I’ll write about “that dock” instead. The one in the background of the photooo in this post. Our Northern Correspondent asked about it. Oh yeah, *that* “dock”. Forgot all about that “dock”. ONC has lived at the end of the moominbeach for enough years now to know that installing a dock on the beach is an exercise in futility. A few good nor’westers (or even one really big one) would reduce any kind of dock your average everyday motorboat driver might erect to smithereens in short order.

So, that is not a dock back there. That photooo was taken the year I was six and there was a big dredging operation going on out in the shipping channel that whole summer and, as NpJane commented on that post, “that dock” was a “runaway”. Specifically, a bunch of pipes associated with the dredging operation floated into the moominbeach shore during one of those nor’westers (you know the ones). I have a few pictures from the Sherman Archives. Like this one (click to embiggen).

Imagine if you walked down to the beach some morning and saw all of those things down there. A child’s paradise! Playground equipment in the water! Here’s one of the Sherman Boys hanging out on the pipes. (The Shermans had Beth and four boys. We had so much fun.)

And here are a whole bunch of beach urchins hanging out. Yer fav-o-rite blahgger is the tow-head in the diamond-pattern pants. (Wonder if I liked those pants…) The closest thing to an adult that I can see at first glance looks like it might be my cuzzint Suze. She was nowhere near adulthood at the time but very responsible. Of course nowadays we are the same age.

These old pipes were so much fun. Eventually the dredging company retrieved them, I guess. But someone with a cabin on the way to Birch Point managed to snag one of them and made an actual dock out of it. For several years, every time we walked to Birch Point, it was part of our routine to crawl *through* that pipe and jump out the other end. It’s okay, it was shallow water. We were not stupid.

I’ll write about the trailer in my driveway when the cows come home somebody opens up the damn government. If you have a cray-zee conservative Republican congressman, please put pressure on them. Just tell ’em KW will not vote for them. That’ll *surely* get ’em to return to sanity. [sarcasm of course]

P.S. I may have snarfed up some of the details regarding those pipes. If any aunts or cuzzints remember that summer with more clarity than my 6-year-old mind does, I’ll happily accept corrections! Any memories posted by NpJane are not to be trusted. She was not born yet! Grok grok grok grok!

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