Stuart Beach - Just Not The Same

This past May, my sister Susan and I visited Stuart, Florida, where we own a condo we inherited from our mother Mary. It has been 6 1/2 years since I was last there, and while much of the town seemed the same, there were several major changes, including a large condo building being constructed along the St. Lucie River in Old Town Stuart, and a major change to Stuart Beach. Back when we used to visit our mother, we would head to Stuart Beach each day. Susan would take her boogie board down to the beach and head out on it towards Africa, while my mother - alternating between reading the Stuart News and watching and worrying about Susan's safety - and I would sit in one of the shelters. The photograph on the left shows Susan with her beloved boogie board (which I callously threw away when we started renting out the condo) sitting next to my mother in one of those shelters back in 1996, along with a few locals enjoying the day. It was a very pleasant way to spend a few hours.

However, this past May I discovered that all but one of those shelters have been removed to put in a cafe, with only a few Adirondack chairs available to sit in, as seen in the photograph of Susan on the right that I took on that most recent trip. Which makes it hard to enjoy the view without sitting in the sun on the beach. Even the one remaining shelter has been set up as a table for that damn cafe. You just can't see the ocean if you are sitting in one of those Adirondack chairs, unless you stand up. Do I sound like some old geezer complaining about how nothing is like the "good old days" anymore? That's exactly what I thought.

On the bright side, the beach is still there, and the boardwalk leading to it seems to be the same, as seen in the photograph on the left of me posing next to it. And I suppose that it would not be all that horrible to buy a copy of the Stuart News (and God knows how much a paper copy of it costs these days), order a coffee from that cafe, and if it is early enough, grab that remaining shelter and hang there for a while, before heading for a walk along the ocean to the House of Refuge, an historic structure from 1876. When we finally take back the condo next August, that is exactly what I plan to do, and perhaps just accept all the changes that come along and deal with it. Or not - complaining about change can be fun, after all.