July 14, 2006

• hindsight

  None of us can remember when Charlie first came to Dingman's Cove, but we all remember the last day we saw him.  Charlie was a very special man.  When we first moved into the Cove when I was a young boy, Charlie was already the sweetheart of the town.  All beach towns already have a certain nostalgic intimacy about them, but Charlie added a spice all his own - a jovial man whose roaring laughter you could hear a block away.  Charlie owned the general store in town.  All of the locals knew him and loved him.  I loved him too.  I still do, the poor misunderstood man.

  Many of the summertime visitors came to know him as well.  They'd come to his store every day of their visit.  They'd say they wanted to look over his expansive model train setup or purchase a little jar of local jam, or look at his rock collection.  But they really came to hear Charlie's stories.  His stories were from everywhere in the world, it seemed.  He had been everywhere, he had seen everything.  All of us boys wanted to be like him and join the marines when we grew up.

  His two favorite subjects were housebuilding and the construction of his own house.  You'd think we'd get tired of hearing about how he built his house on the beach, but he was just so full of interesting tidbits that we just laughed along with him (and learned quite a bit of housebuilding ourselves, along the way).  He had settled in Dingman's Cove when it was much smaller than it was today - just a meagre collection of tiny shacks, unlike today where it is a beautiful (if ravaged) resort town built right into the edge of the beach.  Charlie had first pitched his tent, he never tired of telling us, right out on the crooked spit of sand that jutted into the cove.  "Back then there were so few people that I could stay right on the beach for a week and never see a soul, living on fish from the stream and whatever other food I had with me," he'd chuckle brazenly.

  Then his eyes would start blazing and he'd lean forward and confide with excitement.  "But that was before, of course.  Before I found out about building my house... on... the... ROCK!" he would whisper with such intensity that you just couldn't help following along with fascination.  "I knew I couldn't build it just then, of course, but from that day on I began to plan my Rock House, as I call it."  We knew the story, but it never lost its beauty.  Besides, we had all caught the same vision.

  "That was long before the Society of Rock-House Builders, of course," he would modestly say.  Indeed, not every town could boast that in it lived a man who had not only started a national society, but had even written two books on rock-house building.  Charlie was an amazing man, and everyone knew it.  "In fact, back then about the only piece of information on rock-house building was this little pamphlet - " he would gaze up at the dingy yellowed paper framed in lovely mahogany on the wall behind the counter.  Once in a while he would take it down to show some particularly interested visitor.  "And here you can see," he'd say in almost an entranced whisper, "is the autograph of the man who gave this to me - the incredible Dr. Holmes himself."

  We knew the story.  Indeed, it was an amazing story.  After Dr. Holmes (who actually owned a rock house himself) had given Charlie the rock-house pamphlet, describing why it is a good idea to build one's house on the rock rather than on the sand to avoid hurricane flooding, Charlie had taken action immediately.  He had first built a small one-room cabin on the beach to provide a safe home for the booklet.  Then he had begun construction on his temporary beach home and warehouse, which would allow him a good location from which to construct his ineffable Rock House.  He ordered telescopes so that he could inspect the mountains just inland of Dingman's Cove, and pick out just the perfect spot for his house.  He began collecting rocks, so that he would know more about how to build the foundation on different types of rock.  He began telling the other folks in town about the advantages of living farther inland on the mountains, and several of them began to get seriously interested in building rock homes too.

  He began holding meetings of like-minded rock-home enthusiasts, and together they would brainstorm and come up with blueprints of safe and beautiful rock houses.  Not only rock-home builders were invited to his house, of course.  Many was the town barbeque that I attended at his lavish beach home.  We would sing songs about building houses on the rock, and tell stories about rock homes.  We'd build models of rock homes, and we'd have rock-drilling competitions at the shoreline where a dozen of the doughtiest men of the town would strain and sweat to see who could drill through their rock first.  We'd have accountability sessions where we'd ask each other how we were coming on our preparations to build our rock homes.  And through it all there would be Charlie with his stories, always telling stories - such exotic and wonderful stories as would make us lie on the comfortable sand and hear the peaceful surf and dream of living in the mountains.

  And so passed my childhood and my young adulthood, and the town grew, and my children grew, and the rock-house building fervor grew, and the sun shone, and there was not another place in the world so wonderful to live as Dingman's Cove.

  The day the man came from the weather service (or so he claimed) was the beginning of the end of our happiness.  He drove up in a little rusty foreign jeep and told everyone rudely that we had to leave the town.  "A hurricane is coming," he grated.  "Storm surge, torrential rain, floods, rip currents, potential waterspouts, the works.  It will come fast. Everyone must move to the mountains immediately."  Even though the weatherman claimed to be from the same university as the great Dr. Holmes, everyone in the town was rather upset.  Billy stomped his foot and twanged his suspenders.  "I didn't work fifty years on my beach house to run away and leave everything behind just because a raincloud swings by!" he puffed.   Everyone looked to Charlie as he sauntered up.  "Right you are, my good weatherman!" rumbled Charlie.  "However, I bet you didn't know that you've come to the rock-house building capital of the nation!  Why in this town I've bet you've got more people who believe in rock-solid house building techniques than anywhere else in the whole world!"  Charlie beamed at us all. "I hope so," the visitor had muttered before getting back into his jeep and sputtering away.

  The whole town talked about the visit from the weatherman.  At first everyone was inclined to complain about his intolerance and insistence, but gradually people began to speak better of him.  "After all, he agrees with us that rock homes are the best defense against hurricanes," said Hilda.  Charlie put our feelings into words.  "I think that we should consider his message as an encouragement to start making preparations to start building our rock houses sooner, rather than later."  Everyone agreed.

  If only we had known the unfortunate turn of events which was to occur!  We all went to sleep that night, peaceful, content, and secure in our expertise.  Before I went to bed I looked out the window and saw the peak of Charlie's house, softly lit at the end of our street.  It was a beautiful sight.

  I woke up in the middle of the night to a raging thunderstorm.  I listened to the moaning wind, and realized I had never heard any wind make that sort of sound.  The next thing I knew, I was not only hearing the wind but feeling it.  The windows had broken.  I scarcely had time to fling myself out of bed before our roof began to make noises like popcorn popping.  I hurriedly got my wife and kids together and we looked out the front door.  The porch light wouldn't turn on, but there was no mistaking the ocean frothing at our doorstep.  I couldn't believe it. Our house was one of the farthest from the shore in Dingman's Cove - could it be that the closer beach houses were actually engulfed?  I looked down the street at Charlie's house.  It was gone.

  That was a terrible night.  I must be thankful that I did not lose my family, as did many in the town.  The water flooded my house, but didn't take it away.  By two days the howling winds and crashing surf had retreated, and I walked through the wreckage on what used to be my street to see what was happening in the rest of the town.  A massive rip current had completely swept away Charlie's beach house along with several other houses.  None of the other houses in town had escaped severe damage.  Over the next year those of us who remained began to clean up Dingman's Cove (now more like a Dingman's Gulch).

  We never saw Charlie again.  But we remembered him, his bright face, his friendly smile, his practical handyman skills, and especially his deep wisdom.  Even before we began to rebuild our beach houses in Dingman's Cove, we had planned and laid a foundation for a small memorial to Charlie - a cottage with a rock porch, a little rock plaque on the front door, a slate roof, and solid rock siding, right on the spit of sand where he had pitched his original tent.

  I know that's where he would have wanted it.

   

   

   

  • 9:13 pm
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