As happens with life, I’m out of the loop these days, but I feel more in touch when I encounter readers or when they write to me because of common interests or a sense of connectivity.
Neil, a member of the houseboat crew when we used to go to Lake Cumberland, sent this about last week’s column: Your message today brought back many memories. I used to travel from Pleasantville, NY in Westchester County to Paramus, NJ every day, crossing the Tappan Zee bridge when I worked for HP. When you live on the East coast, you get caught up in the hassle of the commute, millions of people rushing to get somewhere and don’t take time to appreciate how beautiful that area is. More than once I was trapped on the Tappan Zee bridge for hours due to an accident and would see people getting out of their cars to pee because when you gotta go….you gotta go.
I shall remember the house at White Horse Beach as a sea house because it’s built right on the sand, about a hundred feet from the surf so that you’re always aware of the ocean. It’s a comfortable, immaculate place with a wrap-around deck, and an excellent kitchen that has better cooking equipment than ours. Its owner uses the upstairs on weekends. White Horse Beach is not crowded and is very clean. There are no radios blasting away, and the only sound other than the sibilance of the surf is the joyous cries of children as they run into the water and the complaints of the gulls.
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.
As I was walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway
I saw below me that golden valley
This land was made for you and me.
The above was written by Woody Guthrie in 1940 in reaction to Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America” that he considered complacent.
I believe that I have ownership in America. It irritates me when politicians — be they liberal or be they conservative — talk about how they’re going to take back America. America belongs to all of us, and I love to watch our people enjoying their land.
People start walking and jogging along the beach as soon as the sun rises. Bill encountered a man who was probing the sand with a pole with a cuplike device on its end. He was looking for sea-glass. Some pieces of glass worn smooth by the sea are lovely. Then on Sunday morning groups of family members or friends arrived to spend the day: men carrying coolers or small children on their shoulders, women unloading totes of snacks, towels and reading material, children dragging boogie-boards or leading dogs, others setting up umbrellas and beach chairs.
At last all was ready: The young people dashed into the surf while the grownups anointed themselves with lotion and lay supine under the warm sun, cooled by sea breezes and lulled by the surf-sound. . . Ah! . . .
One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth forever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.
All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.
In spite of what humans are doing to planet Earth and to one another, one can only hope that King Solomon’s beautiful words in The Old Testament’s “Ecclesiastes” hold true and that for generations to come, Americans will still be taking pleasure from the country that belongs to them. wclarke@comcast.net