By Ewell Brown
Pinkston Jr.
Like
so many beautiful creatures, Grayton Beach can turn on you as easily it can
turn you on. You know about the lethal forces -- hurricanes, skin cancers,
sharks, vipers, rip tides. But what you really ought to fear are the more
likely threats -- countless species of green slimes and scratchy grasses that
spread thick for miles at sea, then rot stinking on the sand and spill into
Little Lake to steep rancid in the sun. Or the skeeters and biting flies. Not
to mention the insidious hand of humanity. All part of nature’s cruelty when a
vacation is threatened with extinction.
Any season at Grayton can be any kind of season, though most months are predictable enough, like December, when you better stay out of the sandblasted wind. The streets are empty like they always used to be, even in June and July, in the days before commerce arrived. Some of the 50 restaurants in South Walton close for the month. In Seagrove, the Wheelhouse is open, a breakfast institution that has exactly three customers at 9 o’clock on a Saturday morning, and one cook/clerk/waitress/bus girl/manager picking up the night shift’s undone chores, to her immense and freely expressed discontent. The night before had been part of our family’s early Christmas celebration, and it carried on late and raucous. I was at the Wheelhouse because I got up earlier than I wanted to, thankful not to have a measurable hangover. With relatives crashed about in the great room, I sneaked quietly out for a cruise on 30-A, which was nearly deserted as in the old, old summers, but with flashing stop lights. I got me some poached eggs and grits and daily news. Later I would lose at cards and golf but hold my own in our jam sessions. We find that Grayton’s finest hours are when two or more are gathered, say, when it’s time to paint the big house fast in half a Saturday with March rains on the horizon. Or when there’s nobody else around.
Old
Grayton town is surrounded by Gulf, lakes and parks. It has always been at
least a little jag off the route between Destin and Panama City. Being at the
end of a road like County 283 to nowhere else, yet right at hand, turned out to
be Grayton’s salvation, at least for the time being. Even now, 50 years off a
ferry trail ending, Grayton is neither off nor on the beaten path.
Until
mid-century, nobody spent much time nor money on property at Grayton Beach.
Homesteaders were slowly selling it off through the 1920s and 1930s to working
class families from upper Florida and lower Alabama. They built plain cottages
along the highway, then a few more on the short dirt roads off to the left and
in the woods by Western Lake, the largest in a group of 20 geologically
important coastal dune lakes a mile apart along the Walton County, Florida
coast. My family built a big block house in a spacious wooded corner of the
lake, on a foundation of GI Bill careers.
It’s
true that Grayton is not remotely the same place it was when the family Lodge
was founded in 1956. That’s too bad, but it’s not so bad that it spoils much of
anything for most people, those of us from regular mundane places and lives.
Anyone who remembers too sadly how it used to be can forget to remember how
sweet it remains, and how it really was before luxuries such as garbage
service, when anything that wouldn’t burn got dumped in the woods.
Even
the beach has renewed itself many times, thanks to tidal waves and the
meandering shallow pond that spills from the main lake and opens to the Gulf
every now and then. Judging from its movements all these years of our lives,
the roving sprawling big puddle seems to have formed the wide plain over
centuries by cutting from side to side one season to the next across the sand,
sucking in storm surges and keeping the dunes hundreds of yards apart. It has
probably been the kiddie pool for all ages from the first time anybody happened
by, sometimes dank and warm and other times clean and cool or the mix of fresh
and salt, hot and cold spots. It’s waist deep at the most and sometimes flows
like an indecisive river, back and forth with the tide. When the pass is new
and rapid, you can tube the narrow strait all day one way or the other. You can
float dead still when the pass is closed, as it usually is. Around a few bends
are the main parts of Western Lake, which was not the name we always used. We
saw three lakes: The Lake, with a
dozen houses and a few short docks on the west dogleg shore; Little Lake by the
Gulf, where babies play; and Big Lake: It was once spooky over there, and as wild as any kid could stand at the
handle of a 5 hp Evinrude up the back of the farthest narrow channel, miles
from Grayton in canopies of a slender, blackening creek as darkness fell and
every cat-tail moved like a cottonmouth and every floating stick had gator
eyes. In the moments before the frog and cricket sounds of darkness took over,
the little motor barely puttering was all anyone could hear.
