It was wonderful. Just wonderful, a Sears Island conversation

We used to camp on Sears Island beginning back in 1958 when I was about eight years old. We’d stay for about two weeks in summer, then go home, then we’d come back and stay another couple of weeks, all through the summer. Usually it was my Aunt Polly and her children, or my mother, sometimes both, and my sister Nancy, and my brothers Eddie and Doug.

We’d have tents and camp out on the right side where the big oak tree is, because of the fresh water. On that side, there’s a stream that we used to get our water from. Also, I think there was more shade there. And the water was warmer.

We were right close to the causeway. Two-, three-hundred feet from where the causeway is now, but this was before the causeway was in, when the island was connected to the mainland at low tide by a sandbar. There was like a four-hour tide. When we drove over, we’d have to go a certain way, or we’d get stuck. A lot of times we had to come back across in the rowboat. 

We would take all our food down that we weren’t getting off the shore. We were clamming and getting crabs and getting the goose tongue greens—which look just like a goose tongue. They’re all over the shore. You can eat them raw or you can cook them. We used to make holes in the sand, line it with seaweed, and put the clams that we dug and crabs and mussels and goose tongue greens and cover it over. Then we’d put a fire on the top of it and just let it go. A few hours later we’d clean off the debris and coals and it’s all cooked. Or we’d get sticks and whittle the ends out and stick our hot dogs on the sticks and cook them on the campfire. We’d have marshmallows and cook those on our sticks on the campfire. Lots of times we cleaned our plates in the sand and washed them in the ocean.

We spent days swimming, sunbathing, skipping rocks across the water, chasing each other around and eating a lot. Just stuff kids did. We collected driftwood and had great, big, huge campfires and told scary stories at night. No TV, not even a radio. We just entertained ourselves. Oh it was wonderful. Just wonderful.

At the beginning of summer, when I’d go down there and I’d go barefoot, I couldn’t hardly stand the rocks and shells, but by the end of the summer, I could run across that beach with no problem. Once, I fell asleep in the sun and when I woke up, I got a hell of a sunburn. I was as red as a lobster. That was not fun.

We used to bring in our water to drink. Maybe we also drank out of that stream because back then they didn’t say too much about drinking out of springs.

My mom and aunt loved it. We kids would run all over the island and they didn’t have to worry about us. Aunt Polly taught me to swim. First thing she did was teach me to float. They never worried. When we went swimming, it was usually around the adults. The cold didn’t bother us a bit. We’d go swimming from morning tonight. The only thing is they wouldn’t let us go swimming for an hour after we ate. That’s the only rule we had. And we could stay up at night and lay around the campfire. Sears Island was our home. It’s part of our heritage. I’ve walked all through that place.

We never saw any other campfires. But it’s a big island. I heard that down on the other side there were a few people camping, but it was always just us with big campfires going. Later, when they got the causeway in and people could drive there, everybody and their brother was camping out down there and they were camping all over the place. They even brought campers in. It’s too bad that they stopped that. But I guess they had some rowdy people that didn’t clean up afterwards. I don’t see why they can’t have outhouses and a section for people to camp out.

We camped out there from like 1958 to like 1962, when Mom remarried. I was eleven. After, we went down for day trips. Then, when I hit fifteen, my sister and her husband and my boyfriend and I would go camping out down there. But just on the weekends, here and there, not every weekend. There was nobody ever down there, because you had to be in and out in four hours for the tide. My sister got stuck over there once, her and her husband. The tide was coming in and they got their little car stuck in the sand. I was with them, and we got it unstuck, but boy, I’m telling you, it was a little bit scary.

I remember my first boyfriend and I walked all the way around the island. On the way back, we came through the middle of the island, and found this big patch of rhubarb. I mean, this thing was huge and tall. I thought, “Man, I’d like to get some of that rhubarb.” I never could find it again! I looked and looked and I could not find that rhubarb for nothing. That was a hot day. We didn’t take any water with us or nothing, and I’m like, I’m not going to do that again, but I’ve probably been around it six or seven times since.

Every so many years, my friends and I will take a day and walk completely around the island. Depending on the tide, if you go the wrong way, you’ll have to go up over the banks to get the ledges. We usually kind of figure it out which way we’re going to go so that we don’t have to climb those ledges.

When I was older, we did a lot of fishing over there. Striper fishing, mackerel fishing, also canoeing and kayaking. I had a sailboat one year. I put it out on the right-hand side of the island and lost my anchor. We saw the boat going down into the cove and went after it. We never got the anchor, but we got the sailboat back.

Once, after my husband died, I was hanging out onshore with the family and Aunt Polly’s kids and my boyfriend Jeff. They were spending the night onshore, and Jeff and I spent it on my boat. In the morning I woke up hearing these kids giggling, walking right around the boat. I didn’t know it was that close! When we rode out there the night before, it seemed like miles. But boy, when we woke up, they were just walking around the boat.

Right up until two years ago, we spent the Fourth of July there. That was on the other side, by the apple tree. I don’t know why we switched over to that side, but we did. Before she passed, Grammy often joined us. We would have forty, fifty people over there. There were a lot of us

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