Post #11: 2804 N. Ocean Blvd

"...My whole life has been bathed in these waters. I lived through a thousand undertows, ten thousand hush puppies, two honeymoons, five hurricanes, a never-ending sunburn, untold jellyfish stings, a dozen excellent drunks, two Coast Guard interventions, a hammerhead as long as a Boston Whaler, and one unfortunate misunderstanding in the Breaker’s Lounge. Here I saw the most beautiful mermaids God ever constructed, the ugliest oyster I ever ate, and a hermit crab with a Rebel flag painted on its back.  As a child I moved ten tons of sand, one plastic bucket at a time, and as a grown man I waited two hours outside Captain Anderson’s in Panama City for a piece of grouper and some French fried potatoes.

Now I wonder. I wonder if the only way I will see my Gulf in the future is through the open window of a dented Chevrolet Biscayne, Porter Wagoner on the radio, vinyl seats crammed with cousins, beach balls, fried chicken, cold biscuits, and a Coleman thermos full of sweet iced tea. We rush to it, slipping through speed traps, watching for the shrouds of Spanish moss, the first long bridge. And then there it is, the sand white, the water clean. I can keep it that way. I have the power, as long as memory holds.

The first time I saw it was 1965. My mother was convinced the sharks could crawl on shore and snatch us, so we darted in and out of the water like magpies, my brothers, my cousins, and me.  My grandmother wandered the shoreline, talking to herself and her dead husband under the brim of her bonnet, filling an apron pocket with shells. They found, him and her, some pretty ones. My mother and Aunt Juanita rolled up their blue jeans as if they might wade in, but just stood on the sand, looking. They rode a full day, changed a fan belt and a radiator hose, just to come down here and look. My big brother, Sam, unafraid of bull sharks, or sea monsters, waded in chest deep and did not cry when he stuck his hand in a jellyfish, a creature not of this world. We saw the remnants of sand castles, eroded ruins, but the bedtime stories our mother told did not involve keeps or castles, so we did not know for sure what they were. But we understood moving earth. The descendants of well diggers, we dug a hole almost five feet deep, buried Sam up to his neck, and caused my mother a small heart seizure, because she was convinced every trickling wave was the incoming tide. At dusk we sent cannonballs pounding into a swimming pool the size of a stock trough, the water spiked with so much chlorine it turned our hair green and our eyes the color of cherry cough drops. That night we wandered aisles of coconut monkey heads, embalmed baby sharks, and plastic grapefruit spoons, putted golf balls through the legs of a cement dinosaur, and begged to stay just one more day. Later, our sunburn slathered in Avon lotion, we ate tomato sandwiches and barbecued potato chips by a rolling television screen. Matt Dillon had yet to make an honest woman of Miss Kitty, and paradise cost fourteen dollars a night, if you remembered to drop off your key..."

Rick Bragg penned that for Garden & Gun magazine just a few weeks after the BP spill a few years back. I agreed with the purpose of his column, and I couldn't help but have flashbacks of my days at our beach house in Cherry Grove while reading some of the descriptions.

Anyone who knows anything about North Myrtle Beach knew it was far enough away from Dirty Myrtle that the roughnecks stayed away. North Myrtle was where the Pee Dee vacationed, which is why my great-grandparents from Bennettsville built this beach house after Hurricane Hazel. We had the Dairy Hut for ice cream that melted down your hand in the salt air; the Barnacle, where we became proud owners of hermit crabs, if only for a few days; the Cherry Grove Pier, home to the landing of the world record tiger shark.

2804 N. Ocean Blvd.

We built dripcastles, we crabbed the inlet, we fished off the seawall in front of the house before beach re-nourishment became a fad. At night we would play gin rummy or just sit in the yard and try to guess what type of boats were in front of the house. We'd leave the front house to go to Boulineau's IGA, Stevens Oyster Roast or Calabash. If we were lucky, we were taken to Barefoot Landing (to look, not buy) or to play putt-putt.

Life was simple. It wasn't until I had a drivers license that I made my first trip to Myrtle Beach. I wasn't impressed... it wasn't "the beach." After we sold our house a few years back, we tried the Edisto route, which I didn't mind, but it wasn't the same. Every year, we trek down to Hilton Head and a shaded pool suffices for the beach.

But every time I want to conjure up a good memory of family and friends, I can always think of Cherry Grove. The smell of salt air, the heat of a beach house that wasn't air-conditioned until the mid-90's, the coolness of sun burn, the taste of the grits cooked in local tap water and the sound of the waves crashing in front of the house. I go back to 2804 N. Ocean Boulevard every summer, even if I'm not there in person.