8/16 and 8/17/08 Where's Peggy?

We spent this weekend at the cottage with Mom and Dad. They came down yesterday and we arrived this morning.

As Mom and I were talking over old times the name Peggy Miller came up. Peggy and I were inseparable the summer I was 16 and she was 15. You never saw one without the other. I hadn't seen Peggy since that summer and often wondered what happened to her. As I made connection with friends here at the beach I always asked if they knew what happened to her or if they knew where she was now. The answer was always the same, "No, I don't know where she is."

I told Mom I would love to find her but don't know how to go about it. Since her dad's name was James Miller and he was last in Pennsylvania as far as I knew, I would have to call a lot of people in order to find the right one. That just wasn't an option for me at this time.

I had heard years ago that Peggy was briefly married to one of the "Duff boys" in Maryland and mentioned this to Mom. She suggested I call Ernie Duff, a local guy that may have an answer for me.

Now I hadn't seen Ernie since I was twenty or thereabouts so when I called him I started with, "Ernie, I don't know if you'll remember me or not but my name is Snookie". He replied, "I remember the name but I don't know where from". I explained the Crystal Beach connection and my parents names and then he remembered. I went on to tell him that I was looking for Peggy Miller and was wondering if he knew of her whereabouts. Imagine my surprise when he said, "Hang on, I've got her phone numbers". Not only did he give me her home phone, but her cell phone, her brother's number in case they weren't good anymore and her stepmother's phone number! I was finally going to find Peggy!

I called her home phone first but to no avail. No one answered. Next I tried the cell. She answered on the second ring and when I said, "Peggy, you aren't going to believe who this is, it's Snookie".... she screamed! She started right away with she thought about me often over the years and was glad I found her.

Next came the other surprise. She was less than 8 miles away! When she realized I was at Crystal Beach she said she'd come over right away. OMG, I can't believe I'm finally going to get to see her again! In what seemed like forever, she finally arrived. She hadn't changed one bit! Well, ok, maybe a little but I would have known her anywhere!

After big hugs we went in so she could see my parents and meet Bob. We stayed a short time and off we went so I could take her to the other friends I knew were at the beach this weekend. Talk about old home week!

We took a walk down one street and Peggy looked at me and said, "Snookie, I feel like I'm 15 years old again walking here with you". I knew just what she meant.

After several hours together bringing each other up on our lives it was time for her to go back to her place. She has a summer house in another community not far from Crystal.

Wow! What a weekend!

On Sunday we heard a commotion outside and went to the window to see what was going on. The neighbors up the street are doing some adding on and lots of landscape work. They rented a Bobcat to move some earth and it seems that the front end scoop was filled with dirt and they got too close to the edge...well, use your imagination.

They tried tying ropes onto the back of it in hopes of pulling it down and back.

That didn't work.

Someone finally realized that the scoop needed to be emptied before they were going to get out of this jam.

It worked!

.....and that was our excitement for the day.