True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.
________________Charles Caleb Colton
In the panhandle of Florida was a place where I went almost every weekend during twenty four summers of my life. I thought it was Paradise.
The lazy surf ran its transparent tongue along the white sugar sand beach as noisy gulls circled above in an azure sky. Across the shimmering water to the distant horizon three almost motionless ships sailed just on the edge of the world, tiny grey rectangles. It was as though they would sprout wings and fly off into the brilliant blue sky at any moment. A woman with a beach towel, smoking a cigarette, followed by two children walked past headed for the surf. Her head was pushed up into a large brimmed hat, feet squeaking in flip flops and large sunglasses. Her bathing was too small for her and excess fat spilled from the back between the straps and pushed out at the bottom of her suit. As she passed by I caught the faint whiff of the party she and her friends had had the previous night while we were trying to sleep: mostly stale beer and the sour smell of regurgitation. The cabin next door was frequently rented by tourists that were there for weekends of sunning, drinking and partying. They inevitably got too much sun, drank too much alcohol and partied too loud. We did not like all these strangers that often occupied the house next door to us but come they did, no matter what we thought. They came from places like Albany, Bainbridge, Moultrie, Enterprise, Montgomery and other cities and towns in the southern parts of Georgia and Alabama and they were all very much alike. An elderly gentleman called mister Bramblett owned the house and kept it rented most of the summer to those weekend tourists. He died not long after we bought our cabin and his family had him cremated. His ashes were strewn in the brilliant green stripe of the second sand bar. For years after thoughts of him came to me when I ventured out that far into the water, his white hair and blue eyes. I wonder if his ashes became a part of the water, the fish, or maybe they just added to the vast amounts of sand at the bottom of the gulf, constantly moving and shifting. Did the substances that made up his body instead all just explode, riding up on the smoke into the air? I wondered about him and what death meant in general. I still do.
On the beach a few people wandered in and out of the small waves while others lazed about, seals baking in the sun. Two very dark skinned men walked up the beach in what we today call, thongs. The people on Laguna Beach had never seen anything quite like that before. Everyone including the ones in the cabins furtively looked at the naked buttocks of the two men. I heard my mother call to her friend who was there with us for the weekend. “Mary Lou, come here quick, you've got to see this!" Mother called. We learned later that they were Italians, visitors from far away. The July sun beat down like a hammer, as it usually did in this, the steamiest month for the panhandle of Florida. Lying on my back, marinating in Coppertone on an old beach towel, broiling in the sun, and drifting in and out of consciousness, I glanced over at a familiar face. Chip, my best friend came to spend the week with me. We had a great time fishing, swimming, playing Canasta and Rook, bumming a ride up to the hangout, playing Goofy Golf, sun bathing and just hanging around. The night before he and I had gone down to play a round of Goofy Golf. While we were playing I heard two middle aged women following us talking. The older woman was staring intently at Chip and said to her friend, “Now that is a beautiful boy right there. If I could have had a son or even adopted one that looked like him I would have done it in a minute!” Looking at chip, I realized that she was right, even though I hated her for saying it. I even hated him a little for being so admired by a stranger. He never heard her comments and she and her friend continued to talk as though we were not even there. A sand crab skittered across the sand between us. Chip said," Let’s go surf fishing. Do we have any of the frozen shrimp left?" I said, "No, but we can always go get some, or catch some sand fleas and use them." Intoxicated by the heat, neither of us moved. We remained perfectly still soaking up the rays.
Across the asphalt road from the beach house were two dark fresh water lakes covered by yellow water lilies that bloomed all summer. Water Moccasins existed there and it was common to see and almost step on them when moving through the thick grasses surrounding the ponds. Chip and I spent much of our time there fishing for the largemouth bass and bream. Quick sand surrounded the marginal areas of the ponds and more than once I was trapped by it. On one occasion when I was very young it sucked me down to just below my clavicle as I screamed and frantically struggled to free myself. Nobody heard my hysterical screams for help and only at the last minute did the slippery sand turn me loose. Wet, scared, shaking and covered with wet debris and crying I hid out in the bushes till composure returned and my fear had subsided. I never mentioned this experience to anyone and eventually returned to the treacherous edges of the ponds with my fishing rods much warier than ever before.