Grayton
these days can be scarier than the North Pole, weirder than Key West or
milder than Mayberry. Probably someday
it will all be different in ways we can’t imagine. Something even worse than a
double deck freeway through downtown, over the parks and lakes and the razed
Store building that since 1937 has been the most popular night scene for miles
around, nowadays as the Red Bar. This
is three miles from the “Truman Show,” so no horror is unfathomable. They’re
already talking about a development that could potentially poison Western Lake
with runoff into the nourishing wetlands.
No
time is safe. October can be Grayton’s furious worst. Or its most delicious: No
carnivorous insects. No seaweed. Nobody much. Cool water. Afternoon air warm
and still down by the shore. Read. Swim. Walk. Rinse. Repeat.
At
the Lodge, it’s not so summery then. The oaks might shiver. Heaters kick on. A
gust or shower can feel more like winter than winter. Breakfast alone on the
upper deck came this time with a light breeze and layers of bird songs. On the
other side of the lake, unseen SUVs droned through the pines and palmettos.
Power units hummed below me and down the short block; somehow the surf farther
on up the street was drowned out, try as I might to pick up even a hint of the
comforting thunder that I knew was in the air somewhere. Across the cove,
hammering began. A lawn mower started somewhere else. Overhead, a little prop
Cessna chugged out toward Mexico. Off to my right, a bug chirped and then a few
more. Crickets or locusts. A chattering wave swept side to side, front to back,
top to bottom, swirling and swinging from nowhere, one electric static pitch in
my head getting louder and softer and at its peaks louder and louder again for
a few minutes until nothing else was there up to a crescendo. Like turning a
switch, the buzzing snapped off and I dozed to the other lingering musics.
I
barely remembered I was there to take the waters, having learned that the Holy
Grail of Beach Days is a sunny and still October afternoon. I gathered the
basic necessities: two magazines, two apples, a quart of my O.J. Cuervo
concoction, a gallon of Gatorade, a pound of peanut butter crackers, a 99-cent
raft, towels, sunscreens, extra shades, folding chair and ball cap.
The
day went slowly. Read. Sleep. Walk. Rinse. Repeat. The surf was calm and loud.
The gulls didn’t say much. Everything said paradise. I said to myself it was
worth the sweat and blood to get there.
Soon
I was having second thoughts. My throat got scratchy and wheezy. The air was
dry and heavy, hard to get down. A stroll felt like the Peachtree Road Race. A
cold? My muscles ached much more than usual and in the wrong way. Flu? My HMO
doctor and my spousal sympathies were 350 miles away. Mercifully, the water and
sun felt like good medicine, so I put away the Jose and soldiered on enthralled
by the peacefulness.
That
night at a jiffy mart, the clerk made small talk. She asked if the red tide was
bad today. I didn’t know what she was talking about.
“No.
The beach was perfect. I didn’t see a thing.”
She
asked if I was coughing.
“Coughing?”
I looked at her like she was clairvoyant. I wondered if she had been on the
beach, maybe the one under that blue umbrella, and had seen me gasping and
choking. I tried to picture her in a straw hat and yellow bikini. “Yes, I was
coughing.” I looked at her funny again. “That’s the red tide.” She told me all
about the algae plague, how it’s not red and it’s not a tide, and how it kills
fish for a worthy purpose, but it’s getting worse for reasons natural or
otherwise, and it’s not so healthy for some people. In fact, as I recalled, the
water was not even semi-Bahamian the way we prefer it, but tinged yellowish.
Other times a little hue to the water wouldn’t matter, but I would later read
on the Web that areas of the Gulf had gotten full of “plant-like micro algae organisms
called phytoplankton.” They permeate the air. They often attack in the early
fall. They cause “temporary human respiratory irritations like scratchy coughs
or watery eyes. . . . Staying in air conditioning takes care of these
problems.”
