I can't even begin to tell you how much fun we have been having selling Lorri's art at The Beach House here in Rincon. Besides all of the beautiful sunsets, every night we get to meet awesome new people, and hang out with many of our favorite locals, not to mention our adopted island family on the staff.
Since not a night goes by that we don't get the same questions about us, I thought it might be a good time to tell a bit more of our story here. Not that we are important, or significant, but everyone has a story, and ours started... well, a long time ago...
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| The main street of Williamson, Iowa. Home to the Williamson Tavern and the world famous giant Papa Burger... and little else, the town boasts about 100 residents, but was once a coal mining boom town in the 1930s. |
When I (Buzz) was a kid, I used to spend a lot of time in the tiny town of Williamson, Iowa. There wasn't much of anything to the place, but my father's best friend lived there, and they spent most weekends together drinking beer or hunting or fishing, or wasting time or cutting wood. They had grown up next door to each other in the 1940's and 50's in Chariton a few miles away and were basically inseparable. So when the friend married into a family in the town of Williamson, we all sort of became like family over time, and practically everyone in the little town was related somehow.
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Not a mule, or the actual girl in question, but your get the general idea.
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So, I grew up running the streets of Williamson, and as there always is, there was a girl. She was the niece of my dad's best friend and we were born just four months apart. While I ran the town like a wild child with the other boys, she was not allowed to leave the yard. So, in protest, I suppose, she would throw mud pies at me whenever I ran by and yell at me. For my part, I would stick my tongue out and run, but always watching her over my shoulder curiously. She was the prettiest girl I had ever seen.
She wasn't allowed to leave her yard, as I mentioned...unless she was riding a mule. Her father raised jumping mules for hunting and if she was on a mule, he knew they would take care of her and protect her no matter what. She, for her part, had always wanted a horse with a long and flowing mane. Not an ugly mule, with a coarse mane, and a strong disposition against galloping.
So it was, that if you ask anyone who knew the town of Williamson back then if they remembered Lorri, they might say they didn't. But if you asked them if they remembered the little barefoot, dirty faced girl riding the mules all the time, they would know immediately who you were talking about.
Since she so desperately had wanted a horse, she would run the mules up and down the only section of paved road if only to hear their hooves click clacking. She would ride them to the school and the mules would wait for her outside in the school yard. She would even charge a dime for the other kids to ride them sometimes if she was feeling particularly generous. But all that road riding would wear their hooves down to nothing and the mules, and the girl would end up grounded to the yard while the hooves grew back in time for hunting season.
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| The WIlliamson School House where mules waited patiently for Lorri to get out class. |
So, anyhow, I grew up going to her family events, and hanging out in this tiny town, and always, always having my eye on the little girl who rode the mules around town. Her parents signed my baby book. My parents signed hers. You could say that we had met. But like so many young people, I lived in a state of overwhelming self-consciousness and fear and despite dating once or twice, could just never bring myself to tell that girl how I felt about her. Foolishly, I let her slip through my fingers because I lacked the courage to reveal my feelings.
As they do, months turned to years, and we married and had children. She was as beautiful as ever, and was a successful professional. She was one of those people who seemingly had everything and had it all together. If she was seemingly out of my league and unobtainable in my youth, then she was even more so in adulthood.
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| Lorri, the badass volunteer firefighter. One of the first female firefighters in Southern Iowa. |
Since our families remained close, and we lived in the same county all those years, we would see each other from time to time at weddings, or special events or ballgames. As my own life seemed less fulfilling and joyful each day, I felt less fear of telling her how I felt about her, as if I had nothing left to lose, and had already lost so much time. If only I had just thirty seconds alone I would tell her, but I only ever seemingly got less than ten.
Thirty seconds. And then one day, at long last, there was a break in the crowd, and we were alone, for thirty seconds. Losing her, I told her, had haunted me every day of my life, and I just needed her to know that she was my person. The one I could never let go of. The one whose smile filled my dreams, both sleeping and awake, and whose laughter filled my heart.
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| Traditional Southern Iowa hillbilly wedding, complete with brother-in-law turned pastor, and cornhole game in the background. |
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| Beautiful princess and giant headed Shrek-like guy. Still don't know how that happened, but I am not questioning it. |
As it turned out, we were neither one happy in our lives. So we set about in a different sort of direction, not in pursuit of happiness, per say, but deliberately and forcefully cutting the things from our lives that made us unhappy.
We managed through the challenges of joining children and ex-spouses together into a cohesive, functioning unit, and the result is we have five wonderful adult children now, two beautiful daughter-in-laws, four grandchildren, and ex-spouses, who we probably get along with much better now than we ever used to.
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| Move over Stone Henge. Meet Nebraska's Car Henge. Scientists still puzzle at how it was created. |
For the last ten years of our life, we have travelled and seen some amazing, and slightly less than amazing things together.
