Balboita is still in the hospital...
For those of you dying to know...the best-case scenario for splash-down is Friday. Nice marine insurance inspector showed up yesterday -- in record time -- wrote a report, and the work is underway.
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The accidental locals...
That's us. Temporary Southport residents living in a B&B for the last week and counting. I usually avoid B&Bs because they're full of chotskies (tchotchkes) that I'm afraid to turn around in the rooms.
Chotskies
However, we have a little apartment with a kitchenette and no chotskies. Just necessities like coffee maker and microwave.
B&Bs are like funeral homes. In both cases, the buildings don't depend on people to exist and live on even after the guests have left. And then..... there are the flowers. Everywhere. (This is what happens to your thinking if you watch "Six Feet Under," a TV comedy series about running a funeral home.)
Living at a B&B makes you feel like a kid with a nice family taking care of you. Big breakfast ready for you at 8:30, drop into the kitchen to get some orange juice or cream for coffee.
Here are some pix of Riverside Inn.
As you can see, no people.
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Dinner is across the street.....
At Oliver's, which looks like this from the outside.
And like this on the inside.
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Guess who's coming to breakfast...
You'd think the guests would give you something to talk about behind their backs. Not at all. They're all very normal. So disappointing.
At wine and cheese time last night, we got into a discussion with a couple from Bay Ridge in Annapolis, who love old sports cars. Here is their Jaguar which they drove here to Riverside.
This got me thinking about my 1967 Volvo P1800 that I drove when I first got married.
Soooooo, something finally got on my bucket list. I wouldn't mind driving around Annapolis in this. Probably would cost me about $25,000. (Balboita, watch out)
Old sports cars are another world. I learned there are three kinds: barn cars, drivable cars and precious somethings that get carted around to shows.
Barn cars look like this and can be gotten for $3,000 to $8,000, and may never be drivable.
(I exaggerate, of course)
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Channeling classic 1964 Coast Guard fashion...
A little over 34 miles off the coast of Southport is a kind of B&B called Frying Pan Tower. There you can rent rooms and get an experience to talk about during happy hour. The tower originally served as a light house on the Frying Pan Shoals off the coast.
All eight rooms are water view and have such amenities as lights and running water. Cost is $598 for two nights, three days, giving you enough time to kill off any of your fellow guests. (Note: you have to arrange for transportation by boat or helicopter.)
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For those who have been to Southport...
Some oldies....
Riverside Motel (where did the water go?)
Das beach
Das waterfront
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That's all folks...
Still, the notion of U-boat crews routinely landing and moving undetected among the civilian population seems highly implausible at this point.
The stories, however, do point to the emotions felt by many Americans during the first six months of World War II, during what author
James T. Cheatham called “the Atlantic Turkey Shoot.”
From January to July 1942, some 347 civilian vessels were sunk or severely damaged by German submarine attacks off the U.S. Atlantic Coast. The threat was severe, since oil pipelines generally did not extend east of the Mississippi before the war — meaning that most of the Eastern Seaboard’s supply of gasoline and petroleum products was shipped by vulnerable oil tankers.
The Germans’ offensive was made easier because U.S. officials were slow to enforce blackouts along the East Coast. (U-boats were reputed to use the brightly lit
Lumina pavilion at
Wrightsville Beach as a
For a brief period, the U-boats seemed invincible. No wonder people thought the German crew members could come ashore and wander around with impunity — even take in a movie.
U-boat losses fell sharply after July 1942, when blackouts were finally imposed and “dim-outs” were ordered for cars and small boats in coastal areas. In July 1942, U.S. 74 and 76 were temporarily closed near the coast, out of concern that submarines were “assisted by lights from motor vehicles,” according to the Associated Press. Such restrictions were not relaxed until well into 1943.
