OPINION: Railey on magical memories of a cottage on its last sail

Source: Winston-Salem Journal, N.新蒲崗迷你倉C.Sept. 15--The house was built on the highest part of the narrow tongue of land between the harbor and the open sea. It had lasted through three hurricanes and it was built solid as a ship. It was shaded by tall coconut palms that were bent by the trade wind and on the ocean side you could walk out of the door and down the bluff across the white sand and into the Gulf Stream.- Ernest Hemingway, Islands in the Stream.NAGS HEAD -- This Outer Banks town isn't Hemingway's Bimini and the old cottage I've long studied may not be as great as the one he wrote about. But the Nags Head structure, said to be the first A-frame on our beach, had its charms all the same.It sits atop a high dune, and it, too, has survived its share of hurricanes. I've stood outside during a couple of them and watched the old cottage sail right through, as tough as the Ohioan, Ezra Gibson, who built her with two other men. I've watched it on summer nights too, when lights inside lit up the big stained-glass window as Ezra's son Dean, one of the best surfers on the beach, cranked out "Secret Agent Man" on an organ inside during parties.Soon the cottage will be demolished, another beach landmark gone. All along the North Carolina coast, the eclectic structures that made our coast so special are coming down, often replaced by cookie-cutter "McMansions."As the families and their cottages go, they take a lot of class with them. We miss these stabilizing landmarks in a world made uncertain by all sorts of things, including war and rumors of war.The Nags Head A-frame was built when JFK was president. My family's cottage is beside it. I grew up idolizing Dean the surfer, who was several years older, and playing with his nieces and nephew, Brent Bridmini storagees of Thomasville. Children from neighboring cottages joined us.Back then, the A-frame was still relatively new and a trip to Nags Head was still an adventure. Our cottages didn't have phones. Carl and Sally Nunemaker, who ran the general store just down the road where our parents traded, would take pressing calls for us on their phone and scribble down messages. If it was an emergency, they'd send a stock-boy to deliver the message.We children frolicked in the ocean and on the dunes. And we loved hanging out in that A-frame. While my family's cottage was set safely behind a dune, the A-frame was right on top of one, as if daring the ocean to mess with it. It seemed like something out of Malibu, complete with glass beads serving as doors in a couple of spots. Downstairs, we'd play Monopoly and sprawl across hammocks.When you're little, you think life will go on forever like that. You don't think about wars and political corruption and the other timeless problems all around you.Then we all got older and drifted apart. The A-frame often sat empty. Ezra and his wife, Jan, died. Dean took a real job and rarely got back to Nags Head. Then, in the mid-2000s, one of Dean's sons moved into the A-frame and lived there year 'round. It was nice to see the old cottage lit up again. Some summer nights I'd visit with the son, drinking beer on the deck and trying to explain to him just how cool his family and their cottage was.The son moved out a couple of years ago. The A-frame once again sat empty.And soon it will be gone, its only remnants a few old splinters in the sand.Copyright: ___ (c)2013 Winston-Salem Journal (Winston Salem, N.C.) Visit Winston-Salem Journal (Winston Salem, N.C.) at 2.journalnow.com Distributed by MCT Information Servicesself storage