Views
from a Front Porch
Living
in a Beach House on the Gulf Coast
by
Paul Estronza La Violette
Illustrated by Stig Marcussen
173 pp
$19.95 Hardback with Dust Jacket
©
1999 by Paul Estronza La Violette
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Gretal
and I Go Storming, (from chapter 2,
"Sailing")
Sometimes when Gretal and I went storming, in my fourteen and a half foot Sunfish, the storm would win and sometimes we would come back losers. We'd return with a torn sail, once a bent mast (this was when we crashed into Carrere's pier and that time it was definitely Gretal's fault), another time a broken tiller. Once when I had a hard time righting the boat, Gretal decided that she was tired and swam in the middle of the jumbled sail and rested. I had to threaten her to get her to get out so I could right the boat. I have on one occasion lost the rudder. I am not sure how that happened, except it became unshipped and was gone when we got back in the boat.
I lowered the sail tied the painter around my arm and swam back to shore, towing the Sunfish behind me with Gretal barking needless absurd commands from the cockpit. But as I said, all of this was great fun. Perhaps it was childish and immature, but since we both loved it, that was all that mattered.
There was a time when when I took off with a friend in the Sunfish without Gretal. When I returned sometime later, I found Stella very upset, standing on the beach.
"What's wrong?" I asked. "It's Gretal," she said. "She swam after you. Didn't you see her?'
"No. Where is she now?"
"I don't know!" she cried. "She went out after you. I couldn't stop her! She wouldn't listen to me! You kept going back and forth, and she kept trying to catch up. Then I lost sight of her."
She had the binoculars with her and I took them and looked out over the water. I didn't see Gretal. I went back out in the Sunfish to look. Since the current that day was to the east, I went all the way to the Bay looking for her.
I didn't see her there and came back toward our beach, calling her name and looking. But sitting in a boat doesn't allow you to look very farand I finally headed in to where Stella was still standing. Gretal was not with her. We stood there for about an hour pacing about, asking people walking on the beach or in cars if they had seen her. We really didn't know what else to do. In desperation, more of wanting to do something rather than with any hope of success, I went out in the boat and looked around again with no luck. Just as I returned and was pulling the boat up on the sand, I heard Stella shouting. I ran ran to where she stood pointing.
"There's Gretal! " "Where?" "There! See? Down the beach!"
I looked. Finally, I made out a speck coming down the sandy beach from Bay St. Louis. I quickly got the glasses and looked. It was Gretal! We waited and she came up to us and we hugged her and she licked us and we hugged her some more. She was wet, tired and full of sand and so were we. Stella took her to the house for a hose bath and I stayed to take in the sail.
I was tired and took my time securing the boat to the post and folding up the sail. I sat on the Sunfish for a few minutes looking out at the water. Finally, picking everything up, I carried them up toward the house. When I got there, Gretal, washed and clean, was lying on the warm planks of the porch, letting the sun dry her coat. I sat down beside her and watched her as she dozed. It had been a long day.
Gretal continued to go out with me for many years after that, and we continued to have a lot of fun together. But as she got older, I had to leave her on the beach more and more. It wasn't as much fun without her and after a while I didn't go out as much either. When she passed away several years ago, I stopped going out altogether.
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