The old Sea View still sees a lot
I am writing this on the Fourth of July from Tybee Island, a spit of land 12 miles off the Georgia coast at Savannah. Geologists say the island was not here in 1776.
The place where we’re staying with our family dates to 1925.
The two-story building was built as the Sea View Apartments. Today a “For Sale” sign posted in the front yard makes passersby pause. We can almost hear them say, “Ah, that’s what a beach house is supposed to be.”
A picture of the Sea View taken in the distant past hangs in the breakfast room and takes us back to when all of Tybee was wide-angle porches and none of today’s boxy buildings, with little indentions called balconies, that overrun the island.
The old Sea View still sees a lot.
From the rockers on the second-story, you see an unrelenting parade of people and vehicles. They pass by — people of all colors and ages, vehicles of all models, members of every economic class. It’s what our Founding Fathers had in mind when they declared independence, although it’s been a long time coming for some.
But do you suppose they though about either a man who calls himself black or a woman one day being president? Surely they did, or they wouldn’t have declared all men (and women) to be equal.
Renewing
The parade keeps coming, year after year, always changing and always renewing:
The overweight man in his homemade beach chair made of PVC pipe and sand-going wheels. He rolls to the beach early and stays late.
The off-duty soldiers from nearby Fort Stewart, who seem younger each day, but it’s a safe bet that most of them are battle-hardened veterans of the Iraq war.
The underage teenagers in a downstairs apartment, who are too young to drink and smoke, yet do. Constantly. But they are good kids.
The Korean War veteran who wears his allegiance on the gold braid of his cap.
The grandfathers from ’Nam who blend into the crowd, pulling wagonloads to the beach.
Last year at this time, I read Andy Rooney’s account of being a war correspondent during World War II. It made me proud. This year I pulled out Tom Brokaw’s “The Greatest Generation,” his account of the men and women who fought and won that war. Some of them are in the parade. Their age gives them away.
The Sea View could use a coat of paint to cover the cracks in its blue-and-yellow exterior. The downturn in the economy caught up with its cash flow. But times will get better, and the parade will continue.
It always does: It is America.
