8 Lillian
Lessons
When the waiter came to our table with a little notepad and pencil
to take the order, I asked the man if he knew something about the history of
Long Beach. The
expression on the man’s face showed me I just asked an unexpected, weird question.
Stephan smiled, probably thinking, “are all Dutch like you?” In a
split second, the waiter was in control again. He told me he did not grow up in
this city, but the cook was born here so he would ask him. A little
later when the waiter brought us the entrée the cook came with him and told me
that his knowledge about Long Beach was very basic.
Within the same sentence, he told me he knew that the wife’s owner has a friend
who is a local history teacher, and she probably could tell me everything I
wanted to know.
Before I could tell him, he didn’t have to bother he was already gone and went
straight to the bar, five meters from our table. He
placed a phone on the bar and dialed a number. We
overheard the conversation only from his part, but it was enough to understand
most of it. The cook
repeated everything the owner on the other side was saying. He
called the owner at his home address, and the owner asked his wife about her
friend Lillian. What
I understood from the conversation was that the owners’ wife was calling her friend
the teacher who was on the tennis court playing her weekly tennis game with
another friend. My simple
question was getting out of hand and that made me a little bit worried. When
the cook ended the call, he told me the owner, his wife and the two tennis Profs
would be at the restaurant within a half-hour. Stephan
was looking at me with a question mark on his face. “What’s
happening?” he whispered. I only
produced a nervous smile. Twenty
minutes after the phone call, just when the cook and the waiter served the main
dish the whole delegation came in. The
cook introduced us to Jackson and his wife Emma. Emma
introduced Lillian the teacher and her tennis partner Samantha. We
invited the four at our table, and the cook and the waiter went for two extra
chairs. The
owner told us that the next drinks were on the house and instructed the cook to
serve them an assortment of entrées. His
attention moved to Stephan and me. I
noticed that he was used to the fact that people would listen to him, He wanted
to know all about our cycling trip, and it felt to me like a command wrapped in
a very friendly request. By
focusing on me, he addressed a second question “why would a guy like you be interested
in the history of Long Beach”. Because
of all the effort they made to come here, just to tell us something about the history
of the city, Stephan decided the give them a colorful story. He
was a good storyteller. When
it was my turn, I told them that during my cycling trip, I met a lot of wonderful
people who told me with pride and passion about their town. As
an example, I gave them the story of Malbis. I told
them I became very interested in those stories, and that I found out that the complete
southern coastline is influenced by French, Spanish and English conquerors. Lillian
the teacher smiled from ear to ear because of all this interest in her line of work.
The
next moment she took the floor! She
was the kind of teacher for which every young schoolboy would probably instantly
fall in love with. Their
love at first sight probably vanished as quickly as it came because of the raw
dark severe voice of Lillian. This
voice did not match with her sexy female appearance. After
we got used to her voice, we experienced it as sympathetic and easy to listen
sound. She
first gave us the story about this town. Long
Beach was first called Willmore City. A developer
called William Willmore began forming a new town Willmore City along a long contiguous
coastline. He made a development plan but the plan failed and in 1884 William abandon
the city and moved to Arizona while others took over. Original
residents of William City renamed their town Long Beach in 1888, after its 28mi45km
long beach. It’s
the longest contiguous beach in the U.S. After
this short story about Long Beach, she gave us a lecture that took one and a
half hour, about the whole area from Alabama, Mississippi till Louisiana. She
told the story of the Indians who had been living in the golf area for over 10,000
years and about the Spanish, French and English conquerors who suddenly began
to claim the territory of the Indians. She
brought the history of her region with such a passion that we as listeners sometimes
forgot to breathe during her story. The
problem was that she gave us so much information that it was impossible for me
to put it in a few lines. Therefore,
I only wrote down the dates and names and some important facts. With
a tilted view, I looked at Stephan and saw he was also completely observed by the
story. So I hoped he was able to help me reproduce a summary of her story. “You
both cycling in the direction of New Orleans so you probably will stay on US90 all the way until New Orleans,” Samantha
the friend of Lillian noted. “If you
are interested, there is a bald eagle's nest nearby the junction with the US190. This
nest has been there for more than eighty years and has been used often in those
years. Presently,
a breeding pair of southern bald eagles returned to the nest. They repaired the
nest and hopefully will lay eggs in December. The
eagles hatch in January, and in April, the young will fly for the first time. At
the beginning of May, the eagles start their annual migration to the north.” Stephan
became enthusiastic, ”How
can we spot the eagle.” “Just
before you arrive at the junction with US190,
you will find a large parking lot on your left. It’s
the former site of the White Kitchen restaurant that burned down completely in
1959. I know about it because I am a relative of the owner of that restaurant. As a
little child I often spotted the eagle with my spyglass when I visited the restaurant.
You
can place your bike’s there and cross the road to the small telephone company building
on the north side of the road. From
the back steps of this concrete block building, you can see the Bald Eagle nest
in a tall cypress at the tree line about a ½ mile across the marsh. “Thanks,
we certainly will have a stop there,” Stephan answered. I
quickly made some notes about her suggestion. After
an overwhelming evening and a lot of thankfulness and hugs, we were back at the
hotel around 10:30pm22:30.
Directly after we came in I asked Stephan if he could write down a short summary
of ten lines about Lillian’s story. I gave Stephan my notes, and he smiled when
he read it. He
told me that at least the dates were correct. After
a half hour, he gave me the summary, and I was surprised about his accuracy. |