I Can't Relate to The Hamptons

I can't relate to The Hamptons. Never been there.

Neither can I relate to the money it takes to have, or to even rent, a place in The Hamptons. But I suppose I could cozy up to it pretty good, were it proffered. The money, that is. Maybe even a place in The Hamptons, assuming the money were enough to furnish it and/or to buy the friends necessary to populate it — in season, of course. Obviously, I use the term "friends" advisedly in this instance. Just as certainly, they would include a smattering of the "beautiful people," inasmuch as they are the segment of the populace that generally are wont to congregate in The Hamptons. Or so I'm given to understand. I couldn't say from personal experience because, as I noted at the outset I can't ... don't ... relate to The Hamptons, except perhaps in a way that one might relate to a glitzy travel feature that pops up when you mistakenly hit an ad link on a Web site that has nothing really at all to do with The Hamptons. But there it is; so you kill the next three minutes/20 seconds watching it all the same.

 Nothing really wrong with just fantasizing a little about The Hamptons and how neat it might be to have a place in The Hamptons and to occasionally have lunch with Ina Garten, said lunch having been prepared with said Ina's very own hands. Then, Poof! Fantasy gone and back to the Web site and the intended link about tips for getting rid of mold on the deck railings. Luncheon with Ina was swell while it lasted.

How is it I'm writing about The Hamptons, a place I cannot, do not, relate to, except in fantasy? After all, I did not intend to when I got out of bed this morning. Actually, The Hamptons hadn't entered my mind all day long. Not until nearly 4 p.m. when I came back in the house from mowing the lawn, sat down in my chair in the sunroom and started noodling on the computer. And there in my e-mail was something from Modern Luxury, touting the startup of a new magazine called "Beach." If you surmised that the reference Beach that has spawned the new magazine is the one, or ones (is there more than one?) in The Hamptons, then you surmised correctly.

 I am 41 pages — of 184 —  into "Beach," and it has become readily apparent that the closest thing that I have in common with the people, places and virtually everything else pertaining to or referred to in "Beach" is that I like it. Meaning, I like ... check that ... I love ... the beach. Yeah,  the one with the lower case "b," which, in my case, I can assure you is no where near The Hamptons.

  I have no doubt that the Beach and/or Beaches in The Hamptons are quite nice indeed. I have no reason to believe otherwise. Yet, I am perfectly fine with my beach of choice, which now, and for many years, has been Topsail Island off the coast of North Carolina. I fudged a little earlier, because actually Topsail has it's own upper case, but you know what I mean. For all it's charm, Topsail doesn't have quite the cachet that tends to tag along after The Hamptons.

 So. I'll probably go ahead and flip through the rest of "Beach." But, not unlike the popup ad, when I'm done I'll dismiss it and go on with my pleasant, albeit hardly Hamptons fancy, lifestyle right here in the good ole North Carolina Piedmont and where when I'm given to fantasy, it is Topsail, not The Hamptons, that most probably hoves into view of my mind's eye.

Please know that I do not mean here to cast aspersions. Not on The Hamptons. Not on The Hamptons lifestyle. Not on "Beach," which I trust will gain great favor among its target audience.

But I guess what I do mean to say is that the beach, or the Beach, can and usually does magically draw us close, summer after summer, year after year, the non-rich and the rich alike. The true beauty of it is that it doesn't have to be the same beach.

 After all, the beach anywhere is better than the beach no where.

Threescore and Ten

Today is my birthday. I become precisely 70 years of age shortly before midnight, having just narrowly escaped birth on May 18. A few minutes later back there in 1941, and I would have thenceforth shared a birthday with my boyhood friend and kindergarten classmate, Bobby.
Strange, in a way, that I should think of Bobby just now, I guess. We haven't seen each other in many, many years. Last time was when I visited him in Portsmouth, Va., to which he had moved with his parents even before grade school, I think. Anyway, it was summer when I visited, and Bobby then was in high school, and something of a basketball star, as I recall. Distance of our homes one from the other and time, as they are wont to do, conspired to draw us apart, Bobby and I, who early on were fast friends indeed. Since that summer visit back in the early 1950s, I've often wondered what became of him, what his life was like, what he did for a living, whom he married, if he did, and whether he had children. You know, the typical stuff, we would ask one another were we to meet again after all these years.

Sometimes I feel guilty, that I never really made the effort to find out those things. After all, it's not hard to do; certainly not anymore. Indeed, a couple well-placed phone calls might been enough to move the ball along. Or a search of the now ubiquitous Google, or, alas, Facebook. But I never did any of those things. I wonder why? Perhaps it was an inexplicable inner fear that filling in the gaps since would somehow ruin the sweet memories of the good times we shared as kindergarten classmates in the 1940s. Silly, I guess.

Yep, Bobby went his way to live his life, and I mine. And I truly hope his has been a good and satisfying life. But, I wonder if he ever thinks of me, on this the birthday week we share, even if we don't share the same birth date by fewer than 30 minutes.

No matter. Happy Birthday, Bobby. I still remember you fondly as my friend.