Hideaway Revisited

By: Gary R. Oman, CPA, PFS, MST

Do you have a place that holds a special spot in your memory? One place for me is Hideaway Village. If you know where Buttermilk Bay is or Head of the Bay Road, you know where Hideaway Village is. Dianne and I visited Hideaway Village this past Labor Day. But first…

My maternal grandparents had a big Army tent on a platform in Hideaway Village #34D up on the bluff back in the 1940s. Sometime before 1950, they put up four walls and a roof, added a kitchen sink and a toilet and they had themselves a beach cottage. It was all of 300+ square feet but what a spot!

The cottage could sleep six in two full-size beds and bunk beds my father built and, of course, there were two or three Army cots in the closet you could break out anytime they were needed. My earliest memories are from age 4 or 5. The stairs to the beach were a couple cottages away and, as kids, we were up and down those stairs (the equivalent of about three flights) I don’t know how many times during the day…and no FitBit to count my steps!

We knew when the tide was going to be high and low and we knew the tide changed about an hour each day. We would swim every day. Go quahogging in the middle of Buttermilk Bay at low tide when the water would be only two feet deep or less. To do this, you’d feel the quahog through the bottom of your sneaker then dig it up with your bare hand. Every once in a while, your hand would find a scallop instead…and they would sometimes snap shut on your fingers. Your hand would move real quick then! Or, an eel would quickly slither between your legs. I’m not crazy about these things now, but, as a kid, it was no big deal.

As I got older, there was water skiing and fishing, first with a drop line and usually with a spreader, hoping to catch two fish at the same time…and sometimes we did. There was no television and no telephone at the cottage, nobody had them, but there was always something to do. On rainy days, we played board games and cards, like cribbage, whist or canasta or simply played in the rain.

So this past Labor Day, after eating our lunch we picked up at Lindsey’s Seafood Restaurant alongside the Canal, Dianne and I took a swing through Hideaway. Luckily, as we pulled into the Hollow, Dianne spotted two women walking toward the door to my parents’ old cottage.

Dianne quickly climbed the stairs from the Hollow and introduced herself to the owner of our old cottage and motioned to me to come up. I put on my mask and grabbed Dianne’s and went up. We introduced ourselves and were invited to walk through the cottage. I neglected to mention that my father built a full basement under the cottage in 1960 and for the next ten years or so, it was a duplex. About 1971, stairs were put in and the upstairs with its view across the bay became a sitting area with sleeping for five, plus the Army cots of course.

The walk-through didn’t take long, despite the cottage being expanded to 750 square feet when it was rearranged in 1971. The cottage had been renovated over the years and looked very nice, however, gone were the cathedral-style ceiling upstairs, the exposed framework of the downstairs ceiling/upstairs floor, and the cement shower “stall” with plenty of elbow room, along with a reduced sleeping capacity of two…you know, some of the things that make a beach cottage a cottage.

The “new” owner, she and her husband bought the cottage in 1981, was very friendly and gracious. She also told us to call her and gave us her contact information so we could make arrangements to stay there sometime in the future, anytime during the year, she said, since the cottage now has heat. I guess this is one improvement that a beach cottage probably should have.

It was nice to visit our old cottage and see a little bit of Hideaway Village but I’ll have to think about returning for a week or a weekend stay at 34D, it might just affect my fond memories of those many carefree summers we spent there.

Until next time…

Gary

_{Tracking #1-05054275}