The Island

In the summers when I was little, my family would go to my Grandparents' cabin on Whidbey Island. Everyone in my family referred to it as simply "the Island", which to some people would conjure images of the tropics, palm trees and boat drinks. For me, it brings back memories of outhouses, carpenter ants and seaweed.

My Grandpa bought the cabin in the early 60s, before I was born. I think it had running water at some point, because there were faucets in the bathroom and kitchen and a toilet and a shower in the bathroom. As long as I could remember, though, we had used water from the well that had to be pumped old school into a bucket of water and then hauled up the steps to the bathroom.

The pump was outside in the front yard. It was John Deer green and rested on a platform. We had an old basin that we pumped the water into. Incidentally, during this time, my Mom liked to listen to Bob Dylan's greatest hits. My brother and I always got a chuckle about the line in "Subterranean Homesick Blues" where Bob mumbles, "And the pump don't work because the vandals took the handle"...insert rowdy harmonica here.

But back to the water situation...a lot of other people with cabins near us had running water. Our neighbors accros the path had running water and real carpet, not remnants like we had. They also had indoor plumbing. We had an old outhouse that we had commandeered from our neighbor, whose owner had died and left the house to fall into disrepair. After my Dad and Grandpa realized that the outhouse was there, my Dad whacked a trail through the blackberry bushes, and voila! A new outdoor latrine was available for us.

My Grandpa and my Dad were always making improvements to the cabin. The ripped up the flooring in the main room upstairs. So for a while, there were only beams with rows of pillowy pink insulation sticking through. We were firmly instructed not to walk on the insulation under any circumstances. My Grandpa accidentally didn't follow this piece of advice and fell through the floor to the kitchen downstairs. I wasn't there when this occurred, but he was ok. Things like this always happened at the Island.

During another summer, my Grandpa put the whole house up on jacks so that he could fix the foundation. Again, my brother and I were told never to go under the house, because the jacks were old and unstable and it could fall on us and squish us like dead termites.

When we weren't dodging the bullets of home improvement, we spent our time at the beach. The water in Puget Sound is cold as ice, but this didn't stop me from spending most of my waking hours splashing around up to my waist in the salt water. I would put on a life preserver and kick around or hang onto the back of the yellow rowboat as my Mom rowed by the pilings of the old dock. Once, a school of tiny fish swam under my stomach as I was holding onto the row boat. That totally freaked me out, so I steered clear of the pilings from then on.

The other great thing about staying at the cabin in the summer was that we got to have more junk food than usual, since, technically, we were on vacation. Each day, my brother and I were allowed to have ONE pop. We never got to have any type of soft drink at home, not even Kool Aid, so this was a big deal. However, it wasn't name brand pop, like Pepsi or Coke, but we took what we could get. My Dad favored the Cragmont store brand pop they used to carry at Safeway. They had flavors like Raspberry, Chocolate Mint, Lemon-Lime and my personal favorite, Dr. Skipper. Dr. Skipper was a rip-off of Dr. Pepper and had a picture of a tiny cartoon skipper on the can.

My favorite thing to do was to horde my pop until the end of the day. My brother would drink it as fast as humanly possible as soon as my Mom gave it to us. I would wait and then lord it over my brother as I drank it very slowly and told him how good it tasted. It was great fun.

Speaking of junk food, there was a salamander that lived in the wall next to the steps that led upstairs. He would would come out and sun himself in the afternoon. I named him "Ding Dong", like the hostess snack cake. I'm not sure why I chose that name, but it stuck.

The other thing that was really great about the cabin was our neighbor's dog, Tea. We had a Pekinese named Muffy, but she wasn't much fun to go swimming with. Tea was a chocolate lab and she was born to swim. Like all retrievers, she loved to fetch sticks from the water. When I ran out of sticks, I would put a pile of rocks on my air mattress and throw them. Then I would hold onto her collar as she chased the splashes where the rocks plopped down into the water. It was fun for both of us, but I think this game loosened her collar. Because one day, I found out from the neighbor kids that Tea's collar had come off. I felt horrible and later found it washed up in the high tide, but they didn't want it anymore.

Our neighbors hated us. My grandpa and our neighbor, I'll call him Mr. Cranky, didn't like each other at all. They would argue over the property line and where we could park our cars. Mr. Cranky liked to threaten to build a tall outbuilding on the land in front of the cabin, which would block our view of the water. One afternoon, I went back to the cabin to grab my green boots, and as I was looking for them, I noticed my grandpa and Mr. Cranky shouting at the top of their lungs on the path in front of the cabin. I had heard my grandpa say things like "damn" and "hell", but he was using the "s" word and the "f" word like a long haul truck driver! I was shocked! I waited until their heated discussion died down and snuck back down to the beach so they wouldn't notice me. Mr. Cranky scared me.

The green boots that I had gone back for were part of my swimming ensemble. I liked to wear my blue bathing suit with the ruffle over the shoulder, a t-shirt and my green rain boots. The boots protected my feet from the barnacles on the rocks, which was especially important when the tide was out. Barnacles are like tiny razors and are also very slippery - not a good combination.

Speaking of barnacles, the other reason my brother is still annoyed with me to this day, is because I told him that processed cheese came from barnacles. Let me clarify...when you smash a barnacle, it has orangey goo inside that reminded me of the plastic-y cheese my Grandma always had at her house. I told my brother that every night big barnacle barges would come and harvest the goo from inside the barnacles and process it to make Kraft Singles. He bought this hook, line and sinker - no pun intended. He was pretty upset with me when he found out the truth.

My grandparents kept the cabin until they passed away a few years ago. My aunt and uncle maintained it for a while, but eventually sold it to a couple from Eastern Washington. I wasn't that upset, because even though I had gone back a few times as an adult, it wasn't the same. It seemed dirty and inconvenient with no running water. There were spiders everywhere and I realized that the parking lot for all the cabins was practically right in our front yard. It was the right time to move on. But the Island will always have a special place in my memory.

About a year ago, I went to the coast with some friends. When we got to the beach, even though it was February, I took off my shoes and socks and rolled up my jeans. Then I ran out into the waves after their dog, Chewy. I had the same feeling of freedom that I had when I was little at the cabin. All I was missing was my green boots.