The Cabin by the Oceanside

The Cabin

There once was a cabin by the ocean in the city of Portland, Maine.

Portland wasn't the type of town one could easily forget once they'd felt the cobblestone streets pound under their feet or caught a glimpse of her magnificent lighthouses. Folks waved at their neighbors when the sun rose at five in the morning and tipped their hats when it set back behind them over the Casco Bay in the evening. She was a city whose flag portrayed a phoenix rising over ashes, and if something had to be said about this cabin by the ocean was that its story was quite similar.

Consisting of little more than some logs for the structure and bricks for the chimney, it sat squarely on the one acre of land of a family with the surname of Stephens. Its four walls could tell many a story, as they say-if walls could talk. It could tell of lobster trapping adventures, laughter and heartbreak, was the keeper of numerous secrets, but most importantly, it could tell generations of love stories.

The cabin had been in the family since before Harrison was born. His father, a fisherman, had bought the piece of land long before land values had heightened, which, on his paycheck, was necessary for purchase. It had taken three more years for him to scrape together enough money to erect the place that he would consider home in the summer months of fishing and trapping.

Augusta was where they laid their head in the winter months, but summer brought Portland and possibilities to him and his crew of merry misfits that he considered friends and coworkers. They would trap in the bay and sometimes wander as far away as the North Atlantic depending on the buyers' needs and wants.

Yes, this mere one room and one bathroom fisherman's paradise was witness to endless poker games, drunken bouts, and friendships that would span a lifetime.

Harrison and his brother, Johnny-one year younger than him, had tagged along with their father during many excursions and inherited their father's love of all things sea life. By the time the young boys were teenagers, they had begun to work the ships themselves; a responsibility that their father thought they were old enough to handle. Harrison was seventeen when he first began his adventure at sea.

Although casting, trapping, and boating came natural for the young lad, it wasn't what he wanted to do with his life, as his father did.
Harrison had plans of traveling the world, of taking up a new girl at each new port, of being free for the rest of his life to do as he pleased. Although initially meaningless, the encounter he was getting ready to have was about to change his life. All the ideas of what his life was to be like were about to disappear in the cool New England wind when he was introduced to the meek Kathleen.

Kathleen was sixteen and the rose of Cumberland County. She was the envy of all of her friends and those who wished they would someday be her friend. Harrison met her in town one summer's eve morning when he walked into her father's hardware store looking for a replacement piece on the boat's pulley. He opened the door and there stood a young, raven-haired girl with striking green eyes wearing a blue hardware vest with a white, flowing peasant skirt that was fitting for the time, but very mismatched. This was a trade mark of Kathleen's; the fact that wherever she went, she was genuinely authentic to herself, whether that be by fashion or in personality. This pureness was what he was first attracted to and what would hold fast to him in the years to come.

The year was 1966 and America had just recently became entangled in a war that was both questioned and protested. Downtown Portland, however, was in an economic slump due to monopolies and big businesses moving in and was fighting its own battle. The fact that Kathleen's father's store had managed to stay open despite of this spoke volumes to how respected her family was within the community.

The hardware store, usually bustling with people either buying supplies or finding a corner to drink their coffee with her father, was surprisingly empty this morning except for Kathleen and Harrison.