THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, July 11, 1994 TAG: 9407110037
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 64 lines
The best time to be on the beach, some say, is 6:30 in the morning.
The sun, lifting on the horizon, is about a quarter of the way on its journey overhead.
The air is warm, with a wisp of a breeze usually that early at Ocean View. Even without one stirring, the sun's rays haven't attained the blazing intensity of mid-morning.
It is for an hour or so the only time, till near dusk, one may take along a dog.
Or the dog may take you.
There are, usually, half a dozen people. To the south the shore is nearly always empty of humans. Sunday, a meditative fellow was combing the sand for change with a long-handled metal detector.
People have more money lately, he told me one morning.
That's about as indicative as the Dow Jones, I guess.
The brown Lab is blissful. He leaps - hurtles - into water after a thrown stick.
Another ounce of that extra oomph and he'd fly.
Fetching the stick, angling south on the run when he brings it ashore in his mouth, he manages to move me steadily away from the entrance to the beach so we'll have a long walk coming back.
Thus do dogs manipulate us.
He wants to wring every possible minute out of our trip to the beach.
Every half-block are very high wood jetties extending into the water thereabouts at Ocean View, walls to catch and hold the sand.
As we were returning Sunday, I threw the stick once over a jetty, across the water on the other side, so that Boomer soared, heroic Rin Tin Tin against the sky.
And landed with such a mighty splash, he must have dislodged every remaining flea from his coat - a sudden, shocking catastrophe for them, the sky falling.
At the car, as I toweled him off, a couple nearby, in their mid-40s, was preparing to go to the water.
Long, lean, out of sorts, the grizzled man was pulling stuff out of the back of his car.
The merry-faced woman, delighted in the Lab, asked, as a starter, ``Has he been in the water?''
``He's wet, isn't he, dummy?'' her companion snapped before I could answer.
``He loves the water,'' I said to her.
``Come on,'' he ordered her, ``get your damn self in gear, fool!''
And marched ahead along the path toward the shore.
She glanced back.
I waved, once.
She waggled her fingers at her side.
On the way home, the Lab stretched out on the back seat and slept the sleep of the just and exhausted.
When I ruffled his coat at home, his fur was soft and cool as velveteen.
I hoped that, back at the beach, the day - and he - improved for Merry-face. by CNB