Love and Life at Grayton Beach |
Part of the beauty of any beach town is the people who inhabit it and when you are young and impressionable all members of the female gender walk with sand-chiseled grace and symmetry; they are the most beautiful of all the beachside creatures. I met a hundred ladies along these shores, and admired a thousand more, but the beach herself, in all her danger and glory, remained the only girl I could always count on. I remember at least four sisters----blond as sea oats and almost as thin----that grew up with me every summer in Grayton Beach. I knew them the way I knew every other face, as a passing memory which you might not see at all during the next summer, or perhaps only for a few days. I watched the girls bathe in the warm reaches of Western Lake where it pushed out through a narrow sandy pass to within spitting distance of the Gulf (the lake was not yet full enough to open up, any fool could see it'd be at least another week and a half) and on many a warm summer night I admired their sleek forms as they chased their old collie across the wooden floor of our beachside hangout. Half-rusted ceiling fans would blow a light breeze through their straight, sun-streaked hair and the girls would shriek as they raced on, no destination in mind. And then I watched from afar as these thin, impressionable girls became women and, one by one, wives. I found out, when I was much older, that one of them thought I was cute; but I hardly ever spoke to any of them. I was way too shy, they were far too adorable, and my ambitions to catch the last wave of the day, search out the highest dunes, lead the latest expedition around to Miller's Cove----or perhaps catch a card game at Holman's Hangout----in any case there were a 100 reasons I could give for admiring their beauty from a safe distance. Such was typical of my forays down the shadowy trails of romance at Grayton Beach. There were many families like mine that spent great stretches of time there. We came to know their sunburned faces well, and even those folks that you never really met always seemed like old friends. They'd always smile at you when you passed them on the way to the beach, or when you met them at the community mailbox. We'd nod at each other and wink, as though we shared some delightful secret. And, of course, we did.
My grandfather was in the construction business and along with his sons and daughters he built the house I often call my own back in 1956. It was----and is----a sturdy two-story structure made of rough, gray concrete block, rising up through the midst of a tangle of twisting, scrub oak. It never was a beautiful building, too plain and squared off to catch a painter's eye, but it was big, solid and quiet.
Throughout my youth more times than not there'd be three or four families staying there, with dozens of kids racing through the hallways and up and down the stairs, yet you could always find a room to close yourself up in when you needed a little idle reading from the cheap paperback novel you'd come across in the musty chest of drawers where you'd unpacked your undershorts. Almost all of the original beach homes in Grayton Beach were constructed of wood, with wide porches spread out toward the ocean, the lake, or the front door. Dark and quiet dwellings, backed off from the four dirt roads that define Grayton Beach as if they held their own quiet secrets, the cottages seemed too unwieldy to withstand the many violent storms which the Gulf can deliver. Yet every one of these little homes still exist. I know them all, many of them inside and out, and I could paint you a picture right now of every one of them. Except, of course, I'm no painter.
For most of this century Grayton Beach has remained a quiet, undiscovered place. Change and progress made their way slowly into the area though most of my childhood. Years might pass without the addition of a new home or a paved road. But Grayton Beach is no longer undiscovered. People with Real Money are building second and third homes everywhere. It used to be you'd have to drive five miles to buy fresh milk. The closest restaurant of any kind was Chapman's, a fried seafood house across Choctawhatchee Bay that sat about eighty people on a good night. Now there's at least four nice restaurants within walking distance of our house, including a Creole-style concept with white tablecloths, tile floors, and a sixty-dollar wine list. A new subdivision is growing rapidly through the dunes to the west and five minutes away in any direction you'll find fresh seafood, imported beer and lottery tickets. Our place is still on Western Lake and the lake is still scenic, but you don't see the mullet jump like you used to----four, five, six times in a row, silver scales reflecting in the noon-day sun----and all the catfish have long since died off. I've seen eight-millimeter films of myself as a two-year old, playing with my cousin in the dark, shallow waters. I literally grew up in that lake. If I were to pull a seine net along any shore right now I could probably count out every species of life that no longer would be found flipping wildly in the net. This is the price, I suppose, of progress.
Just up the road in the past few years they've developed a place called Seaside, which the developer says models its homey architecture on the breezy old homes of Grayton. Seaside is a striking and beautiful beachside community, with pink brick streets and pastel-colored homes. Inventively angled and staircased, the cottages have numerous porches and balconies, perfect for enjoying the Gulf view and a Margarita. At the end of each block are a couple of trees, a roundabout and a cul de sac. There's several wonderful restaurants and a small, artsy mall where jazz musicians may be heard playing on any Saturday night during the tourist season. It's a popular place to stay if you have money and you're trendy. We drive by there all the time these days and watch the Yuppies, the Nouveau-Riche and the Wannabies, and we admire their sleek forms and shake our heads. No one in our family will probably ever be that trendy or rich, but we'd never be envious. We grew up in Seaside, when it was just woods and wild hogs.
