“Grandpa, on what night did it light up for the first time?” ten-year-old Zachary Y. Rahcaz asks while looking at the Tillamook Rock Lighthouse (off the northern coast of Oregon) through an old pair of 7 x 35 binoculars on a mostly-sunny-yet-pleasantly-milder-than-yesterday August midday.
“I don’t recall the exact night, Zack, but it was in late January of 1881,” sixty-seven-year-old, volcanic-ash-gray-haired, slim-and-still-spry Robert Seves Trebor states. “One-eight, eight-one. One hundred thirty-one years ago. One-three-one. They say it took over 500 days to build.”
“How many days over five hundred?” light-blonde-haired Zachary asks while continuing to focus on the no-longer-in-service, perched-on-a-sea-stack-of-basalt lighthouse. 515?
“An old friend of mine told me that the exact number was 505,” Robert answers while remaining seated to the right of Zachary on a large, fallen, all-limbs-neatly-sawed-off conifer tree trunk. 505. My guess was close.
“Oh. And how far is it from here, grandpa?” Over a mile?
“One-point-two miles,” my inquisitive grandson. “That’s exactly 6,336 feet. [1,931 meters] Six-three, three-six.” My guess was right.
“That’s too far to swim, isn’t it, grandpa?”
“It certainly is without a good wetsuit.”
“How cold is that seawater, grandpa?” Bet it’s under 60. [° Fahrenheit; 15.6° Celsius]
“Zack, when I checked the oceanic temperatures website just before we left on our hike, it had the surface temperature at 57.75° Fahrenheit [14.3° Celsius] just off Ecola Point. Wow. So exact. Wonder what website that was. Must remember to ask him when we get back home.
“Yeah, grandpa, that is too chilly for such a long swim without insulation. My friend Tony and I were in a swimming pool last month and the floating thermometer indicated that the water temperature was sixty-eight [° Fahrenheit; 20° Celsius] It felt cold. We didn’t stay in the pool very long. I was shivering when I got out.”
“Yes, my intelligent grandson, a water temperature of sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit feels a lot colder than an air temperature of sixty-eight. In fact, I believe that it is 68 [degrees] F right now.” F?
“F is for Fahrenheit, right, grandpa?”
“Correct. You are such a wise lad. Say, do you know the nickname of that lighthouse, Zack?”
“No. What is it?” Till-a-mookie?
“Tilly or Tillie,” Robert replies. Huh? Both of those words sounded the same.
“What do you mean?” Zachary is puzzled.
“It can be spelled with a –y or an –ie ending. Which ending do you prefer?”
“Tillie with an –ie suffix, grandpa, like cookie.” Suffix? Wow! / Sure wish that I’d brought a couple of white chocolate cookies. Kind of hungry now.
“Gotcha. A very good choice. Why, who doesn’t like a cookie? Oh, by the way, many people referred to the lighthouse as Terrible Tilly when it was in operation, because the trip there and back could be treacherous. Also, the lighthouse was sometimes struck by large, dislodged rocks that the sea hurled at it in bad storms. During a particularly violent storm back in 1934, the original Fresnel lens was destroyed.”
“Fresnel lens?” Zachary is puzzled again.
“That was the precisely cut glass that made the oil-vapor lamp’s light bright and big, so that the ships could see it from far away – before they were near the dangerous coastline.”
“Grandpa, did anyone ever die at the lighthouse?” Zachary asks out of the blue as he puts the binoculars down. Bet someone did.
“Well, going way back to the beginning, back when they were checking for the best place on that little stone island to build the lighthouse, the lead surveyor [John Trewavas] got swept out to sea by a larger-than-your-average swell – a sneaker wave.” Should I have told him this? Maybe he’s too young to hear about an accidental death. Misspoke. Hope he doesn’t tell Laurie. [Robert’s daughter and the mother of Zachary]
“A sneaker wave? What kind of wave is that, grandpa?” Good. Maybe he will just focus of the type of wave, and not on the man’s death.
“It’s a big wave that sneaks up on you; it seems to come from out of nowhere.” From out of nowhere? Wow!
“Oh, like a rogue wave, grandpa?” He’s already heard about rogue waves? So precocious, he is.
“Well, sneaker waves are more common than rogue waves, my super-smart grandson. While rogue waves may be up to four times the height of the neighboring waves in a certain section of the open ocean, sneaker waves are typically no more than twice the height of the breaking surf waves. For instance, you see those waves crashing into the rocks way down there? Well, they’re probably only about three feet [one meter] high. For that coastal area, a sneaker wave might be five to six feet tall. [1.52 to 1.83 meters in height] Sneaker waves often catch people off guard on wide, flat beaches, or while clinging to craggy slopes just above sea level.” Craggy? Not sure what that word means.
“So, did that surveyor drown?” Zachary bluntly enquires with a nonchalant expression. Whoops. The sly little fellow didn’t forget about the man’s fate. Maybe offer up a rosy outcome.
“Well, they never found his body, grandson. So, maybe he washed up on a tropical island somewhere – somewhere like Hawaii – and lived to be 101.” 101? Why not 100? Grandpa picks the oddest numbers.
“Grandpa, I’m no longer reading fairy tales. If he drowned and sank to the bottom of the sea, you can tell me. I’m a big boy now.” Indeed, he is. Really do think he’ll go far in life. Maybe he becomes an oceanographer.
“Ok, Zack, that is probably what actually happened. Also, a type of sailing ship known as a barque, the Lupatia, sank near the lighthouse on a foggy night in early January of 1881 – just before it was finished. Sixteen sailors drowned.” Wonder if it was 16 days before the light was switched on. Seem to have the craziest thoughts in my old age.
