A Day At The Beach

Ever notice how some days it's powerful hard to keep your head above water? I have been noticing that lately. I get my signals all crossed sometimes and next thing I know, the waves are over my head and I'm drowning. Or I get busy with a bunch of stuff and when I think to look back to the shore and check out what's going on up there, I don't recognize a thing. Story of my life.

When I was a medium kid we lived in Oakland Park, Florida (a bedroom community of Fort Lauderdale), for about five years. Oakland Park is approximately fifteen miles from Miramar ... which for the uninitiated is where my favorite actor, one Mr. Depp, also lived, at the very same time! Or at least part of the very same time. I think that's so neat! Of course he was a long, long way from becoming a pirate. But I like to think he had Captain Sparrow in him even then. How could he not? He's Johnny after all. JohnnyJack.

If you go to Yahoo maps and ask for driving directions from Oakland Park to Miramar, you will see that Miramar is due south of OP, right there along the Atlantic coast ... nothing has moved ... and if you look carefully, just about equidistant from both OP and Miramar, you will see delightful Dania Beach. Now, our parents used to get my sister and me out of school to go to the beach for a day, or at least an afternoon. I'm not kidding. I'd get called down to the office and there would be my mom, looking all serious like somebody had died. I knew that was bogus because our nearest relatives were far away in Kentucky and Louisiana, and we didn't even have a phone to get called on even if we did have some in town and one of them keeled over. I'd be led away by the hand and when we got outside, right about the time the backs of my legs got to sticking to the vinyl of the backseat in the broiling heat, I'd figure out that all that was going on was that we were going to the beach! My parents wanted to go to the beach before school was out (to beat the traffic or just get there earlier I guess) so they'd come fetch us. We never thought anything of it. It sure beat math class.

While I struggled stickily into my bathing suit in the unairconditioned backseat of our '57 Chevy, striving to retain a modicum of dignity while doing so, I always watched for signs that we were headed for Dania Beach (which was a longer drive) rather than Lauderdale Beach. I liked Dania Beach better. I think my sister did too, but since she rarely spoke to me except to holler at me for being a stupid idiot, I'm not sure. It doesn't matter. Dania was a little more casual, I think is why it suited me. You could totally let your hair down there. Lauderdale was real ritzy with big white hotels rimming the bluegreen bowl of the ocean, with a strip of light-beige, sugary sand for a saucer. The whitecaps always seemed to be straining for the portals of the shimmering buildings where the rich people stayed for holidays or maybe even lived year-round if they were rich enough, but of course they never made it. Except maybe during Hurricane Betsy, which I saw with my own eyes in 1965. But that's another story.

The sand at Dania Beach was a little coarser and a little browner and just a little better ... or at least that was my viewpoint. It was not as pristine as Lauderdale, and since we were not as pristine as most people, Dania seemed like our kind of beach. (Bear in mind this was a long time ago. I have no idea what Dania Beach is like now.) There was also a big brown-black pier that made an interesting focal point, with people constantly walking all over it and even fishing from it. If you got too hot and if you got permission, you could go sit up under the pier for a while. But upon arriving at Dania, once you had made it -- hopping gingerly to keep from scorching your instep (water shoes for the masses not having been invented yet ... or if they had we would not have owned any) -- across the really hot strip of sand between the car and the area of the beach that you were going to call home for several hours, that sand at Dania was just perfect for hunkering down in. Like I said it wasn't fancy sand like they had at Lauderdale; this was sand God had put there for poor kids like me and my sister. I'll call her Jan but that's not her real name.

Our routine was, first we'd plunk down our heavy Coleman camp cooler full of ice and my stepfather's roach-brown bottles of Busch beer (which we had been required to lug between us) and little greenish bottles of Coke (that we might get to share one of later, if we were lucky). Then we'd breezily arrange our towels and hastily survey the crowd of people who had showed up to occupy the beach with us. I was always on the lookout for bullies -- large kids with a certain look in their eye -- because I was dinky and weak and the penultimate scaredy-cat. You'd never know it now! LOL! Intrepid I am, now. And no one but a giant would call me a waif! Anyway, I usually didn't see anyone to look out for immediately, because when we got there they were generally still at their desks in their sweltering school rooms.

Mama and Daddy would start by lighting up their Marlboros and re-adjusting their Foster Grants on their patrician noses (you'll never believe this but they both looked just like movie stars). Then, after dressing it in its disguise of a small paper sack, Daddy would use the magnetic bottle opener to pop the cap off one of those brewskis. Aside from her hardpack of Marlboro's, the most Mama popped the cap off of was a frosty Coke and a really hard crossword puzzle. Then they'd both settle in for a long afternoon of being beach bums. I thought there was some kind of rule that grownups couldn't go into the water. They always acted scared right on the edge, running and squealing if a bit of white spume touched their big toe, or if they were daring, maybe letting it swirl in frothy puddles around their ankles ... or else they steered clear of it altogether like my folks did. I didn't care because in the water I felt free. I wasn't under anyone's thumb. Well, except for Jan's when she decided to dunk me or shove me or otherwise humiliate, boss, or deride me. But I could handle her. Most of the time. She was meaner but I was faster.

