Guys like these get drawn in by whatever magnetic force attracts fools with no adventure in their lives to dropping barometric pressure. Three young guys had stripped off their shoes and shirts and were tempting each other into the surf. Nick pointed down the beach just outside the pool of light cast by the large chain restaurant trying to look quaintly seaside.
The breakers were getting large, rough, and sloppy. Think it should get interesting out here soon.”Ī storm front coming in from the west had the Gulf roiling. “I think Lyle might be out in a little while. He stood with his hands in his pockets, watching the surf build. On down to the spot on the beach just next to the fishing pier where the guys and I always meet. Past the new lifeguard building and the large lights keeping the cement strip between tarmac lot and sandy white beach bright for the nighttime crowd at the restaurants and bars. Now it faithfully rolled me down Pickens Road to the main beach parking lot. It survived the big island-wiping hurricane a few years ago because it was off-island with me. It’s been reliable since my uncle passed it on to me in the eighties.
Late 1960s model just a couple of years older than me. Got in my little old brown Datsun truck and enjoyed a warm mid-June breeze blowing through the windows. I strolled out of the bar happy to be leaving. Closest you’re gonna get to fruity from me is a lime in your tonic or a token strawberry in the daiquiri premix.” “Hey,” he said to the woman, “this ain’t Hawaii. He’s a smartass, but he keeps himself around by putting up with the shit I won’t. I’d refused yet again one woman’s request for “something fruity with an umbrella in it, like a Mai Tai” when I’d had enough and handed it all over to my bartender. The visitors from colder places sip at their diet soda and liquor of choice through little red straws with glossy wet lips and the gin-and-tonic with a lime wedge doesn’t taste so much of vacation anymore.Ĭonfronted with these young things and the suitors that inevitably trail in their wake, the snowbirds get a bit less fun loving and little more judgmentally bitchy. The essence of vacation, right? Throw in the girls in too-tight dresses with bikini strings showing around their necks and leg muscles taut from balancing on their spiky heels or tanned to their flip-flop-gripping toes and a bit of the past intrudes. Snowbirds far from home on a warm beach in a cozy bar can feel they are momentarily outside of time, outside of the cares of the world. Mix them together and no one emerges at the end of the evening without feeling tainted by the experience. No matter how peppy the music on the juke or how festive the décor and lighting, these crowds alone are enough to make anyone swear there are no companionable evenings to be had in a bar. When my bar’s invaded by snowbird oldsters and the local diet-soda-and-whiskey sets the atmosphere cloys. Photo Credit: Keoni Cabral/Flickr (CC-by)
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