Chip had been my friend for a long time and came to the beach with my family and me frequently. He was all things that I was not but wanted to be,handsome with blond hair and a pleasant, fun personality. Everyone seemed to be drawn into his gravitational pull. He was even tempered with a winning disposition, unlike me. Even my older brothers liked him and they did not like anyone. Despite his positive attributes, Daddy had the infuriating habit of calling him, “Chit,” instead of Chip. He was the only one who thought it was knee slapping funny. Needless to say, Daddy’s use of “Chit” embarrassed me immensely. The more embarrassed I got the bigger kick Daddy got out of it. My parents frequently allowed me to have friends come to the beach. It kept me occupied and out of their hair most of the time. Every so often just trying to be funny Chip would say to me, “Did your Dad just call me shit?” Then we would both laugh.
The sun radiated down on me, planting the seeds of numerous skin cancers for later life discovery. Nobody, including my 13 year old self, knew the risks and I absolutely loved lounging on the beach in the middle of the day, sweating and burning in the sun. Being of Irish/Dutch descent, I had little chance of getting a decent tan but I would not go down without a fight. I patiently waited for my freckles to unite and become a glorious tan. I kept my faith in the sun and pursued my tan with reckless abandon.
Growing up in south Alabama had certain advantages. This beach, Panama City or the Redneck Rivera as it would later be known, was one of them. As far as I was concerned, the best place on Earth beckoned me from my home, ninety miles to the north. This paradise on the Gulf of Mexico was a state of mind as much as a destination. It had its own sound, smell, taste, and feel like no other place in the world. Small paved roads traversed the most remote tail end of Alabama and the top most part of the Florida pan handle between home and the beach. We wore those roads out traveling between my home, Dothan, Alabama and our vacation home on Laguna Beach, Florida in the steamy heat of midsummer every year. Daddy usually drove, with mother in the passenger seat, four boys and at least one dog in the back seat. There was always a fight going on between at least two of us in the back seat. We played cow poker; steal the shoe and many other games that ultimately led to a confrontation of some kind. Daddy always threatening, "You boys better behave back there or I'll pull my belt off and wear you out"! I for one knew he meant it. He was a heavy smoker and always had a handkerchief in his pocket in the event he had to spit out the phlegm he always seemed to be in his chest. If you were in the seat directly behind him, it was just a matter of time till you got it in the face. When he spit out the front window it would blow directly into the back, no air conditioning you know. Your only option was to duck but you still got it in the face regardless. All of us in the back seat would hit the floor when we heard the front window being rolled down because we knew what was coming. Occasionally a lit cigarette would fly into the back window, shatter and send fiery ash in to the air. It would cause a small riot in the back seat. We ducked and dodged the burning embers leaping almost crushing each other with malicious intent. Rarely did any permanent damage occur.
In the late summer, watermelons attached to lush green vines grew, on both sides of the road. You could smell their almost erotic sweetness while driving through that desolate sandy country. We traveled through vast expanses of farm land with small communities like Campbelton, Graceville, Chipley, Vernon and others, breaking up the monotony. Long stretches of road disappeared into nothingness aside from the occasional Scrub Oak or Slash Pine abutting the road, arising from the endless expanse of Palmettos. Occasionally we saw wild turkey, feral pigs, deer and other animals. West Bay, the last small town before we reached the beach, brought the first hints of our arrival; the briny smell and the cries of the sea birds alerted me to our proximity to the beach. West Bay had a large rusting bridge that went out across the water and seemed to reach up into the sky. As we passed this landmark we frequently stopped at the far end of the bridge to buy fresh fish and shrimp from a man whose shack perched on the edge of the bay. Displayed in his tiny market were rows of salted Mullet, fresh Shrimp, Oysters, Crab and every other edible fruit of the sea imaginable, all at reasonable prices. The fresh seafood, along with the butter beans and fresh corn from the road side stands, would complete our meal that night at the cabin.
