Jottings from Jonah

When I was a wee slip of a lad, my parents rented a bungalow in Atlantic Highlands quite near to the one my grandparents (Mom's Mom and Dad) rented every year. 

All the bungalows were built on stilts made of concrete blocks with plenty of room for kids like me to crawl around underneath and explore. Not that there was ever a great deal of adventure to be found under the bungalow (sounds like the title of a Hardy Boys' Book, doesn't it?).

I'd be on the beach every day, most often with my grandfather (I just realized he had many grandchildren, but I was his first grandson). We'd dig in the sand on the beach, trying to reach China (and never quite getting there). Other times, we'd walk along the water's edge and turn horseshoe crabs over; I was terrified of them. 

We'd spend hours where the water met the sand, tracking the boats, large and small, and on too many occasions, at his insistence and instigation, we'd wave to the people in Europe, whom he assured me were standing on a beach similar to ours and waving back. I was never able to look hard enough to see them, but he assured me he could and they were, and that was good enough for me. 

Sometimes on weekends, my father would take me along when he went fishing off the pier at the end of the beach, and I watched in wonder as he bought a small cardboard box of frozen bait, killies, that, as the day progressed and the temperatures climbed, thawed and became tiny, living fish.

In recent decades, the only time I've been near/in the ocean is when my wife and I visit my brother, Adam, and his bride, Margaret, DTS. My brother thinks I go for the shore and the sea when I actually go to spend time with him, but no matter. 

Flip-flops and bathing suits, even if all I do is sit in a Tommy Bahama chair for hours on end, listen to the roar of the ocean, and watch the seagulls race up and down the wet sand. 

They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and perhaps because of this little knowledge, I may be able to avoid danger. Somewhere, W. C. Fields is nodding his head and smiling.
-bill kenny