Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 17:26:37 -0500 From: Phanny Subject: [WRITERS] SUB: CONTEST: On Clearwater Beach On Clearwater Beach On Clearwater Beach in the sixties the sand is so white that it washes out all t he color in the home movies. The water of the Gulf of Mexico is blue-green on fa ir days and blue-gray on days when the troubled wind comes up from the southwest , carrying storms. And when the storms come, the water is gray and white, poundi ng in big waves that swallow up the sand castles built in places where the child ren in their bright bathing suits and T-shirts thought they would be safe, be hi gh and dry. The children will not see the metaphor for years. The seagulls know who has bought popcorn at the Palm Pavilion. Here is a fat old lady in blue-flowered dress, big straw hat, cat's-eye sunglasses, rubber thongs , big red box of popcorn. She is a comical picture all by herself. (Most of us o n Clearwater Beach make a comical picture: fat or thin or pale or hairy or strin gy or squat or knock-kneed, we are real people on the beach in the sixties.) Eve n funnier, though: she stares with a Norman Rockwell frown at a single seagull, hovering at her eye level before those cat's-eye glasses, wings doing a slow fla p. If she tosses a piece of popcorn in the air, the gull will catch it in mid-ar c. And she tosses it! The frown is mere theater. We should have known that the w oman we thought she was--the mean, stingy, censorious old fussbudget--would not have been carrying that popcorn, not in the bright red box with the smiling clow n. And so she tosses the white kernals, scolding the gull as he tilt his head to catch them--her tosses are tha! t accurate--and then scolding his handful and then dozens of friends as they arr ive, all hovering before her in the air. In this way she says to us, Look, I am not as you think I am. This body is out of control, you must ignore it. I am a y oung girl, skinny and gangly and funny. My friends, those who are still around, call me on the phone when they want to laugh, to be uplifted. Margaret Dumont, s he says to us in popcorn language, Margaret Dumont would not have put up with Gr oucho Marx if she were really a stuffy old snob. Take this to your heart, she sa ys, in the language of popcorn and gulls. The pavilion is a big frame building, bleached by the sun and scoured by the san d. It stands on stilts. A veranda runs around three sides. Greek ladies sit ther e all day, out of the sun, Greek ladies in black dresses and with black hair pul led tight in a knot at the nape of the neck. Their daughters are there, too, mat rons in blouses and shorts and sandals; and the grandchildren in bathing suits r un down to the sand and up again on the wooden plank stairs--fast! You have to b e fast on those stairs, and on the sand; the sun makes them hot, the sun is hot on our shoulders, and the surging water is warm. The Palm Pavilion is white wood and green awnings. Inside, you can see down to t he beach through the boards of the floor. When the hurricanes pass, the storm su rge sends the waves under the Pavilion; you can see the foam through the slats. There is a bar and a sandwich counter, tables where you can sit in your wet bath ing suit, your bottom scratchy with sand. The fries are good, and the hot dogs t he best in the universe, grilled with mustard and relish and just a sprinkle of sand. If you sit leaning forward, your sunburn won't hurt; if you bite carefully , the sand won't crunch. The doors are wide open, and the jalousies. The breeze comes in smelling of salt and wet sand; the waves crash; the Greek voices murmur and chatter; swimmers dodge waves and shriek; at the end of the bar, a TV plays a baseball game. The owner remembers us. He lets us carry our father a beer. Th e sand on our faces rubs the sunburn, but it feels fine, here at the Palm Pavili on in the sixties. There are racks of postcards. We buy the ones with pictures of the beach, laugh at the ones of the ladies with bare bosoms. We buy sun hats and tanning lotion a nd sunburn cream, so that the smells of straw and Coppertone and Noxema and Sola rcaine are also the smells of the Palm Pavilion. There is a shop at one end of t he bar with swimsuits and clothing to try on. We may not go in there in bare fee t and bathing suits. We look through the closeouts on the table near the bar: th is, says a young Greek lady, is a string bikini. They all wear those in France. If this were France I would wear one myself. She wears a black American bikini, and she smokes a cigarette. She is wonderful, exotic and wicked; we try not to g iggle in front of her. The stalls in the bathroom are wooden. There are real flush toilets, built right where the latrines used to be, and big spiders in the corner. We love the spide rs, we love the smell of new paint. There are changing rooms and showers that co st money; we slide on our clothes over our suits. Sometimes we sneak in our unde rwear, and change all the way, illicitly, right there in the stalls. We worry th at someone will catch us, but they never do. You can rent a big umbrella, you can rent a raft, you can rent an inner tube you can rent chairs, you can sit on the white sand or float in the salty warm water . You can sit on top of an inner tube with just your bottom grazing the water, and kick in little foot paddles, and lean way back. The Florida sun will be red through your eyelids and if you open your eyes, it will be a white-yellow blaze in the blue of the sky. Close your eyes again. Lean back. And float. Just float.