Prepared for dinner, we would arrive at our grey cabin home on the beach. My parents bought the Laguna Beach cabin at Panama City in 1947. The year I turned four years old. Nothing separated our cabin from the Gulf of Mexico but a white sugar sand beach. I rarely went to Church in those summer months because any worshiping I did was in the foaming mouth of the Gulf of Mexico. It was where I wanted to be, especially on a quiet Sunday morning. Sunday being the single morning of the week that Daddy did not go fishing. On those days, we usually left for home in the early afternoon. There was simply not enough time to go fishing and return home at a reasonable hour. Sunday mornings also relieved me from the continuous fishing and endless chores exacted by Daddy. As he was an avid fisherman, and because I was the youngest of four boys, Daddy demanded my presence practically every time the boat left the docks. Frequently in the early morning, well before the sun had even thought about coming up Daddy would come by my bed and snatch all the sheets from me and say, "Get your lazy butt out of that bed and get dressed. We're going fishing and I want to be on the boat before the sun is up." Grumbling I would get up and prepare to go with him. Unlike my older brothers, I had not yet learned to defy him. Mother would chime in from the other room, "Ralph, be quiet, you’re going to wake up the whole house." My chore list contained every nasty, dirty task he could think of, or so I felt at the time. After a really good fishing day, we would pass near the shore and our cabin. Daddy would insist that I get off the boat into the twenty foot deep water with a string of dead fish. I would then swim, pulling the fish through the crystal blue green water to shore. After catching my breath, I would drag the fish up the beach to the cabin, scale, gut and prepare them for my mother to fry for lunch. As an invincible 13 year old, I never considered my lure-like appearance to the sharks. Fortunately, they never took a chance on the clumsy lure dragging chum approaching the shore. Daddy and the other adults would ride the boat back to the St. Andrews Marina and store the boat for the next weekend's repeat. Returning home they would find a succulent meal of fresh fried fish, hush puppies, slaw, Butter Beans, corn on the cob and fries waiting on them as soon as they got in. After the meal Daddy would take a shower and then go to the bedroom and take a long nap, during which time you had better make very sure you didn't wake him up.
Through the years, our family owned numerous small boats for chasing the salt water fish of the gulf; Grouper, Snapper, Mackerel and others. We caught many fish only to return then to the sea due to our specific taste buds. Red Snapper remained while Trigger fish returned. Our boats varied in size and quality over the years, ranging from a sixteen foot Chris Craft to a thirty-five foot, teak decked, Twin Chrysler engine, yacht of a boat. The thirty-five foot boat was the same one my college roommate and I would beach in St. Andrews Bay after consuming large amounts of Budweiser and assorted other beer. I was in graduate school at the University of Alabama and smarter than my actions but the beer and two beautiful young girls were encouraging bad decisions. I abandoned the boat in the bay but that is a story for another day.
My reverie and half sleep on the beach with Chip were interrupted by Daddy calling for me to get up to the house, “right now!” He had discovered a strange and nauseating smell coming from his boat. He wanted me to get in it and find the source of the toxic odor. Chip reluctantly followed me toward the boat. The particularly rancid odor coming from the boat exceeded the normal rotten squid and fish smell. This particular Chris Craft contained a hollow space from beneath the front seat to the back splash well at the rear of the boat. Chip and I did our best to ascertain what the source of the smell was but we simply could not find it. Finally I noticed the odor was stronger under the front seat and stronger still if you slithered further back in the claustrophobic black hollow. The smell was horrible and my dry heaving drove me back to the front of the boat desperate for fresh air more than once.
At this point I suggested Chip go down under the floor to see if he could find the offending carcass or whatever it was. He declined, and noted my failure to help him earlier in the week in the pursuit of his contact. I thought back to when he accidentally swallowed one of his contact lenses. He was right, no help from me. After he lost it, he called his mother. She raised Hell and told him to “find it or not come home", (I have always thought she was kidding). Chip last remembered walking on the beach when airborne sand had gotten in his eye. As was his practice, he had taken his contact lens out and placed it into his mouth to clean it with his saliva. That was the last time he or I had seen his contact lens. After receiving some questionable advice from the adults, he drank a huge amount of saltwater. He hoped it would induce vomiting and he could recover his contact lens by filtering the vomit through a strainer, as per Mother's suggestion. This solution worked, partially. He threw-up and threw-up and threw-up but found no contact lens. The next logical step was, since the contact had gone further down the intestinal tract, to come up with a new solution, no more vomiting, something even worse. My mother suggested, “Just wait till you have a bowel movement and instead of flushing it, dip it out, and filter it with the same spoon and strainer you used on the vomit." Everything will be fine." It seemed to me at the time that I had never heard a more outrageous suggestion. "Blasted contact," he muttered. Chip looked at me expectantly and said, “Are you going to help me with this?" I said, “No way, I'm going fishing across the street. Come over when you're finished, and make sure you wash your hands." The strainer and the spoon of course, were discarded after the deed. This was the only way his mother would let him come back home. Life, which we all knew was good, could continue, provided he found it. Thank God, he found the contact unscathed after its thirty foot dark trip through his upper and lower intestines. His point, of course was that since I had not been a true friend and had gone fishing instead of helping him sort through his feces to locate the offending contact, he felt no compelling reason to crawl under the seat of the boat. My immediate thought was, “Holy Shit, it’s going to have to be me!”
