Skip to main content

Chateau Christmas

 


When I was young, my father worked on the Governor’s staff. It was a hard job with long hours, but it did come with some perks. One of the perks was that occasionally he was able to take his family on vacation and stay at “the Chateau.” The Chateau was on the National Guard camp on the coast. I was told it was where the General stayed when he was in residence at the camp. The Chateau was a lovely log cabin design built in the 1930’s, but it was big. To my ten or eleven year-old eyes it was huge. I believe the arrangement was that a member of the Governor’s staff could schedule a stay there if it was available and only pay for a cleaning fee.

So, one Christmas we stayed there along with another family who were friends of ours. I don’t remember a lot of detail because this was like 50 years ago. I do remember the house: exposed logs of the walls, beautiful hardwood floors, and a huge rock fireplace. Santa would have no problem fitting in that fireplace. This was just the coolest place, full of secrets.

I remember that we went clamming for razor clams and got skunked (well not quite skunked. One member of our party came back with half a clam, having sliced it in two with the misguided plunge of his shovel. We were, none of us, expert clammers.) Other than the clamming, there was not a lot of playing at the beach. This being December, the weather was not conducive to beach frolicking. But there were games to be played, and food and conversation. One specific memory I have is that I got a Swiss army knife for Christmas. Somehow that day or the day after I managed to slice my finger pretty badly. My mother did not take the knife away. Back then, kids were supposed to survive childhood without safeties on. It also did not tarnish my love for that knife.

I have warm feelings when I think of our Christmas there, good times with our friends and just an affection for the place. The Chateau was not generally available for civilian use. I don’t think I realized at the time what a privilege we were being given.

Star Liner

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Second Wind

  You have heard about athletes getting their second wind? It is not that they feel better, that they are warmed up and ready to run more easily. It is not psychological (at least, not all psychological). No. There is an actual physiological truth to a second wind. It all has to do with respiration. When I say respiration, I am not talking about breathing. Respiration is a biochemical process that happens at the cellular level. It is how the cell gets energy. There are lots of chemical processes that are constantly going on in each cell, and those processes require energy. Without a constant feed of energy, the cell will die. The more demands there are on a cell, the more energy it needs. For example, every one of your muscle cells need more energy when you are running.   In fact, you won’t be able to run if the cells don’t have sufficient energy for it. The energy currency of the cell is a molecule called ATP. You may have heard that sugar is how our bodies get energy, wh...

The Outsider

  I am reading The Outsider by Stephen King. The first 150 pages or so I found disturbing. Not for the reason you might think. It is not scary, not creepy in a traditional horror way, but disturbing in a tragic way. The first hundred to 150 pages is tragedy on top of tragedy. The most disturbing thing to me (it is disturbing to me anytime I encounter it in any story) is a false accusation. A man is falsely accused and may well be convicted of a horrific crime. That kind of thing disturbs my soul. It makes the whole world seem wrong. I have always been disturbed by stories with that kind of thing. And why not? It happens in real life too. That makes it all the more horrific. In the Jim Crow South, all you had to do was make an accusation against a black man to set the lynch mob in action. No need to bother with a trial. But even if there was a trial, the outcome was a foregone conclusion, innocent or not. We see Vladimir Putin inventing charges against people and they get locked up...

A Child of the . . .

  What was it like to grow up as a child in the 90s? How about the 1940’s? Thinking about a child growing up in each different decade, conjures up images in my mind. But that is all they are: images. I was a child in the 1960’s. I can tell you what it felt like to be growing up in the 60’s and 70’s, but what it felt like to me is not what the history books remember. History will tell you the 60’s was about the Viet Nam War, civil rights, and the space race. The 70’s was Disco and Watergate. I remember being aware of all of those things, but to me this era was about finding time to play with my friends, something I probably share with a child of any decade. It was about navigating the social intricacies of school.   It was about the Beatles, Three Dog Night, The Moody Blues, The Animals, Jefferson Airplane. It was Bullwinkle, the Wonderful World of Color, and Ed Sullivan. There are things that a kid pays attention to that the grown-ups don’t. Then there are things the adults ...