Walking on the Beach
Point and Shoot, FL (YU)—Scrib used to take great pleasure in walking on the beach. He thought in his head when he walked.
That is, he solved various writing problems, thinking them through.
The sun on his back and shoulders, the surf to his right, walking north, and to his left, walking south.
That was in
He didn’t walk on the beach much anymore because he had to drive to get to a beach, and it took half an hour each way. He didn’t like driving that much, to walk.
Now, when he walked, he walked around his neighborhood, fully-clothed.
He could see the bayou. But he wasn’t walking along a beach, like a beachcomber.
When he moved
back to Point and Shoot, from Atlanta, he would drive to Mexico Beach, at the
end of Tyndall AFB, park at the public bathrooms, where there was a faucet he
could wash the sand off his feet at, and walk down to Crooked Island Beach,
where there was parking, and Portolets, for military dependents. He would walk as far as
He carried a green crab net and red Vidalia onion sack.
He gathered surf clams, speckled speeder crabs, giant Atlantic cockle shells, and Busycon perversum, or left-handed whelk, from which he made his famous scungilli marinara.
He served it over angel hair pasta with Cuban bread and a green salad.
One time when Owen was between bands he fished with Captain Cooter on the Friendship, and they steamed past Scrib one morning, and the deckhand waved at Scrib, recognizing a man with a crab net, and Scrib waved back at Owen, recognizing the silhouette of the Friendship. Probably they were looking for cobia, or ling.
Scrib called the
annual Ling Tournament, in
Sometime he called himself The Above-Ground Gourmet.
He called himself a hospitality industry report writer and folk art critic. A folk artist called a shiteater a shiteater.
There were many similarities between folk artists, seine fishermen, and underground writers. Also independent filmmakers and roots musicians.
Owen played
When Scrib moved
back to Point and Shoot, and walked on the beach, he used to go and hear Balder
and them play at The Red Bar, in
The time he saw
Owen on the Friendship was earlier, before he moved to
I know it’s confusing. It confuses me.
The memories all mix together, doctor.
Scrib didn’t have senile psychosis. It was more pre-senile dementia (PSD).
Willem de Kooning had Alzheimer’s. He kept on painting.
What else could he do? He was a painter.
Scrib would keep on writing. As long as he could.
He was a writer. It was what he did.
This is what he looked like in his beachcomber outfit.
He wears a blaze-orange watchband and a plastic, olive-drab Timex Camper watch.
He wears Birkenstock sandals and a white T-shirt with a pocket on it for a pen. He wears white cotton Pointer-brand painter pants.
Are you a painter?
No, I’m a writer.
I meant a housepainter.
I meant a technical writer.
Woodie Long is a painter.