Some might call these skiffs. Some might call them dories. Still others lacking nautical history and knowledge, like myself, might just call them rowboats. They were scattered about at varies locations on the shore of Willard Beach the other day. Mom would often pack our creme and red Chevy station wagon with us and our pals and head here on sweltering July days. While most of my friends loved to go to various lakes in the area, her wagon always set a course for the ocean. The beach is small confined on the left by the large rocks and the old Fort Preble and on the far right by the abandoned fishing shacks sitting high on a bluff. The water here was always freezing cold, as I remember, but heck it was the beach; it was wicked hot and there were a million things to do and explore with your friends. And that all usually happened before Mom opened the cooler and dragged out her egg salad sandwiches. They were a staple of our sojourns to the beach, but with one gust of wind, we were all crunching away with our sand-crusted meal. One question still lingers... Mom, with so many other of your culinary delights that you could put together for a day at the ocean, why the egg salad? For pete sakes, egg salad? Maybe my sisters or Capt. Billy have the answer to this one. My brother? Nope... PB&J. I'm baffled!
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Capt. Billy
Some might call these skiffs. Some might call them dories. Still others lacking nautical history and knowledge, like myself, might just call them rowboats. They were scattered about at varies locations on the shore of Willard Beach the other day. Mom would often pack our creme and red Chevy station wagon with us and our pals and head here on sweltering July days. While most of my friends loved to go to various lakes in the area, her wagon always set a course for the ocean. The beach is small confined on the left by the large rocks and the old Fort Preble and on the far right by the abandoned fishing shacks sitting high on a bluff. The water here was always freezing cold, as I remember, but heck it was the beach; it was wicked hot and there were a million things to do and explore with your friends. And that all usually happened before Mom opened the cooler and dragged out her egg salad sandwiches. They were a staple of our sojourns to the beach, but with one gust of wind, we were all crunching away with our sand-crusted meal. One question still lingers... Mom, with so many other of your culinary delights that you could put together for a day at the ocean, why the egg salad? For pete sakes, egg salad? Maybe my sisters or Capt. Billy have the answer to this one. My brother? Nope... PB&J. I'm baffled!
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In Pemaquid I first learned the word skiff, at the Carpenter's Boatshop.
ReplyDeleteRound our skiff be God’s aboutness,
Ere she try the depth of sea,
Seashell frail for all her stoutness,
Unless thou her helmsman be.
-- Old Scottish prayer
http://www.carpentersboatshop.org/Publications/CBSBrochure.pdf
I don't know Birdman, the idea of munching egg sandwiches, sitting rugged up on a windy beach, sounds kind of cool to me, guess it must be a Mum thing!! Love the picture by the way!!
ReplyDeleteWe call them 'annexes' and we don't row them, we 'godille' them. Brings me straight back to my own childhood holiday memories munching baguette with rillettes and garlic sausage.
ReplyDeleteI have similar questions for my Mom when we meet again in heaven. Mom, did you really like baloney?
ReplyDeleteLobe the shot. Beats red, yellow (orange) and green bell pepper shots anyday.
ReplyDeleteGreat photo. Love the colors and composition. It is beach time here too...going out tomorrow when it is going to be hot and humid.
ReplyDeleteGlad you had an opportunity to experience the Erie Canal. Where were you when you lived here?
Was it very long ago?
moms like god work in mysterious ways :)
ReplyDeleteMy mother made us kids egg salad quite often too. Food and life are so different now.
ReplyDeleteWhatever the food, it wouldn't be a beach picnic without the crunch of sand.
ReplyDeleteYep, egg salad would be questionable after a few hours in the heat. But, no one died, right? :)
ReplyDeleteLove the colorful "rowboat" pics.
I remember eating rice balls and boiled eggs my mom made us at the beach. What is with the eggs? :D
ReplyDeleteEgg salad sandwiches sounds yummy to me. My mom was much more likely to pack sandwiches made of pickle & pimento loaf. Remember that stuff?
ReplyDeleteMy Mum made a great egg salad sandwich when I was a kid! I could go for one right now.
ReplyDeleteWell you helped me conjur up a memory. We didnt' live near the shore but each summer a long hot car trip to and from B'h'am to Little Rock where my grandparents lived. Our cooler always had ham sandwiches w/o crust with mustard and mayo wrapped in wax paper, stuffed (deviled) eggs and cold Cokes in the little glass bottles. Fine stuff. I was always ensconced in the back seat with pillow, quilt for my "bed". It was good to be the Queen on those road trips. I had already polished off one sandwich before we got to Tupelo!
ReplyDeleteI love your overturned rowboats and I did spot a kayak. My son in law paddled for a long time. V
A very nice and colorful picture today for a mid-summer weekend, Birdman. My mother was a dreadful cook. Fortunately, she spared us egg salad sandwiches, which I have never liked. But, like you, my childhood memories include many days at the beach in Ipswich, Gloucester, Essex and Manchester. Some of that skin damage my dermatologist keeps burning off started right there.
ReplyDeleteEating sand crusted egg salad sandwiches is a rite of passage, don't you know? ... And your Mom wanted to make sure you had a normal childhood! Enjoy your weekend!
ReplyDeleteDifferent sandwiches and sand, but the crunching was there here either!
ReplyDeletesounds like the perfect place to me, even crunching egg sandwiches ... love that photo!
ReplyDeleteLove those rowboats . . .and as for egg salad sandwiches - when I was 12 and in charge of my brothers and cousins for a week during the day, I made them egg salad sandwiches every day, and they have never let me forget it.
ReplyDeleteAt the risk of having egg of my face, I would have been thrilled to have my mom make me an egg salad sandwich and take me to the beach to eat it. Egg salad is comfort food to me. It's cheap and goes a long way. Maybe even longer than pb&j. It could have been nothing more than good economics.
ReplyDeleteLovely and colorful picture of the rowboats!
ReplyDeleteSometimes when I look back I now crave for some of the awful things my mom cooked for me, though I complained when she served it.
Cruise Pictures
Quit complaining, Birdman...how lucky you were to have a mother who enjoyed the sea and took you and others there. She sounds like a great person!!
ReplyDeletePS. I know you weren't really complaining!
ReplyDeleteNow first of all you'll get no sympathy from me about these so-called blistering Maine summers. Having visited your state in five of the last dozen or so summers (mostly for camera camp in Rockport), I can attest that the summers are heavenly compared to out here in the middle. But anyway, it's a very good photo. Why give a name like that to a rowboat except as a self-depreciating joke?
ReplyDeleteI love your post, as well as all the memories it dredged up for your readers. The comments make great reading, especially as a survey of beach food around the world. We lived a block from the ocean in San Francisco when I was a child. It always seemed to be cold there in the fog, so we had an open fire (surely not allowed now) on the sand and cooked gritty hot dogs. I can only hope that today's kids are making such memories, but I suspect that, to many of them, the idea of "outdoors" is a foreign one.
ReplyDeleteI just mashed up some egg salad in your honor.
ReplyDeleteAnd what, pray tell, is wrong with egg salad sandwiches? LOL! When we were on the road, our mother gave us chocolate on baguette. You didn't hear me complain! And to me those are rowboats... cool colorful rowboats.
ReplyDelete