Point Roberts Recidivism

It would be unlikely, if you just came upon Point Roberts yourself, to find that you had an old friend living here, too. The law of averages just seem way too strong for that. And, indeed, we didn’t ever see a soul we knew when we came here 13 years ago. And then, one day, Ed got an email from one of his closest friends at Cal Tech, an educational experience that came to a conclusion in 1956. A college pal who had been one of the wedding party at Ed’s wedding (or maybe the other way round), sent a message to report that he had been reading some kind of Cal Tech alumna phosphorescence and had noticed that Ed Park had left RAND and was now living in Point Roberts, WA. Interestingly enough, the old friend noted, he and his wife had recently bought a house in Point Roberts. So there they were: two old Cal Tech boys living in one of if not the only one of America’s most remote communities that isn’t in Alaska.

The couple had been living in Seattle, doing engineering work, and when the retirement date came, they drifted up here because their daughter had met a guy who lived here and they had come up to visit her and were charmed by the unusualness of the locale and the low prices. Next thing, it’s another house for them. Unlike us, they settled in on the ocean front facing the rising sun. One of his first tasks was to take a picture of the sunrise every morning. I, of course, have never seen a sunrise here and not only because I’m such a slug-a-bed. We live in the middle of that aforementioned woods and the disc as well as the rays of the sun are pretty much obscured for us. I’m just glad I can tell that it’s light.

The old friend loaned me a series of sunrise pictures and I had a good time trying to find a way to make a quilt that was like any one of those pictures. Not all that successful, but the learning was worth the try. And we went to the movies with them now and then and had dinner together. The usual. I accompanied him to a couple of community group meetings as he made the inevitable and largely unsuccessful attempt to become community-ized. But he and his wife were as pleased with their arrangments here as we were and they settled in to remodeling, gardening, and teaching computers to seniors (of which he was one), as well as the rest of what passes for life’s small amusements here.

And then, two years ago in the winter, an unfortunately high tide combined with a villainously vigorous wind from east, and the next thing you know, the friends’ newly remodeled ground floor and garage found itself in a matter of minutes with five feet of sea water. Many of those at the peninsula edges were similarly discomfited and while misery may love company, it certainly doesn’t make it any less miserable. Ed helped them clean things up and out and they pretty much restored their living arrangements over several months, including half a dozen new appliances that had received more salt than was consistent with further function. We thought the worst was over for them, but then we heard from another friend that their house was for sale and they were moving to New Mexico, a state with no known ocean front and perhaps inadequate water for drinking, let alone flooding. And in a few weeks, they packed up and disappeared from America’s strangest little place.

That was about 18 months ago. Yesterday, Ed received an email from that old friend. They are looking to move back to Point Roberts, buy a little place where they’d spend part of the year or maybe more than that. He was writing because he had heard there was a house for sale on our little cul de sac of a street (a street with 10 houses, counting both sides), and a street that lies almost at the center point of the Point. Not only a center point, we are also a high point. So maybe they’ll come back and give us another try. We inquired around about the house, only to find that the basement of the house had flooded this winter: leaking water heater? High ground water? Don’t know. Ed reported the finding to his friend who concluded that it sounded like nothing a sump pump couldn’t fix.

What a place! The Department of Homeland Security at the border and acts of God in our basement...and still we keep coming back.