Now I know it sounds pretentious when I talk about "my grandparent's riverhouse," but it's really nothing like what you're thinking. More of a swamp house, so not so high class. :) It's an old house along the Aucilla River in north Florida, right next to the St Marks Wildlife Refuge (that's on the other side of the river). So, really, it is located smack in the middle of a swamp, but just happens to be next to the river :)
Mandalay was a hunting lodge back in the 1930s, when there weren't roads leading out to it, but a small train line. It's an old 9 bedroom house, with two big porches and no central air, and a big dining room, and an enormouse kitchen. It's been a sort of time share since at least the 1970s, when my grandparents got involved with it. Nothing big and official with options to swap weeks at Cancun, but just five families rotating weeks at this old house on the river.
It's a great place to grow up! Grandmother would make sure that when my branch of the family came down to visit each summer, we'd have at least part of our stay down there. It wouldn't always line up with fishing seasons, or scalloping, but we'd always have plenty of time on the boat, and swimming off the dock, and just playing at the house. It's an old house, as I've said, and for years they didn't have anything but a tiny little 13 in black and white TV there (I do remember hearing about Hong Kong being turned back over to China on that TV). But that's a great thing for active kids in summer - it forces us to go and play outside instead!
One of my favorite pictures from Mandalay - our supplies table! More kinds of sunscreen and bugspray than you can shake a stick at! We're a fair people spending lots of time in FL (not a one amongst us who tans easily!), so we have to protect ourselves!
This hammock is a right of passage, I believe. The porches at Mandalay are wide enough that they can hold a hammock stretched across them. It's a nice place to watch the river, read, sleep, and stay away from the bugs and enjoy the ceiling fan's breeze. There's pictures of me and Anne and Dad all piled in there when we were very tiny, of me and Anne when we were in grade school and high school, and of now when we're not so tiny. :) This picture was from March (it's very rare to see pictures of me at Mandalay when I'm not in summer clothes). Zach and I stopped in FL to visit family as we moved cross-country, and were able to spend a day down there. So, yes, a picture of him in the hammock too.
Mandalay also has some intensely sad and painful memories for me, but those memories are so different from everything else I have in my mind about the place, that it's almost a second category in my mind, not connected with Mandalay at all. When I think about it though, it just means another reason why this place remains so important to me.
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