Camille and the Cottage

I decided just this Tuesday to finally move out of the old cottage and into the nice, new apartment that my son so graciously offered up.  There are many feelings that I don't care to dwell on right now, and many are purposefully swirling around and through the resolve that I have truly come to.  “No, truly,” I say as I fumble for the keys in the deep pockets of my slacks.  I have spent too long dwelling here after I should have left.  My hands shake, but of course I pay little notice, as this is no new ailment of mine.  “Where are they?” I mumble haltingly, and I can almost hear Captain Josiah laughing through the window of his newly-built beach house across the street.  He's so bored, having been finally forced to retire from his first and only love, the U.S. Navy, that his main excitement is achieved through basely spying on the neighbors.  He's still too young for that sort of activity.  “You just wait, Captain,” I mutter.  “No doubt you're next.”  The keys found at last, I lock the door, demonstrating to myself this resolve I have only so recently attained.  “No really, I plan to follow through with this decision.”  I walk down to the waiting mini-van towards my son who assists me into the back seat.  I look one last time at the cottage, glance at the realtor's glamor shot staring back at me from the sign in the front yard, and turn away.  My son loads my two bags of clothes and pictures and we are off.  I do not look back.

I bought that cottage in 1953 when my wife and I were barely in our thirties.  Our son was very young and our daughters had yet to be born.  The war had been a difficult experience for a young married man,  but by '53, I had developed my business and had achieved some small level of success.  Enough to afford a one-thousand square foot cottage less than a mile away from the ocean complete with the sounds of seagulls and the smell of the coast.  The American dream arrived and was right there in front of us in a town we fell in love with for its simple, Mississippi Gulf Coast charm.  We drove every weekend from Jackson, come hell or high water, and felt that we were truly part of the personality of that small town.  And yes, high water came more frequently than hell, and there were times when our weekend trips became renovation projects.  I remember Camille in 1969 most clearly because we drove down there in a panic as soon as the roads were clear.  The kids were crying, but we had planned ahead and carried as much fresh water and canned food as our utility trailer could handle.  Our neighbors made good use of that food and water to go along with all that fish they were frying in large quantities.  Everyone down there had lots of frozen speckled trout and redfish that were gradually thawing since their freezers didn't work without electricity!  It was a good time, in a sense, but it was tempered by the thoughts of the hundreds of folks who were taken by the storm and who would have no second chance.  It took us two years to make the cottage habitable again, but that didn't stop us from driving down and working on it every weekend.

In all those years between '53 and now, that cottage was involved in so many memories.  So many family board games which were played religiously after the evening meal.  So many fishing trips out to Cat Island or down the coast to the Louisiana marsh.  One time my son hooked a redfish so large, it nearly pulled him out of the boat.  Then there was the duck hunting trip near Raccoon Island in Louisiana when our dear retriever Alf was nearly pulled under by a gator that had grown large in the brackish marsh waters.  That was one of John's bravest moments, maneuvering the boat as closely as possible to where Alf was in the water and then, without thinking, wildly beating on the alligator's head and body with our pushpole.  Alf, once the gator was distracted, nearly flew out of the water into the boat, and wouldn't retrieve any more ducks that trip.  We went sailing through this same area a few years later in the 26 foot cruiser we bought second hand from an old man in Pearlington, but we saw no alligators. 

That sailboat was truly a dream to us.  We could load the whole family -- our teenage son and two daughters -- and easily sail away on overnight trips.  All of the kids learned to love the art of sailing, one of the few pleasant skills that I picked up from my wartime years in the Navy.  We always enjoyed taking our little sloop down past the Mississippi River gulf outlet to Barataria Bay and Grand Isle.  Fishing there was good and there were so many interesting places to explore.  Just up and down the big river alone there were countless little precarious fishing villages on stilts in the middle of the marshland.  A lot of those families had lived in those villages since the time their families came over to Louisiana from the Canary Islands.  They were wonderful people with an uncanny knowledge of the bays and the weather, and they sure could cook!  Now that I'm an old man and unable to go there by boat, I frequently wonder which of those villages are still there and if any of their sons are still baymen and oystermen.

When Camille hit, John was 18 and in his freshman year at Mississippi State.  He came down to work on the cottage with us on weekends when he could get away, and we were grateful for his help.  Neighbors pitched in and helped each other fix up their houses.  Those who's houses survived helped those who lost houses.  Locals helped out those of us who came down for the weekend.  The Mississippi Gulf Coast became a community, and we remembered that feeling for years afterwards.  There were lots of things that changed on the Gulf Coast after Camille and her memories lingered in the minds of my generation.  The next generation had a short memory, however, and forgot most of the lessons learned.  Land was redeveloped and sold to folks who had not yet acquired respect for Camille and her progeny.  Soon, houses sprung up in the zone between where our cottage sat and the ocean – the zone that had been totally wiped clean by Camille.  Now that area again looks like it has been scraped clean by a giant bulldozer, but just like last time, there are already signs of progress and the foolishness of rebuilding things that the ocean will just rise up and claim again.  I offer my best hopes and wishes for these people, these Captain Josiahs and others like him.

So now I drive away from my little home that has entwined itself in my and my family's lives.  My son looks in the rear view mirror and must see something in my face, because he is compassionate.  “Don't worry, Dad.  Things will be so much better now.  Maybe the new owners will be able to fix it up again just as you did after Camille.”  I reflect for a moment and am tempted to despair at the unfairness of it all.  I know, however, that nature and weather do not and can not play fair – not as we understand the word to mean at least.  Plus, I know that after living for the last few months as an old man in a nearly destroyed cottage, that it is for the best.  So onward I drive to the last phase of my life, but one with hot water, clean floors and walls, and a functioning roof that will keep out the elements. 
“I know, son.  It's time to move forward.”