News services reported despoilation of northern Gulf beaches:
“Red
tide is suspected in a massive fish kill that has left an overpowering stench
hanging over the shoreline in Fort Walton Beach and nearby Panhandle
communities: fish floating upside down, fish skeletons, fish with undersides
bulging like balloons, infested with flies, heaped on area shores.
‘It
made us sick,’ said a man from Cinco Bayou. ‘We haven’t had it like this,’ said
a 35-year resident.
The toxic algae bloom thrives in warmer weather. Fatal to fish, red tide also causes skin irritation and respiratory difficulties in people.”
The
next morning I tried the beach again. As I got closer, my lungs and nostrils
and throat rebelled. I got a headache. How could all this look and feel so
perfect on the outside and ruin my insides? I had counted the days like a buck
private going on leave. I had the place to myself and the run of the wild
kingdom. Now this. What mercy? I holed up with baseball on TV and Brubeck on
the boom box. Two or three times I ventured hopefully toward the beach only to
stagger back doubled over heaving.
Grayton
Beach was settled ever so slightly in 1890. A mere 109 years later, the streets
were paved, a job that took the county less than half a morning.
There
aren’t any motels or condos yet, just private homes and a few B&Bs.
Visitors are advised to park the Harley or the family-mobile at a house where
one’s host has a four-wheel drive truck and a county permit for the beach, or
at any other house there, all of which are within walking distance of the
beach. Or else just pull as close as possible to the dune walkover. Grayton is
not necessarily recommended for day-trippers. There are few parking spaces and
no public restrooms.
It
is also free, like many parks nearby. A few have showers, bathrooms, picnic
pavilions and ample parking. Some cost a token amount, like Grayton Beach State
Park and Camp Site, on Big Lake. Before the park or the highway existed, we got
to Big Lake the hard way, by a winding channel or a severe hike through
scrubby, prickly back dunes; the first sight of such vast open water ringed by
pines could make a young hoss hum “Bonanza.” Any couple of people who braved
the badlands that far from their own reality knew they were as alone as they
would ever get.
Then
Big Lake was cut in half by 30-A.
It’s
been a long time since anyone was allowed to roam around on those hills, or in
Grayton Dunes State Park to the west , where teenagers in Jeeps and Ford
woodies used to fly over blind sand ramps, barreling up any hill, along the
ridges and around the back loop where a trail was worn. Fortunately for the
terrain, we’ve put a stop to all that. Younger adventurers played cowboy games
in the canyons and prairies. Those with other fantasies might still find places
in the posted territory to look and touch where Mother Nature smiles.
To
see what all these dunes looked like 50 or 1,050 years ago, visit untouched
Deer Lake Ppark or Topsail Hill Park. Both have toilets by the parking lot and
strenuous treks to the beach through that thick bleached burning sand. They
epitomize the prevailing local ethic that beach access should be plentiful, at
least for the extremely able-bodied.
Most
of the beachfront in the county is public, and taxpayers are exerting their
rights of ownership. Recent zoning regulations have reflected some regard for
Grayton’s God-given scale, as if the window of opportunity for a Big Grayton
may be closing. Maybe everything we have loved here doesn’t have to be overrun
after all with oversized overkill like every other place that makes people love
it. Maybe even the rambling little bungalows on Garfield Street have a chance.
Anything can happen.
There
are finally the inevitable big and tall houses, and more on the way, where a
last row of dunes used to reign high. Hemmed in by the new is the old Wash Away
house, the first house built on the sand, now fixed up considerably and perched
on the ubiquitous pilings.
The
Wash Away has held its approximate ground since the McKinley Administration. By
Eisenhower’s time, the “Haunted House” looked abandoned. There were no signs of
its thriving past as a hotel or workers’ dormitory. Sand would flood the lower
porch and dust the floors throughout. Sunk in a deep well of drift banks, it
was a playground for children jumping and exploring, a piece of the landscape
like a magnolia cave. It could be creepy. Some boys could run all day from Blue
Mountain to Seagrove and swim half the water in between but would not darken
the battered door of the Haunted House. Nobody went in at night, or even got
that close. It made noises. Our lore said it was built on the spot where the
town founder, a Mr. Gray, buried his two daughters. We supposed they were bled
to death by deer flies, or mutilated by tripping into a razor bed of oyster
shells. They were said to roam the dunes and appear to guests at the Wash Away.
