When I was growing up, I was never too far from the ocean. I was born in Portsmouth, Virginia at the Navy hospital. Within a year or so, my mother, sister and I moved to Kure Beach, while my father was stationed on the USS Nicholson, which was based out of Charleston, SC. In Kure Beach, we lived in one of the cottages at my Aunt Faye and Uncle Norris's motel, the Sandcastle Inn. One of the highlights of this location was that we were one block away from the beach-- and the Kure Pier. I don't recall much from those years, but little things stand out in my mind...azaleas blooming, the time I dropped a really large conch shell on the comode and shattered it (sorry, Uncle Norris!), the occasional trip to Jubilee Park, running barefoot across the hot asphalt to cross the only tangible barrier between me and the beach.

I recall very little of the Pier from my earliest days, save my mother and sister, Twyla, telling me that I really wouldn't fall through the cracks and drown. Not exactly a comforting memory, one might think, but it is one of the few places that I really hold dear. We moved around for most of my childhood, as Navy families do, and I remained close to the coast until I was about thirteen years old, and Dad took a detached duty position with the NROTC unit at the University of North Carolina. I desperately missed the ocean, especially after having just spent the entire summer with my Grandpa Hinshaw, clamming, fishing, getting up too early, going to bed too late and doing all the things that boys do. Grandpa and I didn't spend any summers together after that year, and that made me miss the place even more.

To this day, when I'm ailing, hurting, ill or just down, I go there and it never fails to make me better. In fact, I think I'll go there today...