Wildwood has it's own theme song. Did you know that? It's kind of silly, actually.
Well, let me start from the beginning.
We left around 10:30 Sunday night and the drive down was uneventful for the most part, except for nearly hitting a very stupid deer that didn't get out of the road until we'd stopped moving at it very fast. We got to the shore house around midnight and dragged our tired selves in. Patrick gave me a cursory tour as we heaved our stuff upstairs into the bedroom. Then we turned on the airconditioner in the window (it was very muggy in the house since it had spent two weeks closed up) and went to sleep.
I woke up, as usual, very early on Monday. I usually wake up with the sun, it drives Patrick crazy because he likes to sleep in. So I satisfied myself with exploring the house to a greater degree. When you walk in the front most door, you're in the enclosed porch. There's a chair here and there, and a good deal of beach accoutrements like boogie boards and things. Then, into the front door that leads into the house and you're in the parlor. Here, there are four doors in addition to a few windows, some chairs, and a TV. The door to your right leads to a very steep flight of stairs up, straight a head is a bedroom, next to it the kitchen, on the intersecting wall another bedroom, and across from that is a powder room. The kitchen downstairs has a door leading out back. This is right next to the outside "creepy" bathroom, which is the only bathroom in the house with a shower. It was once a rather flimsy shed, and now holds (in a very small space) a toilet, a shower, a sink, and a water heater. Patrick reassured me that the pipes had all been replaced recently.
So lets go upstairs.
I'd gotten the idea by now that the house was very old, like most shore houses. Well, I got an idea for how old when I ran into knobs sticking out of the wall in the upstairs hallway and bathroom. I remembered Patrick explaining to me that these were left over from when the house was lit by gas lamps, and that there used to be more, but most of the rooms had been redone since then, and these had been removed.
Upstairs, everything is off a hallway. Two more bedrooms, a bathroom (with a claw-footed tub!), and a kitchen. I wish I had thought to take pictures of the stoves in these kitchens, as they were really very old. As in, some of the first ones of their time. I didn't touch the one upstairs, which was obviously the older of the two, and I only used the stovetop on the downstairs one, because I was afraid of exploding the oven.
Anyway. The upstairs kitchen leads out onto a porch-balcony-thing (I can't remember the word) with stairs leading down into the back yard. I spent a good portion of each morning out here, enjoying the quiet while Patrick was still asleep.
That's about it for the house. I estimate that it's about 100 years old. Nice, round number. This is also supported by basic history that I dug up saying that the area we were in really started to grow in 1905 after a bridge was built to allow horses and buggies onto the island. But this is all just a guess on my part, really.
Monday arrived, and after exploring the house to my satisfaction, we got up, walked to Mc Donald's for breakfast (everything was withing walking distance, it was great), and met two of my co-workers who were down for the day to walk on the boardwalk. It was fun. We split up around three, and Patrick and I headed home to relax and unwind before heading to the grocery store. We got pizza (I was craving) and then went food shopping.
Monday night was spent downstairs in the parlor spinning (me) and playing Xbox (patrick). We were blocking out the thunderstorm that came down from up here. I called my mom right when they were in the thick of it.
Well, that's it for post 1. I'll finish up the tale later today, complete with pictures!
No comments:
Post a Comment