In 1944 (the year before my birth) my father built, with his own hands, our summer house right on the beach in Jerusalem, Rhode Island. Although larger and finer than the typical cottage of the time, just like the other cottages in this fishing village cum summer enclave, it was built on posts about two feet above the sand. He had it all finished just in time for the 1944 hurricane, that was before they named them. The house was not severely damaged, but all of the detail work-decorative shutters, lattice, stone walkways-all of that was demolished.
As the story goes, my father went up into the attic-“cried like a baby”-and then came down, ordered a load of telephone poles, and hired a house moving company. The house was raised, the poles sunk deep, bolted to the original poles, and then the house was set down and bolted securely at about seven feet above the sand.
It was the joke of the peninsula, everyone was laughing. They called it ‘Camp High’ which is funny because it was actually named ‘ CAMP HIE ‘ using my mother’s initials; you know how holiday cottages were always named in those days. People would come from far and near to see the anomaly, the house on stilts. They kept on laughing right up until Hurricane Carol blew through ten years later, in 1954.
At the time I was eight and I remember it well. That was the year that my father launched his new Chris-Craft cabin cruiser, christened the JALAHOJE . It was named by my clever mother who enjoyed telling people that it was an old Indian (‘Native American’ nowadays) word meaning “never a dull moment!” It was in fact an amalgam of the first two letters of each of our names: JAY, LANCE, HOPE, JESSE.
No sooner was the boat in the water, than my brother and I started begging for an overnight cruise to Block Island. We could see the island from our beach house; it was twelve miles off the coast. Dad promised we’d go when he was on vacation, and true to his word on the morning of August 30th (two days after Jay’s 12th birthday) my father called the Coast Guard for a weather update. He was told that everything was fine. Some moderate swells out the west gap of the expansive sea-walled harbour, lightly choppy out the east. What about the hurricane? No worries about that, it blew itself out in the Bahamas; hurricane tracking virtually non-existent in those days.
Excitement was in the air as we loaded the car with the provisions for our two day voyage, and joyfully headed for the dock. We couldn’t stop beaming as we traversed the inner waterways and entered the harbour. Once we passed through the west gap and left the protection of the breakwater, we hit the “moderate” ground swells. They towered above our craft, and we were bobbing up and down like a toy boat in a bathtub. “GO BACK, DAD! PLEASE! I DON’T WANT TO GO TO BLOCK ISLAND. GO BACK! I DON’T WANT TO GO!” I clamoured. “THAT’S WHAT I’M TRYING TO DO, SON, AS SOON AS I CAN STAY ON TOP OF ONE OF THESE XXXXERS LONG ENOUGH TO TURN AROUND.”
Once he maneuvered back into the safety of the harbour, we quickly renewed our resolve and proceeded undaunted to the east gap; the consolation a cruise down Narragansett Bay and an overnight at Jamestown Island. “Lightly choppy” turned out to be six foot high breakers, and as they crashed over the bow of the boat in rapid succession, I dove under a pile of life preservers in the cabin. Somehow dear ole Dad managed to execute another retreat, and if I wasn’t almost catatonic I might have enjoyed the thrill of riding those big rollers back to safety behind the jetty.
Not much was going to save the day, but Jay and I reluctantly settled for an afternoon on Salt Pond, a picnic on one of the islands, a drive-in movie that night, and a solemn promise that we’d make the trip to Block Island before the boat was pulled out for the winter; kind of lame, but what to do? Salt Pond (officially ‘Point Judith Pond’) is a vast saltwater inlet about two miles wide, that sprawls its way inland about six miles, and sports three inhabited islands, a scattering of diminutive ones, and an intricate shoreline scalloped with coves. Despite normally being this child’s paradise, that day it was scant substitute for Block Island.
Sullen or not we killed a few hours, no doubt did something special for dinner, and then went to a drive-in movie where I had a mini-crisis in the restroom. My bathing suit was still on under my pants, and while taking a wee-wee in the stall (I was extremely pee-shy even then) the cord from the waistband lassoed the head of my penis, and when I tried to pull it loose it tightened. Try though I may, I couldn’t get it undone. Ultimately my father came looking, and found me there in the stall, sitting on the toilet crying.
He tried to get the knot untied without success and then, much to my mortification, he opened the stall door to get more light, mumbling something about people thinking that he was a pervert. Frustrated, he pulled out his pocket knife as I shrieked in horror, “NO DAD, NO, DON’T CUT IT OFF!” While trying to convince me that he was not about to do a penis-ectomy, he struggled to keep me still while he delicately cut the cord, only the cord.