After a great deal of procrastination, I crawled under the seat with a flashlight And a flat lipped shovel, determined to remove the offending item, whatever it was and get it over with. After slithering on my stomach through the dark bowels of the boat, I found a large ten day old Red Snapper in an advanced stage of decomposition at the far end in the crawl space. I scooped it up on the flat lipped shovel and pulled it out, with a fair amount of retching, spluttering and gagging. The dry heaving became so insistent that I thought my stomach might actually explode. The smell was beyond horrible. The fish had baked under deck for a week and some days in July! Chip suggested, "Let's carry it across the street to one of the fresh water ponds and throw it in." The problem was solved! The turtles, frogs, and fish in the pond had an unexpected meal of partially decomposed fish and maggots. Daddy got a story, funnier than “Chit,” and told it as often as conversation permitted. The story always began with, “Remember the day Tommy turned so green when he and Chit were cleaning out the boat.” Needless him humor always escaped me. Anyway, Chip had his contact lens back and could actually go home. For years afterwards I kidded him by saying, “Wow, Chip, Your left eye is not blue anymore, it's brown."
Another week ended at Laguna Beach and after an hour and a half trip north, we arrived back home in Dothan, Alabama, tired and sunburned. Sand still in my ears, my shoes, between my toes and in what Daddy laughingly referred to as my crack! I was, at the time, not so interested in baths at the beach house. It always seemed so redundant after being in the water so much during the day.
Chip and I were friends for a long time after this particular week at the beach and probably still would be if I had not done a very stupid thing. It involved a girl that at the time belonged to him. There was a night when he came to my house and with his index finger pushed my door bell. At first I thought he wanted to fight. I should have known; he was a far better person than me. He questioned me as though he were a policeman. He did not seem to believe or understand what I had done or why and was trying to figure it out. Each part of my deed had a place it would fit, much like diagramming a sentence; breaking it apart and putting it back together in a different way so it would become clear and understandable. His look made me feel as though I was standing in front of him naked or had been caught stealing something important. The girl really did not matter; she didn’t really want me, at least not for long. That was a night I will never forget and have rarely felt so badly. I lost the best friend I have ever had, bar none. Occasionally I wonder if he even remembers any of this and if it mattered to him as much as it mattered to me or if it mattered to him at all.
Although I really liked that girl, I honestly cared more for Chip. As it turned out I didn't miss her at all but I missed him for a very long time. He and I were at the University of Alabama at the same timebut almost never saw each other. He was a fraternity man and did very well there. I on the other hand became an art major and found a place where I perfectly fit in. The bohemian attitudes and life style suited me just fine. My hair grew long and I painted giant colorful canvasses. I even had some notoriety in those circles. I met the girl I would eventually marry there. After college Chip married and so did I. On one of our trips back to my childhood home I called him and asked if my wife and I could drop by and see his new baby. He said yes and we went. He had not changed very much and seemed glad to see us. Later I learned that he and his beautiful wife had divorced. She too had lost him and I felt very sorry for her.
Many years after my father died Chip came by the house on Park and Powell to pay his respects to me and my family. He was the same as he had always been. We walked out to my car and sat down. He gently patted me on the leg and said how sorry he was and how well he remembered my father and all the fun we had at the beach. Years later when his mother passed away I tried to get in touch with him but only reached his father. I told him how very sorry I was that his wife had died, how beautiful I always thought she was and how much I had liked her. He was very nice and assured me that he would tell Chip that I had called. I don't know if he ever did.
Writing about family, friends and growing up is much like kneading bread dough that has a piece of broken glass somewhere inside. Sooner or later you are going to hit something that will make you bleed.
tbd
