Favorite Places

This is an oddball subject, I guess. But I have special little spots onboard Betty Jane that mean way more to me than just the function they serve. Just the other day, for example, I hung up my red-hot GB baseball cap--I rarely wear a hat these days unless it's on Betty's flying bridge--on the lamp by the door that opens from the saloon into the cockpit.

And this was the oddball part. I experienced a subtle but highly positive feeling from the act of merely hanging up the dang cap, primarily because the spot where I hung it was rife with memories that feature a heck of a lot of my dearest friends. Like my buddy Chuck who stuck with Betty and I through the wintry vicissitudes of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina as we all came down the ICW to Florida some years back.

Or like by friend Don who once sat behind the table in the saloon with his lovely wife and proclaimed with a grand smile and a sweepingly knowledgeable hand gesture, "This is simply such a nice space to be in right now, Bill--it's like living inside a work of art."

Or like my good buddy Bill who used to hang his hat on the lamp after he'd come back from one adventure or another ashore and then forget where he'd put the darn thing.

Funny. But I gotta ask myself sometimes. Do such places and things as lamps, V-berth book shelves, and coffee cup hooks solidify into little bits of geography onboard boats? Little states with their own histories, famous personages, poetry, and boundaries? And if so, why seemingly more so boats than cars, planes, or houses?