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| Oktoberfest in Lacrosse, Wisconsin. POLKA! POLKA! POLKA! |
We grew in our professional careers. Finished raising our family. And even raised a few goats together (another story).
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| The Grand Canyon. |
Then, a little over a year ago, Lorri had back surgery. As it turned out, she also had a rare condition that caused blood clots in her legs from her knee to her hip that was revealed post-surgery. Were it not for my diligent daily visual inspection of her legs (you're welcome!) she probably would have died.
Truthfully, I almost lost her anyhow. And that was enough. It was enough to remind us that there was no amount of money worth me spending 200 days on the road away from her as a union representative. Enough to remind us that most folks we know plan and dream and save for days that never come, or lose their good health the day after they retire. Or watch as 401k's are wiped out, or pensions dissolved. There simply are NO guarantees in life.
As we dropped our youngest off at college last fall, we determined that, come hell or high water, we were making some changes. We weren't putting things off. We weren't waiting for perfect timing. We just did it.
Six years ago, we started coming to Puerto Rico instead of the Florida Keys when we discovered cheap flights and cheaper Airbnbs. Two years ago, we almost accidentally "discovered" the west side. The rest is history. We were immediately hooked. The beaches. The vibe. The people. Forget about it. There is nowhere else. Not for us.
So, we dropped our daughter off at college, sold or donated or tossed everything. Left high paying professional careers, and moved to Rincon for the winter to "figure out what we want to be when we grow up the second time around." Like the happiness thing... we only knew what we didn't want to do.
Lorri had grown up around a grandfather who was a woodworker. She was enamored with the smell of sawdust. But she had never touched a saw before. And she can't draw to save her life. But when we moved to Rincon, she immediately set out to be an artist working with wood instead of a training and quality medical professional at a non-profit blood center.
We rented a house, filled the garage with a bunch of saws, and I went inside to write, waiting for the inevitable pinterest fails and trips to the emergency for stitches. It would take, I figured, about a year for her to turn out something art-worthy.
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| Lorri's first scroll saw trees ever. |
She was out there for about four hours when she came in and showed me her palm trees. Cut by hand on a scroll saw by a girl who can't draw and had never made a cut before. Now, I can draw a tree, but I can't cut shit with a scroll saw. It is a skill... or an artform, that I do not, nor will I ever, possess. It is as if she, however, was born using the thing though. She draws the rough shape, and then cuts all the details to match the vision in her head. She never ceases to amaze and inspire me.
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| The Beach House in Rincon |
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| Lorri under the red tent at The Beach House in Rincon, Puerto Rico |
Which brings us to The Beach House. How? Why? The answer is simple really... we were already there!
To say we were Beach House regulars is a bit of an understatement. We would go and watch the sunset and stay late drinking and meeting people. Then, many mornings, we would wake up, talk about what we wanted for breakfast, and end up right back at The Beach House for mimosas with Steak and Eggs or Eggs Benedict. Mmmmm.
We loved the food, the atmosphere, the staff, the owners, and all of the people we met there. You almost never meet anyone at The Beach House in Rincon who is in a bad mood, or having a bad day. Rather, it is a meeting place for people who are celebrating life, and sunsets, and morning whale spotting.
So, when Lorri was ready to debut her art, Kevin, the owner, said why go anywhere else? Basically, he gave us permission to set up a tent and tables around the spot in the smoking section where we were already spending most of our time anyhow. It was more or less as if we were already there, and the art show just sort of grew up around us.
As a result, our first winter here in Rincon has been nothing short of awesome. We plan to be set up every night from now until Easter at The Beach House between the hours of 4pm and 9pm, give or take an hour or two, IF we can keep enough art on hand to justify setting up a table. Our goal of basically paying for our nightly beer and food tab has been blown out of the water as tourists and locals come to visit and take home a piece of Lorri's work.
She now spends most days in her workshop from sunrise until setup time, filling special orders and working on commissioned pieces, while my life has been reduced to that of a roadie for an artist, setting up tables and tents, and burning up the road buying wood and blades and paint brushes and espressos and everything an artist needs to keep creating.
Through it all, we are having the time of our lives. We meet amazing new people every night and have developed friendships that we will take with us wherever we go. And while we aren't quite ready to settle down and never leave a place forever, we can never imagine a winter that doesn't end in coming home again... to the people and beaches of Rincon.
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Summer Adventure 2020 coming soon...
Her name is LuLu, and she is a toy hauler with room enough in back for an art studio!
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Oh yeah... having too much fun with us? The Beach House has rooms for rent onsite as well, so no need to drink and drive and breakfast and mimosas start at 7am daily while you watch the whales.
Thanks for reading!
Buzz & Lorri Malone
