It’s a perfect
summer day
IN MISQUAMICUT,
late in August of 2019, and there isn’t a soul here to see it.
Vehicles fill the lots between Winnapaug and Weekapaug
roads, but nobody’s on the street. With every blow of the
breeze, the moment feels more like a Don Henley song — and
a premonition.
Then, over there: Signs of life. A pair of lanky green martians
materialize between two buildings and bobble through a parking
lot carpeted with crushed white shells. Aliens at the beach?
Sure; Misquamicut has always had a surreality about it.
On closer inspection, it’s just a couple of boys with inflatables
slung over their shoulders — wins from a nearby arcade, no
doubt. We’re the only ones on the sidewalk, the kids, their
martians and me. The sky above us is almost translucent, and
the cool air feigns protection from a beating sun. The boys
cross Atlantic Avenue, trading playful shoves all the way.
Opposite them, the siren sounds of summer transcend the
white noise of wind and waves. I weave through a lonesome
cluster of red-roofed buildings to a patio at the edge of a greenblue
sea. Everybody, it turns out, is at the Windjammer.
Scores upon scores of ladies and gentlemen, some in their
swimsuits, sip drinks beneath blue Sam Adams patio umbrellas.
The lucky ones, with pink cocktails in-hand, hovered long
enough to claim colorful Adirondack chairs — complete with
cup holders! — and sun their legs on the bar’s cement seawall.
Seagulls pace on flattened boulders while a sliver of private
beach hosts sunbathers in fold-out chairs, their toothy grins
catching the reflection of the open ocean. That part — the tonic
of the sea, its transformative effect on | | CONTINUED ON PAGE 88
CHARLES TREFES, THIRD-GENERATION OWNER OF ATLANTIC BEACH PARK, POSES IN THE CAROUSEL BUILDING.
54 RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY l JULY 2020