Crisis overcome it was back to the movie, but we could barely see the screen because it had begun raining desperately. Something was in the air; I was picking up on the vibes from the weather and my parents. Something just wasn’t right. Once home my brother fell asleep-he could sleep through anything, even a hurricane-while I kept getting up and getting sent back to bed, until finally my parents let me stay with them.
They were huddled over the Zenith Trans-Oceanic radio, my father incessantly turning the dials, trying to find some news about the disturbing weather. Shortly after six in the morning he did. At that very moment, Hurricane Carol, which would prove to be one of the two most deadly and destructive hurricanes in the history of New England, was approaching New York, fifty miles southeast of Long Island’s Montauk Point.
On a clear day we could see Montauk Point, as-the-seagull-flies it is less than twenty-five miles southeast of Jerusalem! Mom woke my brother and we started packing, while my father went out to the garage on the leeward side of the house, started the car and left it running. We stuffed in as many of our precious belongings as we could fit, filling the trunk and the back seat, leaving just enough room for my brother and me, the cat and canary, to squeeze in.
Once we were ready and anxious to go, there was no sign of my father. We found him in the bathroom, sitting on the throne with a cup of coffee! Come hell or high water, when that man had to go … he had to go! Finally, after answering nature’s call, he swung in behind the wheel and now we were on our way. Not a moment too soon, as the waves had reached the front of the house.
While pulling out we saw a blurry figure on the other side of the road running towards us and waving. It was our neighbour, Mrs Conti, her car wouldn’t start. She asked if we would take her parents-in-law and two children, saying that she’d stay behind because we had no room. “No, you’re coming too, we’ll make room,” my father said, as he took her arm and gently but firmly pushed her into the front seat with her daughter and my mother.
Somehow the son and the grandparents squeezed into the back with Jay and me, and now we were ready … but no! Before the doors were closed the grandfather’s hat blew off and went sailing away (all the men still wore fedoras in those days). The boy jumped out and went running after it. We were all screaming for him to come back, forget the hat-we thought quite certainly that they would both be lost-but in the few minutes that seemed like hours, by some miracle he returned clutching the hat!
Once again we were on our way, the breakers now crashing over our front porch. With the surf washing across the road my father navigated cautiously, and we practically hydroplaned much of the half mile stretch that followed along the beach. There was a palpable sigh of relief as Dad skilfully negotiated the curve, and we proceeded away from the ocean towards the bridge, about three-quarters of a mile north.
Jerusalem is a small, broad ‘V’ shaped peninsula, each leg about 4000 feet long and, after discounting the marshy crotch, about 500 feet wide. For all intents and purposes it is an island, marginally attached to the mainland by a thin strip of sandbar, about 200 feet wide on the west end of the beach. The only egress was a two-lane road and a narrow wooden bridge, over what we called ‘the gut’ (a canal connecting Potter’s Pond and Salt Pond), to which we were now headed; each of us silently praying that the bridge, our solitary link to survival, was still passable.
Just before the bridge my father stopped at the marina-such as it was in those days, two long narrow rickety docks that extended out into one of the larger inlets on Salt Pond-to secure his baby, his brand new Chris-Craft, with some extra rope. Not far from the car the water was up to his knees, so he just blew the JALAHOJE a kiss goodbye, waded back, and we moved on.
The bridge was already moving as we inched our way over. Once safely across on higher ground, we stopped to see if anyone else would make an attempt, ready to offer help if it was needed. A few minutes later another car came across. Then we watched transfixed-twenty-two eyes (including cat and canary) peering through the foggy glass-as the bridge split in two and crashed into the channel below.
Our evacuation had begun with the packing sometime after six that morning, and we learned later that the eye of the storm had made landfall at 8:00 a.m. in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, 45 miles east, precisely at high tide. Where that fits into the timeframe of our escape I can only guesstimate, most likely it was about the time when the bridge collapsed. We then made our way slowly to the town of Wakefield seven miles away; the five Contis, the four of us, the cat and canary-all safely shoehorned into the four-door ’51 Buick. They don’t make cars like that anymore.
First, my father stopped at the telephone company. It took a while, but finally they were able to get a ‘batten-down-the-hatches’ warning through to his company in Providence. Located 40 miles north at the terminus of Narragansett Bay, Providence, Rhode Island’s capital city, was ultimately submerged under twelve feet of water.
Next we went to the Wakefield Branch, where many people had congregated to ride out the storm; the men taking turns hand cranking the gasoline pump to fill everyone’s tank. Once the worst of the deluge had passed, we ventured back to Jerusalem, only getting as far as the high ground from which we had previously watched the demise of the bridge.
