Mystery Solved

Many years ago, I told the story about the only three-way symmetrical stack interchange in the world, which turned out to be one of many three-way symmetrical stack interchanges in the world.  So that mystery was solved due to a drive.

This week, I solved another, thanks to the Internet.

When I was eight years old, I went on the camping trip with the trumpet-playing boy.  That camping trip was to a beach.  Things I remember about the beach: There were horseshoe crabs.  Some kids got stung by jellyfish. We got ices one night after playing mini golf.  It rained really hard right after we set up the tents so we got to snuggle down in our sleep bags and read which the counselors ran from tent to tent wearing trash bags as rain ponchos to drop off snacks of peanuts and raisins.  The counselors sang, “You Are the Sun, You Are the Rain” by Lionel Richie.  And a staircase down to the sand from the bathrooms.

That staircase down to the sand has bothered me for 18 years.

I thought the beach we went to was Chincoteague.  It was the only semi-local beach that fit the beach in my mind.  I could even point to the place where we played mini golf and the campgrounds where we stayed.  But there was no staircase down to the beach.  The parking lot was flat with sand meeting asphalt.  The bathhouses were portables set up on the other side of the lot, away from the beach.  So it must have been another beach, but which other beach?  I would loop through everything I remembered again and again, always getting hung up about the staircase.  Everything fit except that.

I’m in a Chincoteague Facebook group and someone posted a picture this week of THE STAIRCASE IN MY BRAIN.  The copy: “Found this picture of the old bathhouses.  Circa 1997” and then a picture of the stairs.  It was like spending 18 years in a slot machine, spinning around, and finally landing on three cherries.  They must have removed the stairs and bathhouses some time between 1997 and 2001 when we started going each summer to Chincoteague.

Counting the “mango and orange” mystery that I solved in 2015, this counts as the third big life mystery that I solved completely by accident.  This is when I love the Internet.