Alligator Point

When Tom and I left Greensboro, we had no plan for our immediate (or long term for that matter) future.  During the three plus years that we fought in the legal system to keep what Tom had worked so hard for, we always thought we would win because justice was on our side.  We didn't know that the system is not about justice, it is about the law.  Laws can be and often are manipulated, via interpretation, legal skills and, sometimes,corruption. 
So the March afternoon we left Greensboro for good - our beautiful home no longer legally ours, our hard fought battle lost to dark forces, Tom looked at me and said, "beach or mountains?"  I responded, "beach", and we drove to an off-season motel at the Outer Banks.  We stayed there a couple of days, reeling, disbelieving and still shaken from the ugliness and violence that ended Tom's career and the Addison Hill chapter of our lives. 
Reality, in the form of no money, soon set in and we drove to Chattanooga, where Shelley and Donny lived and had offered their basement apartment until we figured out what to do.  I got a job taking church directory pictures for a company which sent me to small Church of God churches, mostly in rural Alabama.  Tom and I made a good team, the pay was good and Peter traveled with us and helped much of that summer.  It was before digital, though, and the equipment we used was heavy and awkward.  My broken left arm was not completely healed and Tom's heart was bad, so we decided to move in another direction that fall when Peter returned to McCallie for his junior year.

"I think we should find a house on the beach," Tom kept saying, only to be scoffed at by me, using the same old argument - "we can't afford it." Duh.  Our income, from various sources, totaled less than $700 a month. But we packed up our van and our two Jack Russells and drove to the Gulf Coast, where we found a little shack on stilts we could rent from Labor Day to Memorial Day for $425 a month.  At high tide, the soothing, healing ocean rushed up under our deck.  Tom worked on his book and took long walks on deserted beaches.  I set out crab traps, enjoyed encounters with dolphins and photographed all I saw.  The name of the town was Panacea.  And for nine months, it was.

After Memorial Day we got Peter from school and drove him to Vail Colorado, where he  had a summer job working with his brother, Thomas, who lived there and managed a restaurant.  Since we had no where else to go, we decided to stay out west until time to take Peter back to Chattanooga.  After a couple of weeks following leads to rentals in our price range (one place turned out to be - no kidding - a bus with a stove and sink in it) we arrived in Montrose, a small town in southwest Colorado.  We attended the Methodist church on Sunday morning and that led to our meeting Doris Gregory, a well known local writer who moved to Teluride in the nearby Rocky Mountains every summer and needed someone to house sit her Montrose home. 
Montrose is within an hours drive of five national parks.  Tom got to use his pass often that summer.

Labor Day 1995 found us back in Panacea, where we had made arrangements for an even cheaper rental, still right on the water, for the winter.  We had only been there a couple of weeks when hurricane Opal struck. Along with other residents of Alligator Point, we were evacuated.  When were allowed back, four days later, we found our little house tilting, but still standing.  So we moved back in - after all, we still had three weeks left of the month's rent we had paid.  Our landlord assured us that it was safe, but I felt we were slipping right into the ocean that I loved.  I called the county building inspector, who understandably was busy after a major hurricane, and asked him to come out and make sure we were safe.  He refused to come, but asked me which house it was.  When I told him, he said, "Lady, don't walk, run away from that house".  Turns out it had been condemned even before Opal.
So that was the end of our beach bum days.  The first house we rented now rents for $675-$1,200 a week year round.  The beaches are no longer deserted.  We were blessed greatly by the time there we were given.  And who but Tom would have made it happen?