Dressing the Part

One of the more pleasant aspects of life at the beach is the long established and widely accepted custom of casual clothing anywhere anytime. Even the better restaurants are filled with diners in shorts, T-shirts and flip flops—what passes as dressing up for dinner—and many of the people seen walking down the street are in something more casual: a swim suit, maybe a faded and well-worn shirt over it. With all the sand and warm sun typical of a beachtown, leather shoes, dress shirts and ties are definitely out of place.

From my first day here, shorts, T-shirt and a pair of Crocs became a uniform. Give me a chest of drawers with three pairs of shorts, a pair of jeans, a drawer full of T-shirts and another with underwear and I need little else, maybe a baseball cap. Sure, the colder months call for a sweater, a pullover or two and maybe a jacket, but even in chillier times shorts will usually do the trick. As for socks, I’ve forgotten what they feel like, and in the shoe department a pair of Reeboks and the Crocs fill the bill just fine. On rare occasion when I feel the need to be a little less casual, I replace the shorts with a pair of jeans and the T-shirt with a polo shirt, but at the bottom I am still sockless.

I’m going to miss all that.

The day I decided on moving to the house in the country I realized it would call for a few new items of clothing, something casual but in a different direction. Shorts may be fine inside, but outside is a place where long pants, socks and high top leather shoes bring more peace of mind—peace of mind in the arena of safety. In Oak Hill you don’t want to step on anything in bare feet or brush up against unfamiliar foliage with bare legs. And rather than a baseball cap, a wide-brimmed hat will do more to stop the hairy caterpillars from dropping down a shirt. Though I’ve always disliked them, gloves for working in the yard might also be a good idea.

Walking over the acre of property with the realtor a couple of weeks back, he suggested, with a small adjustment to his Daniel Boone attire, that it was an area where having a gun in the house would be wise. I couldn’t imagine he was talking about crime in the form of robbers or kidnappers, and I looked at the ground around me with new eyes, expecting to see something slither under a log. For a moment my head was filled with the vision of me as a rugged pioneer uncovering a nest of rattlers in my garden at the edge of the woods. A moment later I told the realtor I had to leave, that I had an appointment at the gun shop.

It’s still a couple of weeks before I move out to the house in the country and I’m still enjoying my shorts, T-shirts and bare feet, but I have been to Sears for a pair of sturdy shoes and while there I thought maybe a Bowie knife would come in handy, something to hold between my teeth in a wrestling match with unwelcome critters. I’ve seen Animal Planet and the scenes of anacondas released in the swamps of Florida. I just want to be prepared.

Something in the Air

Can’t describe myself as doing much of anything today, most of it along the lines of what I imagine as the life of Riley. But don’t misunderstand that to mean sleeping until noon and idling away the remaining hours flipping through movie magazines and munching chocolate bonbons. No, after the usual early morning walk on the beach, I passed a couple of hours reading to my golden girls in the retirement home down the street, then came home to laze way the afternoon marveling at the change of season underway here on the watery edge.

The doors and windows are all open here and autumn breezes are blowing through and unclogging these stale rooms. Surprising how insensitive one becomes to a daily electric climate, dulled and accepting of the ‘perfect’ air-conditioned temperature. Though it seems a little early to me (my first autumn in Florida) I am experiencing a change now that involves much more than mere changing temperatures. Something is in the air. A shift is in progress on every front. The color of the ocean has darkened, the light has gradually become more sympathetic, less intimidating. New birds have come from other climates to winter at the seaside. Ocean water is colder, the beard of seaweed tracing the surf line redder now. I doubt there is ever a time in this setting when the air is anything less than fresh, but at this time of year you notice a clear difference in the air, a difference that enlivens the senses.

In the late afternoon I walked down to the water’s edge with the idea of filling my vision with nothing but ocean and sky, wanting to stand with feet in the surf, seeing a hundred and eighty degrees of only those elements, divided by the razor sharp horizon. But in fact, nothing about it surprised me; colder water, deeper blue ocean, and perfect clarity to the horizon three miles out. Walking back up to the beach stairs, I came upon the lady in sand, an image that made me think of Picasso for some reason. The photo of the stairs? Nothing special, except as a look at the climbing sand bolstered by October tides.