To Ogunquit

What we remember is all we know. This is what I remembered one day driving to Ogunquit.

The smells were a mixture of new leather seats baking and fresh air rolling in over the Yorks. I breathed deep, gripping the wheel tightly as if I might become intoxicated. Looking up through the open sunroof, I moved my face around using the rear view mirror to assure the maximum opportunity to soak up each ray. As I made my way up winding Route 1A past the old white church in York Harbor center, I thought how much my Granddad loved roads just like these that went through, not around, each precious town. He was why I loved them, too.

Granddad knew how to travel. Being on the road with him meant understanding that the getting there part was most important. Careful preparation and planning freed us up to wander, adventurers on a patient path to a destination that would be there when we arrived. "We" were my grandfather, my grandmother, and me. Perched on her lap, in a car without lap belts, I braced both hands on the red dash as we soared through the countryside. And soar is exactly what I imagined we were doing. Granddad and I had this "understanding" that our convertible Buick Electra 225 was special. Its protracted fins emerged wing-like from its elegantly aerodynamic white body, ending in bright red cones suggestive of rocket engines. I just knew the car could fly. With our top down and the wind whipping around my ears, I imagined what flying must be like. Gripping the dash more tightly, I would lean forward towards the sloping windshield, peering up through the bright blue tinted line across its top, staring straight into the brilliant afternoon sun. I felt my grandmother's arms around me, securing me, and pulling me back a little. I turned around and peered into her piercing eyes, underneath that perfect hair, held in place with a scarf that nicely complimented her summer dress.

Grandmother was from that period when you knew a woman by her ability to effectively accessorize, to have the right meal steaming when it was time to eat, and to maintain her home's tasteful décor impeccably neat. She was the perfect compliment to Granddad's well-honed manliness. He could work on his own car, play golf, lead a union meeting, and converse in a friendly, assured manner with perfect strangers that had you believing they had grown up together. There was nothing forced about either. They never played these roles. They really were these people.

I pulled into a Mobil Station to fill up one last time before hitting Ogunquit. This time I remembered the little arrow above the gas gauge pointing right with the words "Fuel Door" stenciled above, reminding me to pull up to the left of the pump. After swiping my speed pass, I engaged the catch on the pump handle, letting the gas flow while I stretched and took a look around. Though this was the busiest time of the year, this was not the road of choice, so traffic was light. Down to the left I could make out where a side road dipped down to the beach, revealing a narrow vertical rectangle of ocean. The main road curved off to the left on its way to the York Harbor Inn, just around the corner. Two years ago we celebrated my older girls' twelfth birthday there with a buttery lobster feast for all. We had a great time at lunch, followed by a walk down the street to that lane leading to the beach. The balance of the afternoon was spent wandering along the waterline, searching for shells, occasionally dashing into the surf up to our knees. I enjoyed the sun and the water sounds, as I always do. But I walked the beach with my cell phone flipped open, chatting with the office while I watched the girls play, rather than walking hand-in-hand with my wife.

The handle catch snapped closed. Tank full. Time to move on. No rush, really, but there was an open-air hot tub with an ocean view at the end of this drive, followed by a walk along the Marginal Way under the stars. It was nice to be heading towards something, not fleeing from something.

My grandparents would come over for dinner. Afterwards, my brothers and I were sent to bed. Sometime later, the grandparents would walk down from our house, past the gas lamp that lit the slowly curving steps. Slipping into the Buick, they would drive off without a word, somehow knowing about the boy in his pajamas hiding in the backseat. The Buick was my getaway car. Left behind was the madness of Mom and Dad. Before the car had turned around to head out of the culdesac that was our end of Alberta Street, they would be at it already: more drinking, more fighting.

If lucky, my grandparents would let me stay all weekend.

Often those weekends became impromptu trips. We would cross the Blue Ridge and meander through the Shenandoah Valley, journeying back through time as we drove. To live in Virginia is to be near a battlefield. The historic struggles for "liberty" or "states rights" replaced the battles back in Springfield. One year we took in the New Market Battlefield Center, where Grandmother and I fought the Civil War all over again. There, back in 1864, a mixed lot of veterans, militia, and boys from the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington beat back the invading army of Major General Franz Sigel. It was one of the countless pyrrhic victories on the South's march to ruin. Later that same year, Sigel's replacement, "Bloody Dave" Hunter put the farms of the Valley to the torch. Granddad laughed as Grandmother and I left the darkened slide show theatre, cursing the hated Yankees for what they had done. He had the perspective of the civil war historian. She and I were purely partisans, constantly refighting a long finished war.

That evening, like so many, found us settled into the Belle Meade motel in Harrisonburg. Today it is a flaking shadow of its once stately plantation-style hospitality. They would sit in white wrought iron lawn chairs, sipping a scotch, watching the sun set over the mountains while I played with Lego spaceships on the shuffle board court. They did not seem to need to talk, just sat and listened to the nighttime summer sounds, punctuated now and again by a passing truck bringing the Valley's product to market. I picked up on their silence and left them alone.

Coming to a fork in the road, I eased the Sable to the left, moving temporarily away from the ocean, moving through the summer residences that dotted the drive from York Harbor to Perkins Cove, just below Ogunquit. Music was missing. I punched on POWER, tapped CD, then SEEK, selecting The Joy of Bernstein, track 1. Gently at first, then rising to a majestic crescendo, the strains of Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man blared through the six speakers out into the surrounding air. Vacation with soundtrack, my idea of fun.

