BUSHWACKED

1982

I spread my beach towel at the base of bright white sand dunes and rested my weary eyes on the Gulf of Mexico. I’m more familiar with the brown, muddy sea and sand of Savannah and South Carolina Low Country. This looks like paradise. I enjoyed my birthday Slurpee and Payday with the rising sun and wondered if my family is worried or relieved that I’m gone.

After my shoulders are adequately sunburned, I apply Coppertone sun tan lotion and walk down the beach scanning the shore for sand dollars, the currency of childhood vacations. A little boy with shiney black hair and red swim trunks pushes a plastic dump truck loaded with sand to his big sister, a girl about ten-years-old, shaping a gargoyle atop a sandcastle’s door. Her moat, fed by the low tide, is filled with guardian fiddler crabs, creating quite the outdoor diorama. The brilliant girl holds wet, sludgy sandmud loosely in her small fist, letting the mixture dribble, forming peaked towers along the castle’s turret roof. Her mom, a slim woman in her early thirties wearing a black one piece and gold flip flops, saunters hip-first down to inspect her daughter’s medieval sand architecture. She pauses a few feet from the castle grounds and snaps a photo of her bright and shiney child. The girl smiles a smile that I imagine will be pasted in a family photo album, “Summer of ’82, Pensacola Beach.”

By eleven o’clock, the beach is crowded with oily, happy people and I need to get high, so I walk the hour back to my car, stopping along the way for a corndog and CoCola. I choose a fatty from the wooden weed box stashed under the passenger seat and walk into the dunes.

I’m an outsider, alone, a loser watching families - like I observe my own family. I’m not a member. I’m a spectator, a witness, a spy. An orphan. I’m a bachelor and a vagabond, a nar du well. A sinner. I make the rules now. I’m the boss of me and I’m giving myself the day off. I shower off and take $20 of the few hundred I have left in a Bible. Robbers won’t steal a Bible. But, if they do, I trust that karma.

The Sandshaker Lounge is a six minute walk from 7-11. It’s a little after noon and the place is lively with conversation and laughter. There’s a sign on the wall behind the bar that reads: The sun, the sand, a drink in my hand, it just doesn’t get better than this!

The Sandshaker looks to be separated by age. Older men sit at the bar smoking cigarettes and drinking draft beer. They’re not in swimwear. Men and women over forty line the counters along dark, paneled walls or play pool. Younger patrons spill out the back door to the Sandshaker’s tiny tiki bar on the beach. Inside, the walls are filled with framed memorabilia and photographs of the Navy’s Blue Angel Jets like the F6 Hellcat, F-11 Tiger and A-4 Skyhawk. A giant blue marlin is mounted over the bar and there’s a pool table on one side of the bar, a pinball machine on the other. I order my first legal cocktail under the Big Blue Marlin and sit with the older folks and regulars. Crunching, grinding, whirling, blenders line one side of the bar under a sign that reads, “Home of the Original Bushwacker.”

“I just moved here and somebody told me I should go to the Sandshaker and order the Bushwacker. Today is my 19th birthday so this will be my first legal cocktail.” I handed the bartender my license to prove it.

“Well, bless your heart. This birthday Bushwacker is on the house. Be careful with these. They sneak up on ya.” The beautiful bartender winks as she blends the strongest, most delicious frozen concoction that has ever crossed my lips.

BUSHWACKER

4 ounces cream of coconut

2 ounces liqueur (Kahlua coffee liqueur)

1 ounce rum (black)

1 ounce liqueur (Creme de Cacao, white)

1 ounce liqueur (Creme de Cacao, black)

4 ounces half and half

4 ounces vanilla ice cream

2 cups ice

2 ounces rum (151 proof)

Blend ingredients except 1 oz of rum which is floated on top.

I think you get drunker if you drink through a straw. One Birthday Bushwacker and I’m barefoot in the sand, warm inside and out and I start thinking, maybe everything will be O.K. After the second Bushwacker, I know, this is my kinda place. The people are friendly and so am I. I talked to a fella in his 50s with a parrot on his shoulder who claims he’s a pirate but had to retire because he lost his sea legs. Said he went all wobbly. So, now he’s a beachcomber. He showed me his metal detector and a small sack of treasure: a pair of sunglasses, a gold cross, coins, a Matchbox car and a class ring with a name inside. He says that if a thing is engraved, he does his level best to hunt down the owner. Then my parroted friend leans closer and whispers in my ear. Perhaps he sensed I was on some sort of adventure. When the student is ready, the teacher appears.

“Some hotels on the beach serve a continental breakfast. That’s a free breakfast. All you have to do is believe. Believe you are a guest of the hotel. If you are questioned, and you won’t be, just say, ‘Oh gosh, I left my key in the room. I’m happy to go back and get it. Be right back.’ Stand up and pretend to head to your room. And they’ll say, ‘No, I believe you. We don’t want your pancakes to get cold.’ Eat there a few days and move down the street to the next hotel. You have an honest face. You’re a clean cut kid. Believe your story and you’re golden.” Said the prophetic parroted pirate.

I left the Sandshaker with valuable intel, like where to find a free breakfast, the location of the best gay bar, safest dunes when sleeping on the beach, cheapest Happy Hours and some not-so-valueable intel like where to worship on Sunday mornings. I look church-goin, but I can promise you, I ain’t.