Related Memory #3: House on a Beach

I recall that Tee and I knew this one guy--John--who lived just outside of Gulf Trace. John was older--probably close to fifty (maybe fifty five)--and had been a boat captain. He had made a lot of money in Alaska during the building of the pipeline. He was big into Ham Radio and showed me his set up, which was in a spare room. His house was the only one on a road where a development had been planned. This road led to other roads in the woods, but no houses had been built--I think it had been bought up by the state, so it sat idle (now it's where you can go to some cabins in the state park there), was just a bunch of woods and then a big stretch of dunes (where I walked around quite often, though now it's all off limits). But the thing was, John lived all alone.

He was kind of an odd guy--well-off, into his ham radio, alone in a big house that itself sat alone off the main road, didn't work any job that I knew of. I don't know how we met him--guess Tee was the one. He took us out to dinner once, we visited a few times. It was later, after he got to know us, that he told me he'd had a wife who was an alcoholic and he told me--specifically--that you don't want to get into a relationship with an alcoholic, that there was nothing you could do for them and that it would all just be heartache. I think he was telling me because Tee was probably one, or close to being one--I knew she had other habits as well. (Her ex-Vietnam-fighter-pilot father was alcoholic.) But, I wasn't really set on such an investment, anyway, as much as I liked Tee.

I know, after I left and went to Seattle, Tee told me that John invited her to go to the Cayman Islands with him--where, no doubt, his money was invested, tax-free. She asked if it included any funny business and he'd said, no. So, she went. Took advantage of his offer and when he tried to take advantage of her--as Tee pretty much expected--she locked herself in the room. Really, she should not have gone in the first place.

Don't know what happened to John after that. I was in Grayton about a year ago and his house was still there, still all alone.