On weekends, my Granddad would sit up with me late at night just listening to one record after another. At some point, he stopped putting them on for me and I started putting them on for him. They were not just albums, they were album collections, courtesy of the Reader's Digest Company of Pleasantville, New York. My favorite was Pops Festival, Arthur Fielder conducting the Boston Pops in pieces like Ferde Grofe's Grand Canyon Suite and Richard Roger's Victory at Sea. We also had The Kings of Swing, Down Memory Lane, and Hear Them Again, all filled with the popular music of the Thirties, Forties, and early Fifties. Granddad sat in his chair in the living room. I sat on the floor in front of the fireplace.

Do you hear that? he asked, as the trumpet solo in A String of Pearls unfolded. I turned to look and all I could see was his outline supporting his lit cigarette as it swung with the beat.

"It's beautiful."

I realized I had said it out loud. Bernstein was now conducting his own work, the sparkling geometries of On the Town. Slowing down, I fell into line waiting to turn onto Shore Avenue in Perkins Cove. I had now arrived in Tourist Central. The street was clogged with cars and lined with strollers going into or out of the many upscale shops, going down to or coming back from their evening meal by the sea.

Granddad hated crowds. He always seemed to find the back road that avoided the traffic. In choosing where we traveled, he made sure we were where everyone else wasn't. He would never have gone to a seaside resort in the summer. We went to the mountains. We went to quiet places. We sat on the balcony of Hawk's Nest Lodge, listening to the clanking of the coal train in the gorge far below that wound its way along the New River. Before dinner and after dinner, Granddad sat. Looking back, I wonder what he was thinking, cigarette in one hand, cradling his scotch in the other, head cocked back a little, not looking at any particular thing. I don't know. He didn't say.

Coming up on the right was The Anchorage, my home away from home. Turning into the lot, I slid into the spot in front of the office marked:

REGISTRATION

Passing through the white French doors into the office, I ignored the temptations proffered by the candy and Coke machines to my left and walked up to the desk where I checked to see if my room was ready.

It was. As I signed the credit card slip approving the pre-paid three-night stay, I remembered all the times when Granddad checked in. He invariably took me with him. I felt so big, looking up at the man or woman behind the desk, waiting for Granddad to hand me the key. My role was clear. First, take the key, run ahead of Granddad, find the room, open the door and make the first exploration of our lodgings. Then, hurry back to my Grandmother, waiting in the car to receive my report on all the "cool stuff" I had surveyed en route, as well as my verdict on the room itself. She was always sitting waiting in the car. Grandmother did not drive. I believe she is the only adult I have ever been close to that did not. For her it seemed fitting, a woman who always had a man to drive her about, to open the door for her when it was time to step out. This did not mean she was dependent. The world she grew up in was one where if it was too far to walk, you took the trolley. Where the trolley track stopped, the train took you on to the next town.

Granddad's family lived along the line headed north from Huntington, up into the country. During summers, when he was little, he would board the train to his Uncle's farm in sight of his mother. Along the way, the stationmasters, other uncles, would check on little William at each stop. Family was everywhere back then.

I took the key to my room, located on the right hand side of the compound. Making my way up the stairs with only my one bag, I felt lucky that this last minute trip had been blessed by a last minute cancellation, otherwise no oceanfront room. Arriving on the second floor, I looked out over the rail, slowly panning out past the parking spaces, over the tastefully arranged flowers, then the famous Marginal Way, and finally out over the Ogunquit River merging seamlessly at high tide into the Atlantic.

My first trip to New England was with mom, dad, my brothers and I back in '68, the year when the whole world seemed crazy to me. This trip, though planned, somehow resulted one night in we five not having a place to stay. Dad drove and drove, opting to wait dinner until we found lodging. We three boys got hungrier and crankier with each successive "No Vacancy" sign. Later, we arrived at some place we did not want to be. I remember thinking it could not get much worse, so different from the trips with my grandparents.

The room had two double beds. I sat on the one closest to the little bathroom, opposite the TV. In its reflection, I saw me staring at nothing in particular. For the first time that day, I knew I was alone. That was why I was here, to be alone, or more specifically to be okay alone. "Go to Ogunquit," I had said to myself, thinking how often Granddad had taken us to some place beautiful just when life started to feel unbearable.

Granddad would bring in our luggage, making sure we had all we needed to settle in before he settled down. By around '70, we meant my brothers, as well as my grandmother and I. This had become the family, grand parents with three young boys. Later, after she died, it was just him there for us, making dinner, cleaning house, driving us about the Northern Virginia suburbs, watching football games, working six nights a week until he was nearly seventy. He did not say much to me or to my brothers. He just was "Granddad." That was enough for me. Back when I did not understand why I always felt unsafe, his silent care said all.

Sitting outside my room on the balcony after evening fell, I closed my eyes and reveled in the sound and smell of the ocean. I felt a momentary pang, sensing the lack: no girls on my lap, or woman in my arms, no cigarette in my mouth, no scotch in my hands. Drawn in my mind to the place where I am always alone, I knew it would never be okay. I would never be okay.

Somewhere in there, I saw the Buick with its top down, Granddad at the wheel, whisking me along in its red leather seat to a place, like…Ogunquit.

Eyes still shut, I took a very deep breath, and the feeling passed.

Opening my eyes, I saw clearly the winding road of the Milky Way sloping out over the endless ocean.

"God, I love it here," I said aloud.