At the Beach

Monday August 25, 2008
Smith Point Park CG
Fire Island, LI, NY

I shouldn’t share this secret, but hopefully you won’t remember it tomorrow anyway. At the very tip of Fire Island at the end of William Floyd Parkway, in a town called Shirley, Long Island, there is a lovely little spit of land with bay on one side and ocean on the other. It also has camping, although if you’re not a Suffolk County resident, you can’t reserve ahead of time, so it’s first-come, first-served for all of us outsiders.

We arrived on Sunday night, always a good time because that’s when the weekenders leave. We got a great spot, with views both ways and the most heavenly breezes. The only problem is, we were allowed just two nights. We have to leave on Tuesday. Obviously, that’s when the real people arrive. And it will be Labor Day Weekend, the last hurrah of the summer, so they definitely will be coming.

Our best hope is to get on line at six in the morning on Tuesday and hope that when the office opens at eight there will have been a cancellation and we will be first-come for the left-overs. Please sir, can I have some more?

I can’t believe that I’m going to get up that early and wait in line as if I were 16 again and hoping to get tickets for some rock ‘n roll group that will be dead by now. I mean literally dead. I just heard that Jay Black of Jay and the Americans is having a 70th birthday party. Holy good night, I thought he was still 19.

I watched one of those oldies concerts at some arena in New Jersey recently, on Channel 13, our PBS channel, and I swear I saw defibrillators at the end of every row. It was a sea of white hair, but they were on their feet, hand-jiving and hip-swiveling as if it were 1962. Good for our generation! We haven’t lost it yet. The medics can take the day off.

John and I have even promised ourselves that we will go bike riding this afternoon and explore the beach. First, however, we have to have our after-lunch nap. And then we’ll need to rest up after that. I don’t know. There may not be enough time. We’re going out for Chinese, and you know you don’t want to eat that food late in the evening or you’ll be too full to fall asleep at nine p.m.

Planning is everything.
Betty