Summer Flowers, A Wonderful Walk Along A Historic Beach And Boondockers Stopping By

It isn’t really summer without the great show of summer flowers blooming all along. We both like to gather wild flowers and stick them in a vase, much to our delight and visitors. It is the wild beauty of these flowers, moving their colorful light heads in the breeze off the sea, which makes our thoughts back in time to summers long gone. We were kids and it was some year early in the sixties, that my parents decided to take a 2 week vacation not far from our town, but out of the way of every day’s hassle. We were camped in a white home-made tent behind the dike. All around us was a blooming meadow. We gathered flowers and brought them “home'” to mother who put them in a jam jar on the rickety camp table we had. Our parents were so young – much younger than we are now. Behind the dike was the oh-so-wonderful beach. We had no boat at the time, but we built sand castles, little harbours near by the surf, where we let our little plastic boats swim. It was paradise for sure. We never had any worries, the sky was blue and behind the campground were cows grazing in the fields. Just a memory now – and I wouldn’t want to be without.   One of these past evenings I took Molly and walked the beach along Friars Bay. It’s a beach on the bayside – not on the open ocean. Lots of driftwood here and all kind of stuff coming with the tides. We walked on and on and before we knew it we were just down below the famous Roosevelt Cottage. The cottage itself was visible between the trees. There was the porch where the Roosevelts once had been sitting. Eleanor had been standing on this porch with the big megaphone, calling out across the bay after F R A N K LI N, when he had forgotten to get home in time and was still on his sailboat the “Half Moon”.   It is said that this megaphone would carry her voice 1 mile across to Eastport. They sure didn’t need cell phones in those days. In fact they didn’t even have a landline in those days. Campobello had only one landline, and that was installed in the general store at Welshpool. Whenever there was a call for the Roosevelts, a messenger was sent to the cottage from where they (mostly Eleanor) got on a bicycle and biked a good mile up to the village to take the call. It was at this beach Franklin D. Roosevelt was carried across on a stretcher in 1921 when he had contracted a paralytic illness, which was thought to be Polio. Yup – those were different times. At about 4pm today our boondockers arrived. They are Sherry and Peter from the Florida panhandle. They are travelling in a might fine looking bigfoot truck camper pulling a little car behind. They are “Escapees” and like all the other Escapees we have met wonderful people. It didn’t take long until we were all seated on our porch talking about all our crazy camper adventures. We hope they will stay a few days. Bea and I agree that there is no better idea idea than letting boondockers stay on our property. Everybody is just so friendly. Thanks for stopping by boondockers!