Gma book - For print - 20 stories, 11 font, subtitles (75 pages)

What’s a place that will
always be special to you?
WRITTEN NOVEMBER 6, 2019
W
hen I was nine my grandparents built the bath house on the eastern shore
of Mobile Bay in Fairhope, Alabama. My grandfather bought the land – 50
square feet for $50 – while he was working in the area. He was a contractor at that
time, and doing pretty well for himself and my grandmother. He’d gotten contracted
to clear the land and make it ready for them to build The Grand Hotel in Point Clear.
He built a nice, sturdy bath house out on a pier in the water to relax and fish from.
They would later build a full house on the property in 1946, once the war was over
and materials that had been rationed became available. That house would be taken
out by Hurricane Camille, and my mama and daddy rebuilt the house that they
eventually lived in on the property.
This property would become the family destination for vacations, summers,
holidays, weekends, everything. My children grew up at that house on the bay. My
daughter Kim spent her first months on the planet in the waters at that house. It
was a very special place to us.
But at the time I hated it. There wasn’t even running water or a bathroom to begin
with – just a little outhouse on the beach. He dug a well and we had wooden buckets
that we had to fill up with water and drag them down to the wharf and all the way
back up to the house to drink and bathe. But it was so much fun to swim there, and I
do have some fond memories of my childhood summers spent out in the water.
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