COLUMN -- Island getaway still a chance to kick back, tell lies with the locals

Pioneer Press
Jan. 05, 2003

Excerpt --

I don't spear fish and lobster or dive for conch as well as I once did, nor half as well as my teenage son does, but youthful hubris has been replaced by a fatherly pride watching him dive. The conch are not as big as they once were, but it's not the size of your conch that counts, but whether or not you still enjoy diving.

I no longer press up and over the side into a boat — I swim to the stern and climb the ladder. I can afford both the indignity of the climb and the cost to rent a boat with a ladder.

For this aging traveler Hope Town is a metaphor on a myth. It's a testament to man's irrepressible drive to improve his lot, even in paradise — and yet, it's still a place where an old man can sit by the sea, drink a little beer and tell a few lies, and nostalgically "dream of young lions roaring on the beach."

Read the column . . . .