“So, if they had finished the lighthouse in 404 days, instead of 505, the light would have been on, and the Lupatia may have safely arrived at port?” 404? He’s picking up on my pattern. Very clever.
“Grandson, maybe so, but why did you pick 404?”
“Because you have been saying similar numbers: 1881, 131, 505, 6336, 57.75, and 101 – all palindromic numbers.” Palindromic numbers? Where did he learn such? He may get a scholarship to a university at this rate. Sure hope he doesn’t get tripped-up during his teenage years. Like me.
“So, you’ve heard the term palindrome?”
“Yes, grandpa. It usually applies to words, but numbers are fair game, too.” ‘Numbers are fair game, too.’ Woah!
“Zack, when and where did you first hear or read about palindromes?”
“Grandpa, there’s this video game called Palindrome Home. The goal is to build a house using building blocks – kind of like virtual Lego blocks – that have a single-digit number on each end. But, here’s what makes it hard: you have to do it in palindromic fashion.” Wow!
“In palindromic fashion? So, a block row of a wall has to begin and end with the same number?”
“That’s right, grandpa. And once the corners are set, it gets tougher to get the interior spaces filled properly. What usually results is a house with floor-to-ceiling windows, or a house with very odd dimensions. Plans for a grand mansion often shrink to an odd-looking hut.” That sounds like my life story, and my humble abode. [in the tiny community of Mist, 54 miles (87 km) northwest of Portland (OR)]
“Zack, I can tell you this: I wasn’t nearly as smart as you at your age. You’ve got a bright future ahead, grandson. You’re going to be a shining beacon in a sea of dimwits.” Dimwits?
“Grandpa, when was the last night that Tillie was illuminated?” Illuminated? Must already be a voracious reader.
“September 1st, 1957.”
“I bet that it could be lonely out there,” Zack posits.
“I’m sure that it could be, my perceptive grandson. It certainly wasn’t for everyone; you had to be a certain type of person to do it.” An asocial person.
“A solitary person.” Wonder what he reads. Wikipedia?
“Probably so, Zack. Probably so.” Why did he repeat that?
“Wonder if anyone on Tillie marked off the lonely days by scratching vertical and diagonal lines on a window sill.”
“I’m sure that at least one of the keepers did, grandson. But, if there were any scratchings or markings on any window sill, they’re all under concrete now; they cemented over the windows because they kept getting broken by the destructive winter storms.”
“That must have been some experience to have been out there in a storm on a frigid January night,” Zachary opines.
“For sure. There may have been moments when a lighthouseman was thinking: ‘Why did I sign up for this?’ [Robert coughs] A real test of one’s mentality.”
“Mentality?” Zack asks for clarification.
“A person’s way of thinking – one’s frame of mind.”
Zack looks through the binoculars once again. “I wonder what the other side of Tillie’s island looks like.”
“I saw it firsthand one day back in 1991, Zack. One-nine, nine-one.” Yet another palindrome.
“Was is it January 9th, or was it September 1st, grandpa?” Huh? Oh, I see … So sly of him. He catches on fast.
“Not sure, Zack. But, there’s a cleft – a very narrow inlet on the western side – the wide-ocean-facing side – which made for a perfect mooring slip for my sea kayak. The swells pushed me right in. It was like an automatic docking service. It was swell. By swell. One to 6, and then 6 to 1. Two to 5, and then 5 to 2 on the landing spot. The overall island profile is 7 to 4, but then remove 4 over 7 in the southwest corner, and then it becomes closer to 8 to 3, and 3 to 8 upon closer reverse-re-inspection. Forward and backward. Where we start is where we finish.” It’s time to leave. Grandpa is losing it again. Another episode. Mom was right: he is losing his mind.
“I’m hungry, grandpa. Ready to go back now?” Think I just had another senior moment. Hope it didn’t scare him. I can feel Alzheimer’s coming on. Wonder how long I have. I’m going to forget him someday. Woeful kismet.
“Sure, Zack.”
They would walk back in silence on the tree-canopied trail. After 2.82 miles (4.54 km) they arrive back at Laurie’s condominium at the junction of the trailhead and the end of Sunset Boulevard in the town of Seaside.
Robert would eat dinner with Laurie, Fred (Laurie’s second husband, Zack’s stepdad) and Zack. The conversation was minimal and surprisingly vapid. Zack would forget to ask Robert about the seawater-temperature website.
Shortly afterwards, Robert would commence his 52.25-mile (84.1 km) return to Mist. Along curvy Oregon Route 202, just after the tiny township of Jewell, a hard-charging-Charlie-charge-hardy would tailgate his partially restored, now-midnight-blue 1974 Datsun 510 for 2.424 miles (3.9 km). Then the impatient driver overtook him in a long straightaway. Four foggy minutes later, Robert would see the gold 2010 Camaro off the road in a ditch. A late-forty-something, bald-except-on-the-back Caucasian man was jacking up the rear of his car. Robert would just drive past him. And sigh.
Zack would receive Robert’s orange-with-blue-stripes kayak four years later. Two weeks after that, in late August of 2016, Robert would go missing. He was never seen again. By anyone. Anywhere.
After carefully navigating the pitfalls of high school, Zack would get a free ride to Portland State University.
In early August of 2020, on a glass-surface, ultra-calm-sea day, Zachary paddles out to Tillie in his grandad’s kayak from the gray-gravel beach directly below the oceanfront condo. He quickly spots the cleft in the solid-rock islet, but remains offshore. So, that’s where grandad parked this slender vessel 29 years ago.
Suddenly a noticeably-larger-than-the-others, almost-ready-to-break swell rolls up on Zachary. The polyethylene kayak rides it like a surfboard. And then safely slides behind the crest. 1-8, 8-1.