Boatyard Dog

by: Joan Hitz

In the late ‘90s, Nina and Jim Roy adopted a puppy - a golden Lab. They couldn’t bear to leave her home all day, so each morning Jim nestled the tiny dog, Morgan, in a basket and drove her to work.  

Jim Roy owns Outboard Barn in Babylon Village, a boatyard and marine supply at the edge of the Great South Bay. That’s where he met Nina, who owns the tiny, circa-1913 cottage next door. Originally a summer home for the Post Cereal family, the nearly hundred-year-old building is now surrounded by boatyards and marinas. Years earlier, Nina had bought it for rental income. By the late ‘90s, she worked at an accounting firm. 

Morgan took immediately to seaside life. She quickly abandoned the puppy basket to assume the role she seemed destined for: Boatyard Dog. She became a fixture--a fast-pawed, mobile one--endlessly zigzagging among the racks, marine engines and dry-docked sea vessels. 

“Morgan ran the boatyard,” says Nina. “She was the boss. And everyone - Jim, me, workmen, customers - was crazy about her.”

The golden captain was always overseeing, and, underfoot.

When the men painted the boat hulls, Morgan parked beneath to supervise. Nobody minded meeting her rigorous canine specifications. In fact, if she departed, they missed the four-legged foreman.

But sometimes Morgan, a wandering soul, did depart, simply vanishing on a secret itinerary.

“She’d be right there,” says Nina, “but somehow not there, too.” 

Despite this knack for hiding, like any master illusionist, she was usually only inches from her audience and a few slippery seconds ahead. She often turned up in funny little surprise scenes.

Once, an exiting customer who’d left his car door open returned to the store to ask if Jim owned a Lab. Morgan had enthroned herself in his driver’s seat, looking like she’d misplaced her key ...

In cases of extreme disappearance, Jim Roy did hold a key, and a trick of his own, to locate her. 

Jim was in possession of a big red forklift. And more than anything at the boatyard, with the possible exception of Jim himself, Morgan was smitten with it. 

"Whenever we cranked it," says Nina, "the dog would drop whatever job she was ‘supervising’ and race right over. So if she went missing for too long, we’d start the forklift. Instant Morgan!”  

Giant noisy machine, 55-pound dog, wagging golden tail: love story. 

While Morgan supervised at seaside, Nina clocked long hours inland. Days at the accounting firm, and nights, in her kitchen, with chocolate.  

For a long time, Nina had wanted a home business. Then, on a trip to San Francisco, strolling in the land of Ghirardelli, she found it.  

“Everything in that city was chocolate,” she says.  

Nina enrolled in candy-making classes and was soon busy producing chocolate, servicing multiple corporate accounts from her kitchen. 

A new goal emerged: to open a store. Her cottage next to Jim’s boatyard seemed the perfect spot. 

And the store’s name? Nina would honor the family member who operated the boatyard: not Jim, but the dog.

“I always knew I’d name my business for Morgan. She was such a huge presence in our lives.”

But before the candy store became a happy reality, Nina and Jim experienced a sad one: In 2002, at only 6 1/2 years old, Morgan was diagnosed with inoperable cancer. The high-spirited retriever who’d jazzed up enough golden years for several lifetimes was going to have her actual years cut short.

Knowing what they’d have to do to spare their dog further pain, the Roys made sure to bring Morgan for one more visit to her beloved boatyard. There, among the elevated vessels, the red forklift, and slews of heartbroken people shedding enough tears to overrun the Great South Bay, Morgan had a proper seaside goodbye. Then the Roys took her home again to say the real one.

Chocolates by Morgan's Bay opened its doors in October 2009. 

Now, people can purchase confections in a large glass-fronted room where strands of sunlight sift among the reflected sparkles of baywater.  

Here, among the constant interplay of conversation and customers, Nina senses a presence: the spirit of Morgan. Zigzagging among the legs, smack in the middle of the action, supervising ... overseeing ... underfoot.

That may not be wishful fancy.  

While Nina Roy always intended to name the store after her dog, she didn’t know the actual meaning of the name, “Morgan.”

But recently, a customer informed her.

“Morgan,” it turns out, means: the edge of the sea.

And if dogs share the surnames of their people (which they surely do), then Morgan’s last name was, “Roy.”

“Roy” means: king.

So Morgan’s name, and the name of the candy store, mean: The King at the Edge of the Sea.  

Woof.

(first published on September 28, 2011, in South Bay's Neighbor News)