We spent at least one week there during the third week of every June for eight consecutive years. Until Hugo came and destroyed the Tip Top. And razed the dune.

We learned about it from Rich Lovering. His parents had a home south of the South Causeway, one lot south of the Pelican Inn. As a youth, Rich spent his summers there.

I first tried to get in the Sea View Inn, but it wouldn't take children under the age of three. The Sea View referred me to its competitor, the Tip Top. I talked to Sis Kelly, the owner. She had a vacancy for the next week, but she tried to discourage us. "All there is to do is to eat and go on the beach. If you want tennis or golf or shopping, go to Hilton Head or Myrtle Beach. No nightlife except to go to bed and listen to the ocean."

"We are just plain beach and shabby accommodations. Not even a Holiday Inn. No locks on the doors. No air conditioning. No television. No radio. No telephone. Quiet period for two hours every afternoon. Musty beds that sink in the middle. Common baths and toilettes. Old pine floors that we wash down with clorox."

Sis' discouragement became a challenge: What did she mean this wasn't the place for us; we'd show her. So we packed our bags, and the three of us, Susan, two-year old Meredith, and I went to Pawleys Island, South Carolina. Specifically to the Tip Top Inn.

I remember it well. A bright sunny day. Clear, deep blue sky. And about 1:15 in the afternoon when we arrived. Dinner was at 1:30.

"Shabby" was accurate. Susan didn't want to unpack the car. I had to use my best salesmanship to get her to stay for that first dinner.

We ate on the ground floor of the main building. "Main building" is misleading. More of a house. The ground floor which you entered from the ocean-side with three floors of bedrooms above.

I don't remember what we had to eat. Probably southern cooking. Perhaps shrimp. It must have been good, though, because Susan at least consented to allow Meredith and me to run out on the beach after dinner.

It was low tide. The beach was a wonderful white sand. More granular than others along the Atlantic coast because it never packed down like cement. It was soft and warm and bright.

Being protective parents, we tied a bonnet on Meredith's head. The bonnet had been a gift from Lee and Virginia Shield. A prized possession of two-year old Meredith. With her first glimpse of water and her first real freedom after a day-and-a-half in the car, Meredith went running as fast as she could toward the water.

She reached the water, ankle deep. A wave came in. The breeze blew. Her face got wet. Her bonnet flew off. Meredith screamed. My protective reaction was to rescue my daughter. I picked her up. The bonnet disappeared in the waves, being carried out to "God only knows where".

Tears flowed from Meredith. Her prized possession lost at sea. A lesson was learned: Anticipation is sometimes better than the real thing.

I did prevail, however. With Meredith soaking, we had to unpack. We stayed in Hazel's cottage. A small four-room cottage next to the main building. Two rooms on the first floor. Two rooms on the second floor. You entered the rooms on the first floor through a porch which went across the ocean-side of the cottage. You had to climb exterior wooden stairs to get to the second floor. Like the first, you entered the rooms through a porch that went across the ocean-side of the second floor. The second-floor porch, like the first floor's, was shared by the occupants of both second-floor rooms.

As luck would have it, we shared the second floor with a retired couple. The Shacklefords were from Greenville, South Carolina: Lib and Coop (short for Cooper). They tolerated us with Southern hospitality, as did everyone else. We, after all, were the anomalies: Northerners. Everyone else was from the South: Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. Tennessee was considered North. Ohio was considered foreign.

The ocean wasn't trusted by Meredith again that summer. We had to buy a small, vinyl wading pool. The type you fill by blowing it up with air. We would fill it with ocean water. Pull it away from the water on the beach. Meredith would wade for hours in the safety of the pool. No waves to steal her possessions or get her face unexpectedly wet.

We did learn a lot that summer. A respect for the ocean and both its calm and its fury. A new respect for the South, Southern hospitality and Southern culture. We learned how to get sand out of our beds with a terry-cloth towel. We began to learn how to read the waves to body surf (Coop, despite his age, was the best body surfer I have ever seen; he could ride any wave). We learned the simple joys of summer at the beach: The tides; the waves; sunrise and sunset; the ocean breeze; the marsh breeze; the smell of the salt-air from the ocean; the smell of the brine from the salt-water marsh. We learned you don't need locks on the doors, air conditioning, television, radio or telephones.

