As Easter approached in 1966,
Erskine and I were enjoying the newness of young love and our recent
engagement. He booked flights on Bahamas Airways for Long Island in the Southern Bahamas, so we could visit his parents in Mangrove Bush and I
could see where he had been born and brought up.
As the Bahamas Airways DC3
landed at the tiny Deadman’s Cay airport, children flocked onto the tarmac in excitement.
I soon found out that the neighbour’s children couldn’t take their eyes off us!
They would appear with broad smiles at the kitchen windows while we were
eating. I suppose they saw few visitors on what was a very remote Out Island of
The Bahamas at that time.
One beautiful sunny day, Erskine
took me out on a skiff, poling the boat along the coastline. We wore swimsuits,
ready to slip off the side of the skiff into the shallow, transparent water.
Suddenly a curtain of sparkling warm rain passed over us. Then in a flash it
was gone, the hot sun beaming down and instantly drying us.
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Boating at Salt Pond, Long Island, the home of the
Annual Long Island Sailing Regatta |
To celebrate our recent engagement,
Erskine’s best man to be and his wife who had flown down to Long
Island with us, invited us for a meal by lamplight in the best
man’s family kitchen. There was no electricity or running water on the island
at the time. I can still see the pretty gingham tablecloth and enticing meal laid out
lovingly by our good friends.
On Easter Sunday we visited
the little church Erskine had been brought up in, which is now much
larger. His father was a lay reader in the church.
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| St. John's Anglican Church, Buckleys, Long Island |
The highlight of our Easter
trip was when Erskine’s father took us out in the skiff to look for bonefish. I
had never liked fishing, but who could turn down the opportunity to throw a
line into the clear blue water, with the sun warming our bodies? And guess who
caught the bonefish that day? Me! I actually landed three bonefish in a short
space of time, while Erskine and his father caught nothing!
If you’re looking for a “time-saving” read over
Easter and don’t have a copy of my book “Sunbeams from the Heart – A Collection
of Twelve Romantic Short Stories” yet, click on one of the links below! As one
Amazon reviewer commented, “I found the book to be so delightful because short
stories you can read and not have to wait until you have time to finish the
book, you can go back and start a new one.”
“Sunbeams from the Heart” is
available as an e-book and in paperback in countries around the world where
Amazon features an online store.
Happy Easter!
