The first time I sat down at the bar at the Kimball House restaurant in Decatur, Georgia, I was about 28, and I quickly realized I was out of my league. There was a five-year stretch when I didn’t visit at all. I knew my parents were edging me toward home, but I mostly resisted. We’d putter past the old lighthouse, then pick up speed out into the Gulf, where we’d dive for scallops, hunting for their little blue eyes. When I was in college, my boyfriend and I would ride up from Gainesville, and my stepdad would point the boat toward the bay. They kept a Grady-White boat dry-docked at Shields Marina, just at the mouth of the St. Teresa beach or by bribing us with boat trips.
My parents lured me back a handful of times, hosting my friends on the piney shores of St. For years, I visited home only when necessary. I went to college away, determined to be at the helm of my life. By the time I finished high school, I wanted to flee Tallahassee. My stiff upper lip might have convinced my friends, but the looks of pity their parents gave me were a tell. My parents’ divorce was protracted, public, and ugly. I avoided visiting, and when my mom and dad split around the time I started high school, it became even easier to disavow myself of the place entirely. It embarrassed me as much as my parents, whom I made walk 10 feet behind me, terrified anyone would think we were together. Lanark was a forgotten place on the Forgotten Coast. Around 12 or 13, I realized everything about it was neglected, from its abandoned houses with their cloudy, glass-block walls to the cracked sidewalks sprouting with dandelions.
I ate my first oyster in Apalach, although at that age I much preferred big scoops of Mayfield’s ice cream at the old-fashioned drugstore. I listened to the faint sound of wind chimes fashioned from oyster shells. Sometimes, we went further, into downtown Apalachicola, where we wandered in and out of the waterfront shops. On the beach, we’d make drip castles and plunge our hands into the wet muck for periwinkles.Īfter, we’d ride the shoreline of what people call the “Forgotten Coast” - for its propensity to stay suspended in time - into sleepy Carrabelle and shop at the IGA for dinner fixings. We screamed with delight when the fat seagulls stole bits of our sandwiches. We would unpack our lunches on the sloped cement picnic tables, painted a faded turquoise that made them iconic in Carrabelle. She’d fall asleep after her soap operas, and I would watch little green tree frogs cling to her windows and catch lightning bugs.Ĭarrabelle Beach was a quick ride down Highway 98 (some still call it Tallahassee Road) in Gra’ma Freda’s Camaro.
She loved my sister and me terrifically her piles of gold bangles would jangle on her wrists when she scooped us up. Her coffee table was shaped like a seashell, she had no less than 30 bottles of perfume to try, and Coca-Cola and Crisco were essential food groups. Her dog bit and the whole place stank of cigarettes, but I liked it. Inside was a busy, violet-splashed riot of ’60s Florida furnishings with louvered, crank windows and no central air. Once ’50s-era Army camp quarters, it was run down, but she’d fixed it up to her liking. She made the best of it, her little house. We would pull past the dilapidated nine-hole golf course and turn in on the second road, marked by a painted sign announcing an old retirement community: “Lanark Village.” When I saw that old orange marker ball strung on a single power line, we were there. The roadside stands selling “P-Nuts” and watermelon: getting close. I marked time by the approach of familiar sights. We knew not to pester Mom with “Are we there yet?,” so I would stare out the window and use the passing landscape as my clock. My sister and I would clamber into the back seat, and off we’d go from Tallahassee.
0 kommentar(er)