The only directives issued as you headed for the waves was, number one, Do Not Go In Over Your Head and number two, Every Few Minutes Look Up And Make Sure You Can See Us. We knew if we did not obey, we'd get whipped when we got home (maybe; actually it depended on how many Busch's disappeared from the chilly emerald recesses of the Coleman), so we did as we were told. We did as we were told, immediately, about 99.9 percent of the time. Without question. Didn't all kids do that in the '60s? If you were going by me and Jan you'd think they did. Obedience was sort of a given in our house. You obeyed or you got the belt. It was real easy to remember, which was helpful for me because you might say I was a flibbertigibbet. Love that word. Given to much flibbertigibbeting. And the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Eventually, after antsily standing at ease to receive our instructions (which we had already memorized because they never varied), Jan and I would galumph toward the water (because we had flippers and they were easier to get onto dry feet, we thought), and enter the cool, frothy, salty, mostly turbulent world of the Atlantic Ocean. We felt about as much at home there as we did anywhere. We'd clamber in fearlessly, the incoming waves lifting us off our feet and knocking us back, the coldness momentarily sucking the wind out of us. The first thing we'd do after getting completely wet was turn around and wave madly at Mama and Daddy. There they'd be, lolling semi-glamorously on an old bedspread Mama got at the Goodwill, looking bug-eyed in their dark shades. His cigarette would be rakishly hanging from the corner of his pouty mouth; hers would be delicately held in her right hand a la Elizabeth Taylor, whom she actually resembled. They would unenthusiastically wave back because even though we had lost sight of them while we got adjusted in the water, they had been watching us all along.

Having checked in with headquarters and making sure we were not already in trouble, Jan and I would commence to paddling around furiously, first going prostrate and opening our eyes in the shallows, without goggles (remember, this was not the fancy beach), to look at shells, then advancing just past waist-deep, feeling along carefully with our flippers for what might be a ledge that suddenly plummeted down to where sharks were -- or something worse. After about eighteen waves had crashed into me and I had swallowed enough saltwater to float a battleship and my nose was burning and my bathing suit was full of sand, I'd remember that thirty seconds had elapsed and I knew I'd better Look Up And Make Sure You Can See Us. So I would. I would look right where Mama and Daddy had been just a few moments before.

And they would not be there. There would be an adipose lady in a bright orange one-piece and a straw hat, liberally smearing her meaty shoulders with Coppertone. There would be a skinny old guy with a bald head slowly traversing the wet, packed sand at the water's edge, his trunks saggy. There would be a young mother in a madras bikini laughing as her little kid, barely walking, registered amazement the first time the cold white foam hit his tiny feet. There would be strollers and dogs and towels and umbrellas and coolers and transistor radios blaring Andy Williams' "Can't Get Used To Losing You" ... all the right stuff but all the wrong people. Just before I panicked I would look to my right. I always knew to look to my right. And there, way down the beach so far that they were only about an inch long, were Mama and Daddy, relaxed and smoking, reclining on the bedspread. How could they have moved that quickly? I would ask myself, already feeling the sting of the belt on my bird legs. Why did they move the bedspread and the cooler? Did somebody kick sand on them and make Daddy mad, or had there been a radio playing the Beatles? (Daddy hated the Beatles.) It was sickeningly disorienting.

And then I would realize: they had not moved; I had. I had not meant to! I was only playing! I was having fun! But the whole time I was cavorting and trying to avoid being swept under by the really gigantic waves that occasionally rolled in, or just generally scrapping with Jan, something insidious called an undertow had dragged me (and Jan too ... she always thought she was better than me but used me as a homing device nevertheless ... mostly because it was her job to look after me like I was a baby) about a fourth of a mile down the beach. It was amazing how quickly it happened. Some days you barely got your nose cleaned out and your eyes focused before you looked up and were alarmed to see that you had been swept away so far that Mama and Daddy were hardly recognizable. It was bizarre. We'd be obliged to scramble up to the shore and, momentary landlubbers, return across the dark spongy sand to our point of reference before plunging back into the eternal tides.

I have noticed that life is like that. You are innocently (or sometimes not so innocently) plodding away at your daily routine, sometimes even having a little fun as you fight your battles, and you look up and the landmarks are gone.