From this vantage point we all peered through the foggy windows once again-except for the cat, he was eyeing the canary-scanning the peninsula, most of which was completely underwater. Our CAMP HIE, situated on the oceanfront’s most vulnerable site, was proudly hovering above the sea on its stilts, like a flagship that had lost its armada. No other houses were visible on the beach, except for the Hartley’s about two-hundred feet east. It is a substantial year-round, double-story Cape Cod style, set way back and tucked snugly into the leeward side of a massive sand dune.
With hanks of rope over their shoulders, my father led an expedition of men over a broken beam of the bridge that was relatively stable; to see what aid they could bring to the stranded. They only made it a few hundred feet before they were forced to return. The wind was so strong that they clung to large slabs of upturned asphalt to keep from blowing away, as they slowly crawled back to safety.
In the aftermath we discovered that our ‘little house’-a flat roofed rental cottage not on stilts-had floated about half a mile away, and landed upside-down on the foundation of another house that had taken off on a longer voyage. It was strange to walk in and see the toilet on the ceiling, and discover that neither a cup nor plate nor glass had been broken. The house must have flipped over on the side where the shelves were and, despite its turbulent journey, everything just slid on the wall and settled on the bottoms of the upper shelves.
Despite being on the most exposed stretch of beach, by some miracle our house was virtually unharmed (a testament to Dad’s carpentry perhaps). The only damage was a broken window on the east side, water from which ruined our Monopoly and Parcheesi games. When we fled the waves were already crashing on the front of the house, yet even the very large waterfront windows withstood the force. The only thing we ever found of our garage, however, was a small triangle-bladed paint scrapper.
The two cottages next door to ours had floated across the street and, with hardly a foot to spare on each side, slid very neatly into a space between what remained of two cement block houses. The strange thing is that at some point while traveling across the narrow road, the larger waterfront cottage must have passed the smaller rear cottage, or went over it, or something, because somehow it had maneuvered into that tight space first, followed by the smaller one.
Nothing of the Conti’s cottage was ever seen again, except for the enclosed front porch which was intact and hadn’t moved. Another neighbour’s house travelled about two miles away; the owners bought the lot where it landed, laid a foundation and stayed there. One of Jay’s friends, another twelve-year-old, managed extraordinarily to hang on to a chunk of free sailing roof and survived a harrowing two mile trip, while his grandparents perished.
A dozen old fishermen, a gaggle of summer folk, and a case of whiskey rode out the storm in the Hartley’s basement. All of the people survived … the whiskey didn’t. A young police officer had tried to convince them to evacuate, and they had tried to convince him to stay with them, because they knew that the opportunity for escape had passed. Sorrowfully, he didn’t heed their warnings and ventured back out. He only made it as far as the curve.
On the bright side, a few days after the storm my mother noticed a couple of bamboo poles protruding above the trees, in a thickly wooded area about a 1000 feet inland of the marina. We stopped to check it out. Sure enough, they were the outriggers of the JALAHOJE which was gently nestled in the trees with nary a scratch. So much for Dad wanting to add a few extra lines … not a rope was broken! The boat was still tied to a twenty foot section of the dock. Needless to say, we never made it to Block Island that year, or ever actually now that I think of it. An opportunity lost.
Once a makeshift bridge and rudimentary gravel road were completed, we made trips to Jerusalem every weekend. Wandering the beach and the salt flats that autumn was a surreal experience, like a moonscape scattered with the remnants of people lives rather than rocks. Kitchenware, pots and pans, broken dishes. Shattered picture frames, shreds of clothing, a child’s toy. Sections of walls, roofs, partial shells of houses. Toilets and sinks. Refrigerators and stoves. Part of a sofa here, half of a chair there. The overturned police car.
Before winter the little house was flipped upright and returned to rest on its new foundation, securely bolted to deeply set telephone poles seven feet above the sand. The garage was never replaced, but sand was excavated from under one half of our house, making it deep enough to use as a tandem carport. Needless to say, there were no more jokes about CAMP HIE ! Our little house wasn’t the only one to move up in the world. As houses were returned to their original locations, others rebuilt, and those lost built anew, everything was on stilts.
My parents bought one of the cottages on Brecka Drive, the gravel lane that led from the road at the back of our house to the salt marshes. It had been retrieved from wherever it had landed during Carol, and positioned on strange looking pylons made of 55 gallon drums welded on top of each other and then filled with concrete. No other work had been done, so we spent the spring getting that place ready for summer rental: building porches and stairs, making repairs, painting, cleaning and refurbishing the interior.
Hurricane Carol had been a learning experience for most, and was the genesis of the hurricane tracking system in place today. During the ensuing years we always paid close attention to weather reports, and when potentially troublesome storms were getting too close we’d yank the boats out (by then we had three)-always trying to do the JALAHOJE at high tide, so that the trailer would go far enough down the ramp into the water, that the boat would just float onto the cradle. Frequently this was a harried endeavour in the middle of the night.
