Advice from a small-town girl

Today is Labor Day, so of course I’ve spent it laboring.

I’ve moved a few hundred bolts of fabric.

Some of them more than once, since I don’t really have a plan.

Now I’m tired.

Even though it’s a holiday, as long as I was at the shop, I plugged in the “OPEN” sign, and a few people stopped in. One was a regular customer from the Harrington-Davenport area. Another was a woman with local connections who was on her way home to the west side. Just taking the scenic route. And finally, two couples from Iowa came in. They had been on the road in their RVs since the twelfth of July, and would not be getting home until just before Thanksgiving. From here they were headed to the coast. All the way to the ocean.

The last time I saw the ocean, it was from the deck of a cruise ship, over a year ago. That was pretty cool, but not quite the same as walking along the beach with your bare feet in the cold salty remains of ocean breakers.

When I was a kid, we used to go camping at the beach nearly every year. We would travel along the Washington side of the Columbia Gorge (it had tunnels!), through Camas (which was pretty stinky back then) and Ilwaco, and on out to a campground on Cape Disappointment called Beard’s Hollow. The campground, as I remember it, was set in a wooded area, but was within an easy walk to the beach.

We usually went in June, after school was out but before haying and harvest began. It was chill and damp in the mornings but usually lovely during the long days.

I still remember driving north to Long Beach in the dark of early morning to dig razor clams. I remember how tasty they were when we had them for supper. And how even tastier they were later in the year when they found their way into Mom’s clam chowder.

I remember leaving my really, really cute new red plaid tennis shoes at the beach, only remembering them after the tide had carried them away.

I remember the smell of bacon frying on the camp stove and the indescribable fragrance when evergreen boughs met the sharp scent of the sea.

I remember picking up every seashell I saw, whether whole or broken, pretty or not. Each one seemed a miracle to me. A treasure.

I remember begging my parents to buy me virtually everything I saw in the touristy towns we passed through.

And I remember being absolutely awed by the mountains of oystershells to be seen in some of those same towns. I was horrified that there could be that many people out there who actually liked those icky things.

And, of course, because I was a kid, I remember the kid stuff. I often think that it probably wasn’t much of a vacation for my mother, who still had to cook, clean and make sure we didn’t kill each other. But it was vacation to me. Given the opportunity, I’d do it again.