To explain who I am you may want to start with the old beach cottage at 511 Ocean Ridge Drive at Atlantic Beach, North Carolina. It was built by my great grandfather, Furman Nuriah Bridgers in 1950. Here is a picture of the cottage and it was bought by my grandfather, Tom, who we called "Big Tom", from his father's estate in 1956 for $15,500. He must have had regrets about making such a large purchase because among his personal belongs I found after his death, there was an agreement dated in 1957 to list the cottage for sale at $16,900. Thankfully, there weren't any interested buyers or he had sellers remorse because the house stayed in the family for many more years.

In fact, this simple, pine paneled cottage was our family sanctuary-the place we all went to rest, relax, enjoy being with family, enjoy the pleasures of the coast and enjoy great food for 61 years. The bedrooms in the cottage were tiny, there were only two and a half bathrooms, also all very small (none private), there was no conditioning other than open windows and a good breeze, there wasn't a TV or even a radio, the kitchen was very small, the ceilings were low and it wasn't well insulated...and yet....it was the most magical place in my childhood and young adult universe.

During my formative years of the 1960's and 1970's there weren't many restaurants in the area and there were a lot of mouths to feed, so my grandmother, Lou, known very affectinately as "LuLu" to her 8 grandchildren, often asked a cook to join us. Ada lived in a small bedroom in the basement and while I was too young to understand the complications of race relations, having a non-family member who was also African American living with our family was fun and slightly exotic. In reality it had to be difficult for Ada but she was always friendly and the small, simple kitchen ran like clockwork.

She prepared wonderful meals I can recall in detail all these years later. Every meal was served family style on the simple pine picnic-type-table built years before by my handy-man grandfather who built a lot of the furniture in the cottage. Breakfast was eggs, toast, "big" hominy, johnny cake, cereal and melon with lime. Lunch was sandwiches, hotdogs and other simple fare. Dinner was whatever was caught from the daily fishing trip on Big Tom's boat, "The LuLu" or seafood we couldn't catch with a fishing pole and clark spoon like shrimp and crab bought from a favorite seafood store in nearby Crab Point. Sunday lunches were always the same-crispy fried chicken, green beans, boiled potatoes, corn, squash, tomatoes and of course, fried cornbread. My cornbread was always slathered in butter with a sprinkling of salt from the salt shaker with a red spring loaded top cover to keep moisture from causing the salt to clump together from all the mositure in the beach salt air. Rice was mixed in the salt to assist in that job-something that made the beach cottage salt shakers more exotic than the ones in Wilson.

Thursdays were Ada's day off so my grandmother would shoo us out of the cottage after breakfast and send us down to the Coral Bay Club. It was a short walk there and she told us to enjoy swimming in the salt-water pool, order whatever we wanted for lunch, charge it to her and to please not come back home before 5:00. That's exactly what we did and that day flew by like all the others during those special summers at Atlantic Beach. It was at the Coral Bay that I met many friends who from Raleigh and other Eastern North Carolina towns who I'm still friends with today. It's a very fun and interesting group of people and I promise more posts about them in the future!

Even after I bought my own beach house on the same street as my grandparents' place, I would often walk down the street to the old cottage at 511 when no one was there, dash up the stairs and sit down in the living room. There I could quietly enjoy the familiar beach cottage smells, look at the burnished pine paneling, admire the familiar surroundings, see the chairs my grandparents sat in at the old table, look at the well worn furniture and think about all the wonderful times we had in that special house.

My wife, Susan, always says if you want to be remembered by your descendants, buy or build a beach place. So thank you Furman for building the cottage. Thank you Big Tom and LuLu not only for buying the house from Furman's estate but for very generously sharing so much of yourselves and the cottage with me during my formative years and later. I think of you both every time I walk down the beach with my own grandchildren and hope I'm half the grandparents to them you were to me. Thanks to Mom and Dad who had their own condo and never used the cottage so it could be used by our generation as we pleased. And the biggest thank you goes to Susan who helped me fulfill a lifelong dream to have our own cottage when we purchased a cottage on Ocean Ridge Drive in 2004. With that deal, we were lucky to be able to start the magical circle of beach cottage life all over for our children and grandchildren and hopefully their children and grandchildren just as my great grandfather did so many years ago.

Editors note (I'm not really an editor but what the heck - what else am I supposed to say): I wrote this piece for a family recipe/history/cookbook I put together for my children and close friends for Christmas 2015. Because salt water runs through my veins and because Atlantic Beach is such an important part of my life I wanted to start the blog with this post. Also more importantly, my Bridgers grandparents played a huge role in my early life and in who I am today and for all these reasons I wanted to start my blog with this post as a tip of the hat to them. I miss them terribly each and every day but am grateful for all the wonderful times we had together.