With Truman on the Redneck Riviera
August 9, 2021
My two kids in America, Jed and Chesed, treated Sharon and me to a week of celebration for our 50th wedding anniversary, one that took us to a sort of dream world down on the Gulf Coast. I’d heard about this coveted destination for years, but had been oblivious to the significance of the “30A” car stickers, ball caps, and T-shirts I’d seen around Nashville. When we turned right off US 98 onto Florida’s East County Highway 30A, between opposing corner establishments, the Donut Hole and Big Bad Breakfast, we made our way down through a colonnade of overarching trees to Rosemary Beach. Our place was just up the road from Seaside, where we took an afternoon trip to see the location for a Jim Carrey movie, The Truman Show. This shot is of the Coleman Tower, entrance way to the beach, appearing in the film. (We also saw a massive “Trump Won” banner, perhaps 30’ by 6’, hanging down the side of a house on the outskirts of Seaside.)
That stretch of highway, lined with lovely houses and apartments, with ocean sightings a hundred yards away, and served by great little shops in periodic clusters, is somewhat utopian. Kids ride bikes safely for miles up and down byways; people leave their unprotected gear on porches and the beach as they walk up and down the shore.
Of course, the real joy was in fellowship with the family, the chance to gather with two of our kids and their spouses, plus seven of our grandkids, ages 5 to 13. There was a bit of challenge in an “oldywed” game our daughter put together for us, sending us the questions a week in advance and instructing us to not share our answers till game day. Actually, some of them seem designed to break up a marriage, but I guess they suggest that if we survive the experience, we show we’re tough enough for the next 50. (And I thought of insisting that the kids and their spouses answer them first.) But it went off well, with the help of a little humor, which they encouraged. For instance, for number 7, I went with “Trick question. She would have chosen singleness.” So here they are:
1. What is mom's favorite thing about you?
2. Where do you still want to visit in the world?
3. If mom could change one thing about you, what would it be?
4. What is the best date y'all ever went on?
5. What is the worst date y'all ever went on?
6. If you had $10,000 and you had to spend it one day, what would you buy?
7. If mom hadn't married you, who would she have married?
8. What is your favorite hymn?
9. If you could have one super power, what would it be?
Fair skinned (i.e., sunburn and cancer prone) and up to my nostrils in writing deadlines (a review of C.S. Lewis’s God in the Dock and a book editing job in “apologetical aesthetics”), I kept pretty much to coffee shops during the day. But sunset was amazing, best viewed from a walk along the beach. Meals were the big come-together times.
I recalled the old couplet:
Little drops of water, little grains of sand,
Make the summer cottage, more than I can stand.
Though I wasn’t big on the water/sand aspect (though I did take a brief plunge in those clear, warm waters, where I’m told dolphins are seen to cavort), I had a great time with the family and environs, thanking God he’s blessed us with such a crew.
Oh, and there were the interesting people I met in the shops, including a heavily tattooed NYC ex-pat, who asked about my writing. I asked about his too, and he said he’s doing a children’s novel involving angels. And the two guys who were wearing Cubs caps were fun, what with our mutual connections with Chicagoland, including Kankakee. (My ILARNG battalion had an armory in Kankakee.) I brought up the Arlo Guthrie song, City of New Orleans that mentions the Illinois Central train stop there, and he said Arlo had been there in 2005 on a fundraising whistle stop between Chicago and the Big Easy.
Later, in line at the Donut Hole, I met two women who were civilian employees at Tinker AFB near Oklahoma City. With my Army background, I enjoyed talking about not only military stuff, but also about SBC churches in the area (including FBC Del City, where Bailey Smith and Tom Elliff pastored, as well as FBC Moore, where the tornado came through in 2013). They helped me a little in figuring out how Sharon and I might fly “space available” on transport planes, using our retiree ID cards.
Oh, and the trip down and back was cool. Once off the interstate at Montgomery, we got to see a part of Alabama we’d not experienced, featuring mile after mile of pine tree farms for lumber; Chuck Person’s hometown, Brantley (We saw him as a Pacer in the late 1980s, where he was known as “The Rifleman); and a fine lunch at Tha BBQ. People talk about the “culchah” of New York and Paris, and I’ve partaken of both. But I treasure the culture I found along the way to the Redneck Riviera and back.
Oh, one more thing. My youngest children, Jedidiah and Chesed, met “Truman” (Jim Carrey) when Chesed was a student at Pepperdine in Malibu. Jim stopped off at a local yogurt shop and Chesed and Jed (who was visiting) got to talk with him a while. When they asked if they could take his picture, he demurred but said he’d be happy to take theirs. So we have a shot of our kids taken by the actor.