One year neither time nor tide was on our side, and we were struggling with the JALAHOJE at midnight during a mean low tide and torrential rain. All attempts to get it berthed had failed, so they hitched up a web of ropes and proceeded to slide it onto the cradle using a block and tackle pulled by a truck. However, someone had lashed a crucial hawser to a rope guide rather than a securely bolted cleat, so once the truck pulled, the guide gave way, and the block and tackle came crashing through the back window of my mother’s 1955 Buick. Had anyone been in the backseat at that time, most likely they would have been killed … I had been there not five minutes earlier.
For Rhode Island there has yet to be another storm of Carol’s magnitude, but whenever a small hurricane or fierce storm blew through and caused damage, the National Guard would cordon off Succotash Road at Route 1, the sole artery to Snug Harbor, East Matunuck, and Jerusalem. Then they would let cars in a few at a time, in an attempt to prevent looting.
One of those times my parents and I drove from Warwick to Jerusalem in the middle of the night, only to be stopped by guardsmen at the entrance to Succotash Road. The system had changed, and rather than just showing proof of property ownership-electric bill, tax bill, etc.-owners had to get a pass from the county clerk. Unlike Snug Harbor and East Matunuck, however, Jerusalem was not a part of South Kingstown. That little village on the crook of the peninsula belonged to Narragansett, the county on the other side of the harbour and, although only 200 feet away by water, it was over twenty miles round-trip by car.
My father argued vehemently, but in the end we could see that he had relented. Oh, wait; this is MY father that I’m talking about. He threw himself behind the steering wheel in a rage, told my mother and me to hunker down on the floor-in case there was shooting-and then as he made a good show of backing around to return to Route 1, he executed a quick surprise turn and went barrelling through the blockade.
He was too clever for his own good. There was a second roadblock at the bridge, and the guardsmen were there waiting for him with rifles at the ready. Gratefully they didn’t shoot, or cart him off in handcuffs, and when we returned an hour later with the authorized pass they graciously let us through.
The summer of 1955 I was nine, and spent most of my time in my new eight foot pram (a blunt-nosed boat, also called a ‘dinghy’), rowing around Jerusalem’s sprawling salt marshes … a fantasy like maze of inlets, channels, and coves that snaked amongst the eelgrass and bulrushes. That Christmas my gift was a three horsepower outboard motor. In the spring, however, my father thought that the motor made the pram unstable, so he traded it towards a new twelve foot skiff.
At the same time he bought for my brother a sixteen foot speedboat in a vibrant blue, complete with windshield, steering wheel, and front seat controls. It was a beauty! By the spring of 1959 Jay was driving, and we made quite the caravan moving to the beach for the summer. My father in ole faithful, the ’51 Buick, towing the JALAHOJE ; followed by my mother in her sporty ’55 Buick Special (tri-tone black and red with a white roof), towing Jay’s speedboat; and Jay bringing up the rear in his ’53 Chevy, towing my skiff. Those were the days.
The following summer, 1960, my brother left for basic training at the Coast Guard Academy in Cape May, New Jersey, and his speedboat passed on to me. My dog Scotty and I became the lords (well, lord and lady) of Salt Pond and its smaller sister, Potter’s Pond, which was accessible through ‘the gut’ under that lifesaving bridge. For hours on end we were out on the water in that flashy craft, where I found a world of solace in the solitude that I never had at home, thanks to my father’s violent drinking binges.
My last summer in Jerusalem was 1961, after which my parents sold the house on the beach along with the little house, in the process of raising money to buy a business in Connecticut. They kept the cottage on Brecka Drive, but it was never same. My mother died four years later, and when my father retired he lived in that cottage until his death in 1982.
My last visit to Jerusalem was in 1999, seventeen years after selling the cottage and moving to San Francisco. It was just a quick look but much had changed. The beach had eroded so drastically that the oceanfront stairs on the cottages to the east of ours were lapped by the waves at high tide, and our former house, set farther back, was almost completely obscured behind a mountainous sand dune. The road, graded to about two feet above the sand in 1955, was now a foot or so below and covered each year during winter storms.
Sadly, the lessons learned from Hurricane Carol forty-five years earlier all seemed to have been for naught. New construction no longer incorporated the wisdom of stilts, and many of the cottages that had been raised were subsequently enclosed at the ground level creating more living space. No longer were people leaving a passageway for a vicious sea to seethe harmlessly underneath their homes. How easily people forget.
At least I didn’t own that cottage anymore. Oh, no! No more hurricanes for me. By then I owned a house in San Francisco, high on a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean, less than two miles from the San Andreas Fault!