Daily Archives: 2008/05/16

I love the coast. Were I a wealthy man, I would like to live on the coast.

I know that for many of you, living on the coast brings thoughts of a big fancy house on or near the beach, that is only a stones throw from the sand and you can wander out and take a dip before each meal.

Not for me.

First off, I am not a big swimmer. I can swim to save my life, if needed, and that is about it. I will sit and do my impersonation of a potato and stew in a hot tub, and I might, occasionally, sit in a pool.

No… I would not want a big house or lots of land on the coast. I would just want a good old Lighthouse. It would have to be a fully functioning light house that had a real 2nd or 3rd order fresnel lens set, and would actually require me to work on it from time to time. Oiling gears to keep the lenses rotating. Making sure that the fog horn is working. That kind of stuff.

The reason I think I like the coast the most though is the people. You really do not find this as much in the larger, touristy cities, but in the smaller towns that are a little more off the beaten path, you see a nicer group of people. Especially in areas where the people still carve a little of their living out of the sea. I think you see this more in the east coast and on the northwest coast. For the most part I will not count any of the California beaches. There are a few pretty Californian beaches, but I think that Californians treat the beaches much the same way someone might treat a twenty dollar hooker. Use it, mess it up, don’t clean up after yourself and leave it dirtier than you found it. Sorry for any visual that might have created, but of all the beaches I have seen, ours have to be the worst.

There does seem to be a certain “feel” in small coastal towns. I cannot say electricity I also cannot say that they are all laid back. There just seems to be this “expectation” of things to come. A good local, to me, example is the town of San Simeon. It is still a little too touristy for me, but it still has enough of that feel that I am talking about. When you are there and eat at one of the restaurants, you can tell that the people that live or work there are not entirely jaded to the fact that they are a sleepover town to a tourist trap, meaning Hearst Castle. They are genuinely nice and willing to talk with you, at length, about almost anything.

In reality, as I alluded to in my opening comment, a house on the coast, let alone a lighthouse, is beyond my means at this point in life. There is no chance that I will be a lighthouse keeper any time soon. But I will continue to visit lighthouses and dream about them. The wife and I will continue to make our pilgrimages to the coast and enjoy that as well.

There is just SOMETHING about the coast…