The first time the house floated loose, people supposedly saw two girls standing
on the tallest dune during a hurricane while lightning struck at their feet.
The house washed away sideways, thus inspiring the name. Its position was
deemed acceptable after workers who were trying to re-orient the foundation
were chased off by thunder at every stroke of a nail or a saw.
The
first park opened in 1967. Then 30-A was completed. Most of New Grayton was
built in the Seventies and Eighties. A snooty restaurant in the Store building
won worldwide raves and fame for the tiny village, though I never tried the
Paradise Café once they shooed my shoeless self out of their lobby opening
week. Over by Seagrove, an astute developer replaced a vast impenetrable
thicket of oak shrubs, rattlers and cacti with a pseudo-old village called Seaside,
which immediately became renowned for its style, institutionalized communalism
and eco-sensitivity. Nineties professors graded Grayton finest beach on the
continent. More parks have been added. Growth has been steady. Never booming,
never dead, never too uppity for a rusting mobile home or tractor on blocks in
the odd vacant lot. Perhaps in a Seaside backlash, a brand of benign
redneckedness had a place at the table. Perspectives changed. The old Store was
no longer a dump; it was quaint. The shotgun shacks were rustic, not
dilapidated. Surfers and fishermen and poets were free, not bums.
Grayton
Beach needs a personality because its beauty can be, well, elusive. On my third
night of the red tide, I crashed to booming blasts and rumbles. The rain drove
me deep and fast into a mighty sleep until I woke hearing a familiar buggy
swarm from days before, screaming, it would seem, at the bleakness of this
dawn. Cold mist, fog, breezy drizzle. I passed some time on a long drive,
combing Panama City for cheap bright pictures to hang in the hall upstairs.
Along Highway 98, people were fleeing as if from a monsoon. I looked forward to
folding up on the sofa with nothing on but the biggest baseball game of the
year and my sweat pants. I had followed my team intensely for months (well,
years) and had figured on sacrificing a fourth afternoon outdoors to see how
the season might conclude. As my week played out, however, TV baseball was not
a choice to be made, but some consolation for my sentence of indoor captivity.
Traipsing
across the yard with my posters from Alvin’s Island, I saw a shaft of light on
the lawn. I looked up and saw a sliver of blue. There were thin spots in the
clouds. I was tempted to test the water, if for no other reason than to bid
this futile beach trip good riddance once and for all and maybe say a final
curse. There was time before the first pitch to punish myself again. But why
bother?
Only
because I had to. I went for proof that neither air nor water was fit for
immersion. I went to satisfy my mind and came back a long time later more than
a little satisfied all over. The air flowed through me like nothing. It didn’t
sting nor smell like some faintly familiar chemical. The clouds floated apart.
The water was crystalline. I made camp. I could always catch that last few
innings.
I’d rather be
lucky than rich
Read.
Swim. Walk. Rinse. Repeat. Also Breathe. The storm had washed away the red
tide, and my part of the coast was clear. Floating half asleep beyond the
little breakers, I noticed the harsh quiet of harmless waves moving away. Once
or twice I wondered about the playoff game. I decided maybe I would care later.
My
last afternoon lasted far longer than all day.
That
night was like most nights you would remember up on the deck. You could hear
mullet splash. Nobody’s compressor came on. There was no traffic stream over on
the highway. I spent some time on the dock, where the stars were out, then went
inside to check the scores on ESPN. Hours earlier, my team had been humiliated
out of the playoffs for all the world to see while I lay listening to the waves
and sipping tequila screwdrivers. I told myself I wouldn’t trade places with a
big leaguer making 15 million a year.
I
took the spiral staircase back up to the deck and sprawled on a chaise. The
same stars were out, and a dozen of my favorite sounds. There were soft
whistles from the woods, and from somewhere far away, a pounding roaring sigh.
Make that 50 million.