Change, Plus Change

We were at a Point Roberts party this weekend when I had a brief conversation with someone I had just met who told me that, although he now lived in Vancouver, he used to live in Point Roberts.

“What a loss,” I said, extending my sympathies, as it were.
He didn’t seem so sure although he acknowledged that “it was a nice house.”
“Where was it?” I asked.
“Down by the boondocks,” he responded.
“Well, the whole place is pretty much the boondocks,” I countered, asking for something more precise.
“No, The Boondocks,” he explained, making it clear that it was a place name, not a description.
“Where was that?” I asked.
“Down at the foot of South Beach.”
“But I live near South Beach…and there’s nothing named that there. Or at least not for the past fourteen years.”
“God! Has it been that long?” And we went on to talk about what had replaced The Boondocks, specifically a restaurant named the South Beach House, run by Max and Diane who, apparently, also ran The Boondocks.

I’ve never heard of The Boondocks. Although I’ve eaten a dozen times or more at the South Beach House, and have talked some to Max and Diane and their grown children as well, nobody has ever mentioned The Boondocks. And that’s not because it wasn’t a wonderful place, as this fellow assured me it was, but because life in Point Roberts is very transitory. People, and places, come and go. Well that’s true anyplace, of course, but here it is the more notable because there are so few people, so few places. And the places do occasionally come but mostly they seem to go. Since we’ve been here, The Breakers (a bar beloved by apparently everyone in Vancouver) has gone, as has Blackberries clothing store, the prom dress shop, The Secret Garden (tourist gifts), The Roof House Restaurant, and the Maple Beach general store. What has come includes a kind of dollar store called McFrugals, and The Big Maple Studio and Gallery which has mostly hand-made goods of various sorts, and the Café Cappana. What has come AND gone includes The White House (a thrift/recycle place), Christie’s (interior décor), the Maple Beach Restaurant, Sunflowers (another craft gallery), and Brewster’s Restaurant. So just add The Boondocks and all the other places that gave it up before I got here to that list.

Of course, there are lots of places that were here before we got here and will probably be here after we leave. Perhaps the most likely of those stayers to keep on staying is The Liberty Wine Shop, a purveyor of fine wines, a place I never even remember is here, probably because I am not a consumer of fine wines. I was reading an article in the New York Times today about some guy whose house was ‘under water’ (meaning it was now worth less than he owed on it) and he was talking about how he was holding tight right now. However, he said, there were limits: he was not about to give up his $24 bottle of Petit Surrah. Well, I just stand astounded and astonished. But that’s why The Liberty Wine Shop will probably always be here in Point Roberts.

I have less tolerance for change than I used to, of course, because I’m an old person. I think that we all have in our genes only so much ability to cope with change and by one’s 8th decade, the ability is likely to be running low. So, I’d like the places that are here to hang on for awhile in order to outlast the comings and goings of the current people, especially me. The old timers talk about Ben’s Store as if it had closed a few weeks ago, not a few decades ago and doubtless if I last another ten years, I’ll not only be talking about Brewster’s the way that fellow was talking about The Boondocks, but also talking to people who don’t know what I’m talking about. Well, la plus ca change, etc.