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Wednesday, July 22, 2015

The ocean beckons

Taken on April 21, 1948
Galveston beach, TX
Top photos have Uncle Chauncey on the left, smallest sunbonnet is Mary Beth, and I'm the blond with bangs, then my dad, George Rogers.
You can see the water was barely getting our feet wet.

In the bottom 2 photos I'm on the left, Mary Beth in the middle, and Gummy, my grandmother Ada Rogers is wearing not only a dress as we sit on this driftwood, but gloves!  What a lady!

Mother or Poppy must have been doing the camera work for this visit.

We spent about a month of that summer traveling to St. Louis, MO and Stevens Point, WI, going through the Smoky Mountains for my first view of mountains.  We then moved to St. Louis.  After I grew up my first job was in Miami...

All my adult life I've had to think whether I wanted to live near the beach or the mountains.

When I lived in Knoxville TN, I'd go visit the beach for vacations, but once a month would go hiking in the Smokies.

I would yo-yo between mountains and beach almost yearly.  If I lived in the vicinity of one, I'd go visit the other.

Then I moved back to Florida for about 12 years (in different cities).  I just recently found a post card which actually has the house in which we lived in St. Augustine, FL.  Sorry I didn't scan it, but just took a photo with my phone.

At the top of this photo is Anastasia State Park, which not only has a beach, but a campground.  In the middle you see the fishing pier. There is no entertainment.

Close-up view of Hampton Inn and our apartment
The four story red brick hotel (Hampton Inn) to the lower left was built while I lived there (1996-2000.)  The little street just above it going toward the ocean is 15th Street, and directly across that street is the small 2 story grey house with dark grey roof which was our apartment (ground floor). This photo even shows one of our cars in the parking lot.  We were the 4th house from the Atlantic Ocean.  As you might notice, we didn't exactly have a swimming beach unless it was low tide, as there was a pile of rocks making a sea-wall next to those waves.  I would walk up to the state park and wade in that water between the rocks, or drive to one of the beaches further south where you could drive a car and swim.

And the reverse side of the post card is as follows:


Thanks to John Nyberg for the great photo!



The apartment was empty and for sale when I last drove by the area a few years ago.  I hope the real estate market has improved and others are enjoying by now.

I have some really great memories from my living there.  But now I'm happily retired and living in the mountains of North Carolina.

And I contribute this to Sepia Saturday, where you may also visit other posts from bloggers all over the world.  Come check it out!


 Sepia Saturday says..."It's alright for us up here in the northern hemisphere: it's summer and the chances are that - if you are anywhere else but West Yorkshire - the sun is shining. It's time for holidays; time for the sea and the sands. To illustrate this I have chosen a picture of one of the most iconic beaches of all, Bondi Beach, but you will have probably noticed that it is in the southern hemisphere which is in the middle of winter at the moment. So your theme can be summer, sun and sands or winter, snow and cold or old postcards, or waves or the Bondi Vet (I have included that last one in for my wife who is madly in love with the Bondi Vet). All you have to do is to post a post on or around Saturday 25th July and add a link to the list below.

15 comments:

  1. I remember those white gloves, no one wears those any long, times sure have changed.

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  2. So do the last last two beach photographs show where you used to drive for a swim? Lovely old family photographs, and the postcard showing your apartment was a good find. I think a change is always good when you go on holiday.

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    1. Yes, those are the pictures I took from the last time I visited a few years ago, driving from Black Mountain NC to Tampa, FL, I took a bit of a detour. It was worth standing on that beach and dipping a bit into the ocean. Wish I had spent more time just lolling around when I lived there, but was busy with other things.

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  3. Wow, the ocean, just right there by your place, how ideal!

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    1. A nice ideal without the winters when I was miserable with cold salt air and constant lung problems. That's probably part of why I moved to Tampa, but there also were grandchildren in the picture!

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  4. From Chris Rogers on FB:
    What wonderful photos and memories, Barbara, thank you so much for sharing them. The photos of Galveston ... I'm fairly sure that's what is today's East Beach. The beach is so wide and shallow there. That place is the first conscious memory of my life. These photos are from 1948, two years before I was born, but my memory is from 1954, the year we made a trip to Texas, and a picnic to East Beach.

    I remember Daddy standing far out in the water, bending over and holding out his arms for me to come to him. To my little four-year-old self it looked like he was half the ocean away, but I went. He picked me up over his head, and I can still see the drops of water sparkling in the sun and his big smile lighting up his face. Such a wonderful memory. Thanks for bringing it to mind! smile emoticon heart emoticon

    Gummy and the white gloves. Yup lol! She was so old-fashioned and proper!
    Like · Reply · 7 mins · Edited

    Barbara Rogers reply:
    I loved jumping over the incoming "surf" myself, when I was maybe 6. Thanks for your story of East Beach. The color photos are all from St. Augustine. I don't remember ever seeing a wide flat area in Galveston...but it was a wonderful beach...my first also. Glad to add your story, which I'm going to cut and paste as a comment over on my blog, if you don't mind. There I'll be able to keep it as an archive.

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    1. Patricia Rogers said:
      I really enjoyed the photos and memories you shared too. I also remember the trip to Texas in 1954 and swimming at Galveston. My dad talked often of spending many happy summers in Galveston as a child with Gummy, his first cousin Bill Winslow and Bill's mother Stella (Aunt Jim) at "Uncle Chauncey's" imposing white house in Galveston. He would recall that he and Billy would roam the island barefoot running up and down the seawall (that was constructed after the hurricane of 1900.

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    2. Cynthia Rogers said:
      Very cool photos and I also very much enjoyed reading what you wrote. I remember visiting Galveston in 1968 when Mom, Dad, Chris, John and I took a trip down to Texas to visit family. Course, I hadn't yet been born in 1954

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  5. I am with you on the love of both mountains and ocean. Now I live smack dab in the middle between the two... too bad NC is such a big state. I never get to visit either one :-(

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  6. I especially love the bonnets on the girls at the top.

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  7. In many ways, the draw of the seaside is universal, whatever the continent. Looking at your early photos, they could just as well have been taken here in Blackpool or Scarborough.

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  8. I have never heard of gloves on the beach before :) Thank you for sharing the lovely photos.

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  9. I wonder if your cute beach clothes are home made.
    Gummy has a beautiful face, she looks lovely and happy despite the formal hat and gloves.

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  10. A day at the beach usually means shaking sand out of shoes, but gloves too? I've lived on the beach or near one most of my life, and always marveled at life in the mountains. Now here I am in the NC mountains and I miss the grand horizon of the ocean.

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  11. In Hawaii I lived a block and a half from the ocean. I used to go down to the empty beach and wander around for hours. You could do that as a kid back then without red flags going up. I'm sorry most kids no longer get to experience alone time on a quiet beach.

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Thanks for your comments...