In the grocery store yesterday,

[Warpy]

25. My dad retired there

and for the first 25 years, they were within a bike ride of an unspoiled beach, nothing much there but a couple of motels, some houses on streets away from the beach, an old pier. There was a nice nature walk through a swampy part, also.

Right after he died, I went to that beach to dip a toe in the Atlantic for the last time. Oh, what Jebbie's friends had done, it was a solid wall of condos and their parking structures, you couldn't get to the beach, there were no walkways left. The nature walk was gone, the swamp drained, and you guessed it, another condo building.

It had only been 5 years or so since my last long walk on that beach. Rage and disgust were in equal measures that day.

So I know that area pretty well, saw the space shuttle lift off from his front yard, listened to a lot of his neighbors. He couldn't understand why I didn't move there when I left Boston. To him it was paradies. To me, it was pure hell.

That wall of condos will get rickety and the beach will be completely gone within 50 years. The only way to keep a beach is to keep it unspoiled.