A trip down memory…Beach?

My family moved down to Florida (from St. Louis, MO) in 1965. My father worked for McDonald Douglas, and the Space Center was his dream.
Oddly enough, I remember living a bit of a “dream” for the first several months that we were down here. We were staying in an apartment/efficiency right on the beach. These apartments were in Cocoa Beach, that’s right, the land of “I dream of Jeannie”.
During that time our family lived a page from Hawaiian Eye. My sister Dee found two hula-dancer dolls, whose hips actually did the Hula.
These adorned the hotel-ish chest of drawers.
Nearly every day, we walked down the steep, sandy stairs to the beach.
There, I learned about sun-burns, sand castles, wading in the surf and what my parents looked like in bathing suits.
But there was another phenomenon I experienced then, that was most vexing to me. After we found an actually house to live in, we got company.
I think it was the first two or three years after we moved down, we had a never-ending parade of “relatives” who came to visit. Most of them were people I didn’t recall seeing before and probably haven’t seen since.
Mom would dutifully explain to me who they were…well, the first year of the visitations she did. After a while, everyone was “Aunt-something-from-Michigan” and “Uncle-who-its-from-Ohio”. I recall an older couple visiting, and showing them our new litter of kittens. I remember mom telling me to “put them away”, that “your Grandpa’s had enough”. But when I questioned her later about him, she told me that both of my Grandfather’s were deceased. To this day, I don’t know who he was.
In the days before Travelocity and Priceline, if you “knew” someone in Florida, your vacation was made, I think. It’s “pack up the four door station wagon”, head south. No need for hotels and hospitality would dictate that you would be fed (at least one meal) per day during your stay.
This was also before the looming, encompassing and entertainer of ALL visitors to Florida…the Orlando theme park. No Disney world (started building about 1974) No Universal. There were two, much farther away. One was called “Six-Gun Territory” –a western town with shows and rides. The other was Bush Gardens, over by Tampa.
But on the barrier Island of Satellite Beach, which is an hour (traveling time) south of Cape Kennedy (it was then), an hour east of Orlando and about 20 years behind the rest of the world, there was very little to entertain guests. So we developed routines. We would take the visiting family to LUMS…a pub-type eatery, which boasted huge hot dogs (steamed in beer) and it was on the ocean side of the main high-way, so after dinner, we’d walk down so the visitors could see the Ocean.
I remember wading into the lapping surf and the saline air filling my lungs along the sea shore.
There was one summer that I remember the family that came to visit. Mom was SO excited. “Shirley” was coming to visit. “Shirley” and my mom had spent a great deal of their youth together and by my mother’s accounts, “Shirley” was “hell on wheels”. I remember a story she told me about Shirley and her going into town to get some cigarettes. While they were on this trip, they ran into a friend (male) who was driving his “hot rod” and asked if they wanted to go for a ride. Apparently, they didn’t get home until 11 that night. Ah..Rash youth!!! (sighs).

Anyway, Shirley and her husband , Jack (his name is Edward but everyone called him “Jack”) and their two daughters, Shantelle (who was closer to my sister and brother’s age) and Michelle (who was a “t’ween”, older than me, but younger than Shantelle and Dee and Bobby.
We took them down to the pier in Cocoa Beach, where there was a live band and soft drinks and I guess there was food (I don’t remember eating any thing). What I DO remember was that after several days in the Florida sun, Shantelle (a fair skinned red-head) got so sun-burned she was peeling and oozing and leaving pieces of herself on chairs when she sat.
I felt so badly for her.

When my mother became so ill, I went through her address book to make some calls and I called Shirley Bradley. She talked to me as though we had just talked last week. She talked to me that way when I called to give updates. She told me about Michelle’s ongoing illness and that “uncle jack” wasn’t getting along so well.
When mom passed away, she was so sad and so sympathetic. She called several times just to “check on me”. She made me feel like family.
Just before Christmas, her husband Jack ended up in the hospital and compound complication upon long illness, he passed away last Friday.
I remember him as a tall, lumbering man. He was kind, but gave me lots of skirt room, I think because He thought he intimidated me.
I was able to say some things that, I think, gave her some sympathetic comfort.
We sent them flowers.
Walt promised we would get up there this year to see my family.
I hope I get to see Shirley again.
I pray God keeps the whole family in His care.

Until next time,
Eat something wonderful
And live a life worth loving!
-Kim