Saturday, still, and I've survived Wicked Creepy Napkin Guy
and met the photographer whose pictures are amazing. I left my thesis partner, or, rather, allowed
her to leave first so she wouldn't see me take a different turn, and I am
heading north on route 1, away from home, away from Newburyport, and up toward
the New Hampshire coast.
As I cross the bridge, still in Massachusetts, I catch sight
of a sign that I think says STRIPPERS.
Nothing would surprise me -- I am in Salisbury, after all. Turns out it's STRIPERS, a restaurant. Recommendation: Change the name or make the sign
clearer. Further up the street I pass
KITTENS, which does not actually have baby cats, but it does have
STRIPPERS. Maybe Stripers and Kittens
can switch signs. Just a suggestion.
The radio station keeps slipping from one to another. I must be in a strange bandwidth because
suddenly I am listening to oldies. As I
pull up 1A and into Salisbury center, the strip that is still anchored by the
Discount House and Tripoli's Pizza, the oldies station is playing There's a summer plaaaaaace…. Today it
is barely in the 20's with wind chills in the single digits. If there is a summer place, it sure as hell
is not here. It's so damn cold up here
that even the salt marshes are frozen solid, as is a good portion of the Seabrook
inlet as I travel into New Hampshire.
I pull over at Hampton State Park to take pictures of the
impressive ice that is the parking lot.
Wish I had my skates with me. A
woman in high-heeled boots is, for some reason, walking the icy edge
and clinging to a fence for dear life. I
have absolutely no idea why she doesn't take a step sideways ten inches and put
her feet down on the tarred surface. I
guess that would make too much sense, and the woman is clearly insane. I pull up near her, laugh at her through my
windows, and continue north on 1A.
Driving along The Strip I realize that Hampton has
changed. A lot. And yet it has barely changed at all. There are new bath houses and rebuilt
buildings all along the shore-side of the road, the eastern side of sand that
opposes the boarded up western side of the street, the side that is lined with
decrepit shops and the aging Casino Ballroom.
I wonder how long it has been since this place was rebuilt for tourists
like this as I haven't driven through Hampton center in years. I always bypass the center and go straight to
North Beach or Jenness State Park.
A helicopter flies by, creating the illusion that summer is
here and he is patrolling the beach and giving a traffic report. Truth is that summer is not here and may not
be here forever. Based on the air temperatures
and the amount of sea ice there is up here, I'm starting to doubt if warm
weather will ever return. Exposure on a
day like today is intensely dangerous, and my hands and face freeze just
popping out of my warm car to take pictures, which I snap all the way up to The
Wall.
The Wall isn't exactly a wall, and it's not exactly not a
wall. It's a man-made concrete and
boulder barrier against the elements for the immediate neighborhood. At high tide most of the sandy beach
disappears, crashing the waves against the southern part of The Wall. The
northernmost part of The Wall remains a small sandy beach even at the highest
of tides. I stop to snap some pictures
and to grab a few beach rocks for myself and friends to remind us all that
someday, somewhere, summer is coming. I
also take a picture of our favorite parking space, #1913, because 13 is a good
number, the space is close to the meter, it's a short distance to the bath
house, this part of the beach never disappears at high tide, and it's so close
to the stairs and beach access that we can be on the sand and sitting down less
than one minute after shutting the car doors.
None of that trekking across broiling macadam and slugging through
scorching sand like at the state parks (cough … cough … Salisbury … cough…). This beach is just a parking space, a patch
of sand, then the ocean that stretches to another continent.
Heading home I avoid The Center of Hampton and go my usual
way, crisscrossing back to route 1 and cutting over by the nuclear power plant
to access the highway ramp at 107. I am
surprised at how backed up the traffic is, and it almost looks the same way it
does on a beach day. It is noon time,
and the Hampton church bells are ringing.
There is a bottleneck of people like me who decide that Arctic
conditions and high tide make for sensible coastal viewing. So many cars roll down route 1 that the sheer
volume of us sets a strange backdrop as we pass a large pond with one lone
hockey skater, gliding faster and farther than seems safe.
I have seen the last of the beach for today. I drive home, content with my progress at the
thesis table and also with the rejuvenating effect my side-trip has had on me,
and completely satisfied that we finally have one sunny, albeit very cold but
sunny still, day. As I back into my
driveway, I notice that the radio has long-since stopped playing games with the
stations and is still pulsing out oldies radio.
Very old. So old that Louis
Armstrong's voice and trumpet come through:
Life can be so sweet, on the sunny
side of the street…
