he lovely weather lately — that I hope will soon return — has carried me back to a favorite place. In the mid-1950s, my parents bought a two-story cedar shake cabin in Moclips from friends, fellow Renton residents.
I was 8 or so when we first packed our green Oldsmobile’s trunk and a small trailer with everything we’d need for a two-week vacation. That wasn’t easy; we had lots of kids, sometimes more than others, as foster children were often part of our family.
Those trips, of course, took longer then. But we finally reached our destination, the tall cabin near the south end of gravely Pacific Avenue, across the dunes from the beach.
Though I don’t recall my first glimpse, I know it was love at first sight. After six decades, I still carry it in my heart, even though the cabin’s been gone for years.
My mind’s eye still sees sepia-toned pictures of the old cabin, including a large front room with two tall, narrow windows facing the road, a kitchen sporting a wood-burning cook-stove, and a bedroom. What it didn’t have was electricity, and we had to “import” our water. There was no bathroom, either, just a privy beyond the back porch.
Dark, steep steps led from the bedroom to the cabin’s second story, a vast open space, soon cordoned off with curtains creating the girls’ and boys’ rooms. Our beds were a cinch to make; we each had our own sleeping bag.
Both “dorms” had tiny windows, the girls’ facing the ocean. The boys’ window, appropriately, facing the back, past the outhouse and several lots of “beach grass” to a steep hill, which they — and the girls — soon learned to climb as a “shortcut” to Hamptons’ Store above.
It sounds like a poor old — if tall — shack without much to recommend it. But our summer place, which we dubbed Tideaway, was a thrilling setting for adventures. We had the run of the beach, treasures the tide brought from who knows where, all the sand we could want for wonderful castles, agates and beach cliffs we climbed repeatedly to jump off into the soft gray sand below.
My older brother learned to surf fish with “equipment” found upstairs: a round aluminum pan, with fishing line coiled inside and a twine “strap” for around his neck. With heavy weights and large hooks baited with clam neck pieces or piling worms, Doug learned to “cast” the line by swinging it mightily over his head in circles before tossing the hook and sinker into the waves.
We also used poles and the same bait, catching fish we’d never seen before, including sole; something my East Coast-native father called “sea trout” and, my favorite, perch. Because we always had to clean our catches at the ocean’s edge, we learned quickly that not all fish have eggs. We released myriad baby perch into the surf as they were born a bit earlier than if we’d not caught their mother.
Our cabin was also a tasteful abode … my mouth still waters when I recall my mother’s savory Manhattan clam chowder, brimming with razor clams Dad and we kids had dug, and which, under his watchful eye, we cleaned assembly-line fashion on the back porch.
One summer, our mother even canned 52 quarts of clams — on that woodstove. She also made the best breakfasts in the world on that stove: hotcakes, eggs and fried razor clam diggers.
Life was exciting there, though there were some problems, like our car’s transmission needing to be replaced in Aberdeen once on the way to Moclips, and Doug’s body swelling until he resembled a man in a spacesuit after coming across something he was allergic to on the beach and being rushed for medical care (we kids really thought he might die).
Leaving Tideaway at vacation’s end wasn’t easy. So my sister and I took to writing notes, each stowing hers in the pocket of the other’s coat, which would hang in the front room until we returned the next summer (wish I could recall what even one of those notes said).
We’d pull out of Moclips, catch a last look at “our” beloved ocean at Pacific Beach and head for home through the little mill town of Aloha. Dad always sang a two-line ditty beginning at one end of tiny Aloha and ending at the other: “Don’t say Aloha when I go, because I’m coming back to you.”
Alas, the years wore heavy on Tideaway, and later the beloved cabin was “cremated” in a training exercise by local firefighters. But I still dream about it.
Before being crucified, Jesus told his disciples Heaven has many dwelling places and that he’d prepare a place for them. Older hymns, perhaps not correctly, refer to a mansion being prepared for each person. But if there is a dwelling for each, I’d like a heavenly replica of Tideaway.
