COMMENTARY: Why We Might Join the Beach Club

By WAYNE CREED

February 3, 2014

The review of the new Beach Club at Bay Creek in the Wave, which at first appeared to be a rather innocuous report about the general status of the facility, instead seemed to unleash a firestorm of commentary. As usual, the comments section veered off into the weeds, degenerating into a Wrucke vs. Bender UFC cage match, arguments of gated vs. non-gated communities, Bay Creek’s inability to clear snow off the roads, the Wave’s journalistic style, and even intellectually flaccid attacks against members of Old School Cape Charles.

While all this was going on, my wife was reading the article with excitement — years of working in social work, she is the original inspiration for a silver linings playbook. While I’m complaining, “Where’s the bar? How am I going to get my martinis? Do they expect me to survive on just food and water? Never!,” she’s reviewing the amenities, and quite to my surprise offers, “You know, this place is great. And it’s a great deal. Cheaper than the Y.” Stopping me in my tracks, I asked her, “What you talkin’ bout Willis?”

And then she explained. When she was a kid, she belonged to a pool and racquet club in Northern Virginia. In the summers she would spend her days playing tennis, walking over to Roy Rogers for fried chicken, and generally just lounging by the pool. She would also spend one or two weeks visiting cousins in California, who belonged to a magnificent beach club overlooking the Pacific, just north of San Diego. At that moment, I realized that she wasn’t just trying to be Pollyanna — her memories of those times really did make her happy.

Then I thought of my own youth. We also belonged to a club. Looking back, it probably wasn’t much to look at, and compared to what we see at Bay Creek, probably a bit shabby. But it had a big, clean pool, a couple of tennis courts, game room with pool, ping-pong, a few pinball machines, and an excellent snack bar. When Little League baseball ended in mid-June, we were finally cut loose, free to indulge in the lazy days of summer. Me and my friends would sleep late, and then hop on our bikes and ride over to the pool. Pockets stuffed with lawn mowing money, we would swim, play ping-pong, and eat hot dogs and coke all day, until exhausted, we trekked back home to Mom’s dinner table.

Sometimes during the week, when the pool was marginally empty, me and my friend Ronnie would take his dad’s scuba equipment, and the life guard would let us scuba dive in the pool (as long as they could see us). I’m not sure how many hours you need to be certified to dive, but I’m months past that. Ronnie and I would stay under until we completely drained the tanks. Later we would carefully return them to the racks, and Saturday morning, when Ronnie’s dad was checking them before he went on a dive, after discovering they were empty, we could hear his yell, echoing throughout the neighborhood, “RONNIE!”

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Yes, good times. And I think that is what my wife was getting at, what the singer Jonathan Richman talked about in his song, Summer Feeling: “That summer feeling will haunt you for the rest of your life.” In all comments about the beach club, that was something that never really got mentioned. Could this beach club be the place where our kids can build their memories? A place where they could go to use up lazy summer days? A place where grandchildren can come for weeks on end?

Anyone that knows me will tell you that I spend a lot of time at the Cape Charles beach, diligently working on my gorgeous tan. I do get burned sometimes, and may risk over-exposure, but as Ricardo Montalbán used to say, “I would rather look good, than feel good.” The dark tan also shows off my cut muscles and six pack abs.

All that said, my kids, now teenagers, don’t like the beach. The water is too shallow, and there’s nothing to keep their interest. When my son was three, you could give him his shovel and toy dump truck, and he would be good for hours. Later, he had a marginal interest in skim boarding, but after the first time on a surfboard, skim boarding ceased to hold his interest. My daughter, now 16, needs constant social activity in order to consider her life worth living, and will never go to the beach to just “sit” unless she has three or four of her screaming, giggling friends along with her.

And herein lies the cause of my wife’s interest. Every summer we struggle to find something or some place for them to go. At their age, work is catch-as-catch-can, and in most cases, they’ve outgrown many of the camps we relied upon. Could this club be a place for them to meet friends, swim, work out, play games, and if the whim hits them, walk five minutes to the beach?

For my wife, rather than focusing on the things that the club currently does not have (she claims that as the customers begin to use it more, they can add amenities that seem to be most in demand), she sees it as a win-win, an asset not just for Bay Creek, but for all of Cape Charles. The beach club may not be for everyone, but the fact that it is a private club should not automatically make it a bad thing. If you see some inherent worth in the product, pay the dues. If you don’t, you have a public beach and great gym (I am a loyal member of Impact Fitness) right in town.

Instead of driving us apart, maybe the addition of the new club might be something we could use to find common ground, and actually bridge some of the divide. The comment stream from the original article showed that we as a Town certainly have some issues, and as my wife continually chides me, “Maybe it would be better if you chilled out and weren’t such a jerk to people all the time.” There’s some truth to that, and the beauty is, it’s never too late to change.

Nostalgia is a powerful thing. As Tom Waits said, “memory’s like a train: you can see it getting smaller as it pulls away, And the things you can’t remember tell the things you can’t forget that History puts a saint in every dream”. In the midst of this winter, the idea of this new beach club mixed with memories of my own adolescence and youth makes me realize that, in the end, it’s all about that summer feeling.

It will haunt you for the rest of your life.

Submissions to COMMENTARY are welcome on any subject relevant to Cape Charles. Opinions expressed are those of the writer and not necessarily of this publication.

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Comments

6 Responses to “COMMENTARY: Why We Might Join the Beach Club”

  1. Thomas D. Giese on February 3rd, 2014 3:44 pm

    Please publish all of Mr. Creed’s letters. I would enjoy reading them on a daily basis.

  2. Hazel Vargas on February 4th, 2014 12:27 am

    Mr. Creed is a breath of fresh air in this town of bellyachers. Whatever happened to constructive criticism?

  3. Kathleen Kurgan on February 5th, 2014 10:18 am

    The following poem is suggested reading: “Mending Wall,” by Robert Frost — “Good fences make good neighbors.”

    Bay Creek property is privately owned by the Bay Creek Homeowners Association including the streets, beaches, pool, and tennis courts and all improvements on the Common Areas. To come in on that property without permission is like trespassing on a backyard of someone’s house or farm or ranch. The Coach House and the Golf Club are open to the public and there are two types of memberships available, Golf Membership and Sports Membership. Those membership options are described on Bay Creek Resort’s website. They do not include any access to the Common Area Amenities such as the beaches or the existing pool near the Hollies Village or the tennis courts.

    Bay Creek would not be here without Cape Charles; Cape Charles would not be doing as well without Bay Creek. So let’s work together and remember the Golden Rule.

    For those who may not have read “Mending Wall” since 8th grade, it includes the verse:

    “Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
    What I was walling in or walling out,
    And to whom I was like to give offense.
    Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
    That wants it down.”

    The complete poem may be read by clicking here. –EDITOR

  4. Dana Lascu on February 5th, 2014 5:32 pm

    This is all such lovely and inspiring schmaltz! Pour it on, please.

  5. Sarah Boehling on February 6th, 2014 9:02 pm

    I believe it was Fernando Lamas– regarding the comment “It’s better to look good than to feel good.”

  6. Wayne Creed on February 7th, 2014 2:19 pm

    Yes Sarah, you are right, and I think I originally had it correct, but stupidly changed it (of course, it gets worse because I never actually ever heard Fernando say it, but is purely based on the Billy Crystal Saturday Night Live skits (http://youtu.be/J0RTD7250II). :-)