Panama City Beach

Local people hate to drive to the beach because of the traffic.

If there was an accident on Hathaway Bridge, there would be a traffic jam for hours, and during Spring Break, traffic was bumper-to-bumper.

Old Folks worked for a contractor on Thomas Drive, who did business with the Navy base, so he had to drive out there five days a week.

They built a new bridge, to ease the traffic, but in Old Folks's experience, a new bridge didn't reduce traffic it increased it. Certainly when the overpasses, or fly-overs, or whatever they are called, were under construction, it was a mess. And Old Folks usually drove an old beater with a bad thermostat, or no thermostat, that would heat up in traffic.

Old Folks almost never went to Panama City Beach to swim.

One summer when he and Brenda were digging on the Navy Base, excavating a mound C. B. Moore had dug, 8BY3, they had a weather day, because a hurricane was coming, and Potter, who was sleeping on Granny Brown's couch, didn't go fishing, on the Friendship, because it was too rough, and the three of them went out to The Jetties, as locals called St. Andrew State Park, and went body-surfing.

Old Folks wrote about that small triumph over officialdom in Book I.

Spring Break was a pain in the ass. Teenagers would get drunk as a bicycle and puke straight up. Budweiser urged them to drink responsibly, but the subtext of the ads said otherwise, the ads sent an opposite message: get wasted, get laid, fall off a balcony.

When Faulkner burned his back on a radiator in a hotel room in New York, and a friend asked him why he got so drunk he'd pass out against a radiator and burn himself, Faulkner said, "It's my vacation."

It's your vacation. Do what you want.

It's my movie. If I want to write about race, I will.

Spring Break in Panama City is not as bad as Freaknik in Atlanta because Freaknik is black college students, high school students, college drop-outs, high school drop-outs, and who wants that in the neighborhood. Even black people don't want it.

Except black businesses, of course.

A resort destination like Miami Beach, Las Vegas, or Atlantic City will have name acts, like the Rat Pack, Tom Jones, or Elvis.

Panama City has Elvis imitators.

They don't even have Sha Na Na, they have Sha Na Na imitators.

It's pathetic.

The only thing that could make Panama City Beach tackier is gambling casinos.

It's like a low-rent version of Branson, Missouri, with the Rader Family's Ocean Opry instead of real talent.

The beach, at least the businessmen at the beach, want tourists, or used to, but the mom-and-pop motels that used to welcome summer visitors from Alabama and winter visitors from Canada are being bought up for condominiums, where people with too much money buy an apartment as an investment, and the Alabama and Canadian tourists are slowly being priced out of the market.

This is happening along the length of the Gulf Coast, in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida as far down as, say, Cedar Key.

The condominium apartments are not cheap.

The mom-and-pop restaurants and bars are going, too.

Julia Mae's replaced by a boat-slip condominium.

Potter's band, Old Truck, used to play a biker bar at the west end of Panama City Beach. Old Folks and Dick Vajs drove over from Fort Walton Beach to hear them, circa 1976.

Drinkfest '76. Old Folks drank so many pitchers of draft beer that he worked the gear shift and the pedals on the drive home and Dick Vajs steered, from the passenger seat.

Motorcycle-crazy beer joints are disappearing. Bluegrass bands like Old Truck.

When Old Folks got fired for blogging at his tech writing job, a job in which he called himself an ecotourism specialist, he went to the employment counselor at the state employment agency, who asked him what similar job he thought he was qualified for, and he said, "Sex tourism."

He meant the wet T-shirt contest at beach clubs like La Vela, and Spinnakers.

He meant movies like Girls Gone Wild, in which women bared their tits.

Girls. Bared their tits.

Panama City Beach called itself a family resort, but that's like Budweiser saying, "Drink responsibly."

Nudge nudge, wink wink.

She said, "They already got someone who handles that."

To Old Folks, a beach was to walk on, the look for sea beans on, when he thought of a beach he thought of the man getting out of a dinghy with a case of Haig & Haig Pinch on his shoulder.

That was a fantasy.

The summer before Balder reported to Parris Island, for boot camp, he worked at an amusement park, on the beach.

The park is now closed.

Fantasies change.

A person now who wanted to be a novelist would be better advised to become a rock star, or a movie star, perhaps a developer of video games.

I would not advise a young person to try to become a novelist.

There is no future in it.

Here's the peak Old Folks reached, after 33½ years.