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Staff column--Stop and smell the chrysanthemums
By M. Patricia Titus
Staff Reporter
Since I moved to the area full-time nearly nine years ago, I’ve greeted Labor Day with a bittersweet mix of regret and glee.
The unofficial end of summer in the resort area means that many of the delights that make the beach a great place to live are also coming to a close.
The Playland amusement park in Rehoboth Beach, where I spent many of the best evenings of my childhood, soon shutters its doors — sealing off not only the carousel and boat ride that my 1-year-old son has just started to learn to love but the prize-filled crane machines that I so love to test my skills (and restraint) against.
Each fall, I inevitably come to regret that we didn’t make it to Playland more often while it was open and then fritter away the winter wishing I could just adjourn there for an afternoon of childlike enjoyment, free of the everyday cares of my adult life.
Many of our local food and specialty shops also shorten their hours or close entirely come the beginning of autumn.
For me that means, sadly, there are no more potato-crusted cod fingers from Shore Break on the Bethany boardwalk or lime/peach shave-ice from Tropical Treats. There’s a lot less excuse for Kohr’s frozen custard and even Dolle’s saltwater taffy.
I find regret also that I didn’t stop by South Bethany Seafood for some of their wonderful seafood bisque more often this summer. I’ll have to wait until next year — again.
A deep part of me feels something is lacking in life here when Rhodes 5 & 10 has shuttered its doors earlier than usual, and I’m reminded that I’d better take advantage of the fact that McCabe’s gourmet shop is still open most days for a shrimp salad sandwich on crispy fresh croissant with havarti cheese. They’ll surely be closed again for a couple months this winter, for a well-earned rest, and I’ll miss them then.
And I definitely didn’t make it to the beach as often as I might have liked this summer. I call that the wages of a full-time job and the difficulty of going anywhere with a toddler — especially any place that involves sand and water.
It’s an unfortunate aspect of living at the beach full-time, I have found. We move here because we love the shore, the ocean, the wildlife, and we — at least those of us who aren’t yet retired — then find that everyday life often means it’s too taxing to enjoy it as often as we’d really like.
Living in a vacationer’s paradise, it’s too often necessary to really take a vacation before we can enjoy all the pleasures of the place we now call home.
That makes autumn a stop-and-smell-the-flowers time, for two reasons. First, you reflect on all the things you didn’t do in the past few months that you really wish you had. Then you think about all the things you can enjoy over the coming months of cooler temperatures and less traffic.
The glories of early fall at the beach are becoming increasingly known to those who buy property in this area.
A stolen weekend here and there becomes a treasured time to stroll the beach, get in a last swim while the water is still warm, eat a fine meal of fresh seafood and local vegetables, fly a kite, catch a fish, paddle on the bay, view our abundance of local wildlife and generally pause from the busy city and suburban lives that so many of us have lead.
Though I never would have predicted it as a child vacationing each summer in South Bethany, more and more, the area’s property owners seem to think of the beach as the perfect place to have a family Thanksgiving or gather for a holiday retreat.
For those of us who live here full-time, it’s also a time to enjoy those activities, as the pace of life at the beach inevitably slows down along with the metabolism of the natural world.
While so many businesses shut down or begin to close early, biding your time and doing a little leg-work over the fall and winter can mean a special treat.
We have some amazing shops in which to find a special holiday gift that could be found nowhere else. A stop in our local beach supply stores in October can mean a great deal on next year’s beach chair or a signature sweatshirt to bundle up in during the fall.
Fisher’s Popcorn is still open on weekends in Fenwick Island, ready not only to send a bucket of caramel corn to your Aunt Jenny but to pick up a hot, fresh, fill-me-up-again bucket of white cheddar popcorn for yourself.
And where else but the beach can you take five minutes out of your weekend to gather a bucket of shells for a unique gift for a land-locked friend?
We’re also increasingly lucky that local event planners have decided this is a great place to organize autumn activities.
Last week was Ocean City’s famous Sunfest. This weekend, members of the music industry will be convening in Dewey Beach. Then it’s car-crazy time with Cruisin’, Rehoboth’s Autumn Jazz Festival, the Chesapeake Celtic Festival (another highlight for me) and the Rocktober fishing tournament.
It all leads up to another one of my favorite times — Halloween and the Seawitch festival, with parades, candy, trick-or-treating, costumes, hay rides, pumpkins and houses bedecked with the colors of the harvest and turning leaves.
We are lucky that just miles from our sandy shores we also have — still, amazingly, despite development pressures — so many large stands of old trees, delighting us with a color show to rival any autumnal splendor to the north.
We also have a great resource in our local family farms that raise pumpkins for our jack-o-lanterns, apples for cider and corn to make mazes to confuse our bosses.
And our increasing year-round population means that those candy bowls on Halloween eve are now being dipped into by an ever-increasing number of wide-eyed and delighted costumed children, guaranteed to get all but the most determined Grinch or Scrooge into the spirit of the holiday. And those same little faces will soon delight in the wonders of Winterfest’s lights.
So, while we mourn the temporary loss of the things that mark the height of our summer season, the fall also provides for residents of this resort community many of the benefits that make life here so entirely worthwhile, and perhaps at a more enjoyable pace.
The hustle and bustle of the summer relents, bringing us to a pause, a time to take a deep breath of cooling autumn breeze. And we find renewed focus on family, home, nature and an even more leisurely pace of life in a place that already specializes in leisure.
This is, indeed, a special time in this special place. Some would even argue that it’s the best time of all. While the pleasures of summer will be on hold for another eight months, the delights of fall, winter and a burgeoning spring season await us all.
It’s time not only to stop and smell the flowers — chrysanthemums in this case — but to gather up that big pile of leaves and take a flying leap into the joyful nature of this “second” season.
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