We learned we wanted to go back.

And we went back. Eight consecutive years. Every June. Once in September. All but two visits were at the Tip Top. The other two were at the Lovering's.

The second year Kristen was a baby. We stayed with the Moore's at Lovering's. At night when she was restless, I would put her in the Gerry carrier and walk her on the beach. With the rhythm of the waves mixed with the feel of the breeze, she would gently fall asleep. Out like a light for the rest of the night. Meredith slept with Tracy, who was a year younger, in a second-floor bedroom. Kristen slept with us in a crib in the only first-floor bedroom.

September was as pleasant as June. It was quieter, however, because only the "locals" were there during the week.

The island was 3-1/2 miles long. By running up and back in both directions I could do my daily seven miles. During this second year, I was training for a marathon. I had to repeat this up-and-back running 3 times to do 21 miles. To stretch it to 23, I had to run over one of the causeways and back. In eight years, I learned every square inch of that 3-1/2-mile road. I also learned the causeways. I learned the back roads by All-Saints Episcopal Church to Litchfield. Several summers later when I started biking, I learned Litchfield as well as U.S. Route 17 to Georgetown.

Our third year we returned to the Lovering's for a week and then to the Tip Top for a week. At the Tip Top, Kristen, who was just beginning to talk, picked up a Southern "Hi y'all". It got attention which she loved. Although the Southerners found it cute, it got little attention when she returned to the North. With no attention, it was soon forgotten.

My favorite meal was the Sunday turkey dinner. Fresh turkey. Mashed potatoes made with cream and butter. Lima beans, better known as "butter beans" in the South. The lima beans were Meredith's favorite her first year. They became Kristen's that third year.

Southern beef stew was another favorite, except it was like Yankee pot roast (but it would never be called that). Blackeyed peas. Pecan pie. Lemon tart pie. Shrimp creole. Deviled crab. She-crab soup. Real southern fried chicken.

Breakfast alternated between scrambled eggs followed by the world's best pancakes with real maple syrup on Saturday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday; and poached eggs with freshly baked bread, biscuits or muffins on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday.

At nights we were on our own. But for the girls, we wouldn't have been hungry. With them, we would travel to Murrell's Inlet for seafood, to one of several restaurants on Route 17 in Pawleys, or to Georgetown.

The best place was the Rice Paddy in Georgetown. Southern crab cakes. Whole soft-shell crab. Grilled tuna steak. Local shrimp.

But the best of Pawleys were the people at the Tip Top. The same people during the same week every year. We became a family. The McLeod's who were a navy family. Nora, her husband, the Presbyterian minister, and their two boys. He was transferred to New York City. She entered Columbia medical school. We lived with them each summer into her residency.

Lawyers, engineers, pollsters, professors, ministers, nurses, dentists, a federal district court judge, teachers, and students. Babies, toddlers, pre-teens, teens, college students, young parents, old parents, retirees, widow and widowers. Nothing in common except our love of the ocean and a growing mutual interest in each other. The "same-time-next-year" had a real meaning to us.

Our experiences expanded from the ocean to the marsh. We learned to crab, using string, chicken backs and a net. The greatest thrill for the girls was to catch a dozen blue, soft shell crabs, putting them in a bucket until time to quit, and then dumping on the dock. We would scurry to avoid their pinchers as they chose between our toes and returning to the marsh.

Nothing is as peaceful as watching the egrets come to rest for the night as the sun sets over the marsh.

We would go to the north and south inlets at either end of the island. At low tide we could wade across, being careful of the currents which could, if you slipped, carry you out to sea. At the north end, quick sand was another danger. As the population grew, the north end became private property which we could no longer invade. After several storms, the south inlet with the resulting erosion became too deep to wade across. But we still have our memories.

No matter what happen during 51 weeks of each year, we had one constant. Our week at Pawleys Island. Except for Meredith's first experience with the breeze, the waves, getting her face wet and loosing her bonnet, our experiences during our one-week-per year were every bit as good as anticipations during the other 51.