Dairy Queen to get him some ice cream. We would have to basically run back to the beach so it wouldn’t melt. We didn’t care because it was just our chance to get more ice cream. Joleen’s choice was always a peanut buster parfait and mine was a vanilla blizzard with nestle crunch or reese’s pieces.
One time in junior high I did stray away from Joleen and invited another friend who shall remain nameless. This girl was wild and always doing crazy things. This was the first person to convince me to sneak out to go see boys. I was petrified and just knew we would get busted. We didn’t, thankfully and after this trip I decided it was best to stick to Joleen for beach trips. We did stupid and crazy things but never on this level!
These times always remind me of my favorite song of all time. The Boys of Summer by Don Henley. If you don’t know, now you know.
Well, this brings us to the end of another trip down memory lane, next week I will share one of the worst moments in my life having to do with the beach. You don’t want to miss that one.
For now I leave you with one of my beach painting that I did based on the quote by Jimmy Buffett above. This one has sold but you can check out my shop for other paintings like it or request one with your favorite beach quote!
See you next week!
