Tacky

For Baton Rougeans, "the beach" means the Alabama-northern Florida Gulf coast. There's no "beach" in south Louisiana, just wetlands. So going to the beach means piling a bunch of stuff in the car and driving east for at least four hours. (Well, you can drive for just two hours and end up at the beach in Biloxi, but trust me, keep on going, unless you don't mind swimming thru clumps of oil.) Once you hit Gulf Shores, you are in the land of clear waters and white sand, dolphins and stingrays, brown pelicans and white egrets, massive schools of little silvery fish, and (depending on which way the wind is blowing), frightening clumps of jellyfish.

When we first started going to Gulf Shores, the town/beachfront was tacky, to put it mildly. Uber-tacky. The quintessence of tacky--tacky taken to such levels of tackiness that it was almost transcendent. [A note to my British readers: think Blackpool on an American scale. Yes. Really.] The shell animals. The endless racks of tee-shirts bearing images relating to
1. beer,
2.vomit,
3. naked boobs,
4. big butts,
5. meaningless sex,
or 6. all of the preceding.
The plastic dolphins. The shark tooth necklaces. The seedy amusement park with the rickety roller coaster. The tattoo parlors. The grimy bars and fried fish restaurants, all bearing names related to Sea, Sand, Surf, Sun, or Shore. The sad See Live Alligators! "nature" park. The cheap motels. It was great. I mean, if you're going to do something, DO IT--and gosh, Gulf Shores did tacky.

Then, in 2004, Ivan came. Hurricane Ivan rampaged through Gulf Shores and swept it almost clean. In moved the developers. The cheap motels are gone, replaced by expensive condominiums. The restaurants still specialize in fried fish, but the quality has improved immensely, as have the non-fried options. There are now chi-chi delis and a coffee shop and even a couple of wine bars. A colorful array of various theme parks have taken the place of the creaking roller coaster. The supermarket, where once upon a time you couldn't even find skim milk, now stocks every upscale and ethnic item you could possibly want. Baby eggplant? check. Hoummus? check. Hazelnut fresh roasted coffee? check. Thai green chili paste? check. All very nice and comfortable and convenient but as a result, of course, the Gulf Shoriness becomes ever more diluted as the Pretty Much Like Everyplace Else grows more pronounced.

Still, the ocean, the white sands, the dolphins remain unchanged.

We had a good beach break, even with two teenaged boys along--mostly, I think, because menopausal me no longer Tries Hard. When we first started going to the beach as a family, almost two decades ago, I had this vision of what beach vacations should be, a vision that I Tried Hard to realize: the four of us frolicking in the surf and building sand castles together all day and then tumbling into the condo and playing board games and charades til bedtime. And in this vision, the basics of modern existence--tv, video games, ipods, computers, dvd players, cell phones--disappeared from our lives. Good Families, I was certain, did not watch screens while at the beach. As if the company of children, hour after hour, day after day, without a break, wasn't in the least bit problematic, as if sunburnt, weary kids don't get cranky and beastly, as if being in the sun all day didn't guarantee me a blinding headache by 4 pm, as if Keith didn't get testy without a few hours of solitary reading time every day, as if the boys actually got along, as if we were the Good Family.

I didn't Try Hard at anything this time. The boys spent lots of time hooked up to ipods and staring at computer screens. We watched several movies. We frequently went our separate ways. We're not the Good Family.

Good enough, tho'. No more Trying Hard. No more development, no more dilution. Just tacky us bracing for the next hurricane.