From the Surfside

  You always remember your first. Where you were. Who you were with. What song may have been playing. In our case, it was back in the spring of 2003 in Hingham. Lowe’s on Route 3A to be exact. I knew I was ready and although a little nervous, felt confident I was up to the task. It started as most trips to a big box home improvement store do. Navigating the parking lot through display racks of perennials and annuals. Trying to find a spot that’s not taken up by a metal shopping cart. Eyeing rows of fencing, imagining how good they’d look on your property with the surest confidence you could install the entire fence yourself if you just had the time, and the tools, and the knowledge, and the experience, and maybe the slightest bit of carpentry and measuring skills.  We parked, I’m guessing, about a mile away — not by choice, but because it was the only place we could find a spot that wasn’t occupied by a stack of mulch, a row of sod, or a nondescript white work van straddling the line o