Day 113 (Written Tuesday April 3) ~ I Wear My Sunglasses At Night, I Ain’t Missing You At All, Panama, The Power Of Love, Jump, I Can Dream About You (If I Can’t Hold You Tonight). I can’t hear any of these, and a host of other, songs without instantly being transported in my mind back to the mid ’80’s, when I was a pre-teen cruising the strip (the “Miracle Strip” for those of you who remember) in Panama City Beach, Florida with my older cousins. When I was between the ages of 10 and fifteen these were the hottest songs on the radio during the summer. Back in those days gas was less than $1.00 a gallon and people could afford to, and loved to, go cruising, especially when we were on vacation in Florida. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
When I was five years old my parents, along with some friends and my mother’s brother and his family, took us to Panama City Beach, Florida for vacation. We stayed at the Bikini Beach Motel. I was a little kid, but I fell head over heels in love with the Emerald Coast at first sight. We went to Sea World, played on the beach, went to the Miracle Strip Amusement Park, ate at Angelo’s Steak House, got freshly made chocolate covered doughnuts for breakfast at The Doughnut Hole, and hung out with my older cousins (Angie, Corey and Nicole). It was the greatest week of my very limited life.
It would be several years before we would return to Florida (I was about 8), but when we did, it only got better. We upgraded from the Bikini Beach Motel to a condo. As far as I was concerned we were living the high life. We took my Big Mama (grandmother), and my best friend Brandon Johns to PCB and stayed at the Edgewater Resort. It was an all inclusive resort with a one acre lagoon pool, water falls, arcades, restaurants, concerts and awesome rooms. Again my uncle Lloyd and his kids (Angie, Corey, Nicole) went with us. We felt like grown ups getting to run around the resort on our own. There was a Burger King just outside the parking lot (the first BK I had ever eaten at, and we ate there every day), a mini golf, go cart track across the road, and a movie theater just beyond. I saw my first “event” movie down there that summer....the original Batman. My parents let me run with my older cousins and we would cruise the strip, blasting the local radio station, just seeing who and what we could see. Of course we all were dressed in our brand new airbrushed sleeveless shirts, backwards checker board painter hats, body glove bracelets, sea shell necklaces and Ray Ban Wayfarers with neon sunglasses holders around our necks. Life would never get better than those summer nights by the coast.
After one of these trips my dad chose to take a different route back home on one trip and we passed through Destin, Florida. Little did I know the impact this would have on my childhood. In those days Destin was a tiny little fishing village that had only a handful of high rise condos, no water parks and go cart tracks. It was just miles of virgin beach, as white as sugar, filled with wildlife such as crabs, fish and dolphins. A couple of years later we would stay in Destin, which would become my summer home for the next five years. Each year we would stay at Sundestin Condominiums. My friend Brandon Johns and I would spend a week there with my parents and a week there with his parents, each summer. We would usually go the same week every year, as would many other families, allowing us to make friends with kids from all over the country that we would only see once a year. And when we got together we were the kings of the condo. It was our personal playground where our parents allowed us free reign. It was during these summers that I first fell in love with the cute, tan girls from Louisiana, Georgia and Arkansas. During theses summer vacations was the first time I remember feeling “grown up”, although I was far from it, I felt grown. We would go eat at Amberjacks (a restaurant on the first floor), order virgin strawberry daquiris, spend hours in the arcade, swim, walk the beach, go to Big Kahunas or Shipwreck Island water park and ride go carts and play putt putt golf. All day and all night the radio stations would play the same songs over and over. I don’t know if I paid much attention to them back then, but to this day, if I hear Van Halen (David Lee Roth era), Huey Lewis and the News, or any other of a dozen 80’s pop artists, I can feel the warm gulf breeze and smell the salty ocean air and I feel 13 again. Even if I can’t go back, all I have to do is here those old songs, and Florida and my childhood, well, I can dream about you.
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