(title quote: Beach Boys, Somewhere Near Japan)
"Running down around the towns along the shore
When I was sixteen and on my own
No, I couldn't tell you what the hell those brakes were for
I was just trying to hear my song."
- Jackson Browne, Barricades of Heaven
My brother graduated from high school in June of 1980, right around the time my father was eligible for retirement after serving 25 years with the Glen Rock police department. Ever since my parents were newlyweds, their dream had been to move south. Shortly after they fell in love with each other, they fell in love with Myrtle Beach. They drove south any opportunity they could get. They never came on an airplane. My father vowed never to fly again after an airplane he was on during his time with the army lost an engine in the air. They always drove.
For a few years we stopped coming to Myrtle Beach so often. We stopped spending large chunks of our summers and every week that school was out on vacation in the land of the palmetto tree. I didn't realize at the time that my parents were saving money for the move. Saving money was something they didn't do often. My dad has always been the type who loves instant gratification. At least I come by it honestly.
“My life is like a stroll on the beach... as near to the edge as I can go.” - Henry David Thoreau
After attending my brother's high school graduation and my father's retirement ceremony, we were soon to embark for South Carolina on a more permanent basis. My father drove down ahead of us, with my grandmother, in his conversion van that he and a few friends had spent months building out of an old appliance delivery van my dad was given in exchange for helping with deliveries during the past 20 years. They converted it in the warehouse of the grocery store where my father worked when he wasn't wearing blue. Now it was to serve as his RV while he found us a place to live. My grandmother went along as my mom's agent in the location of lodging for us, so that my mother could be sure that any place my dad purchased would be fit for us to live in. My dad can be an impulsive man, and he was determined to buy a house of some kind during his single week of advance scouting. We just wanted to make sure it had a sturdy roof and walls and a floor that wasn't dirt. My dad had joked about us moving into an old, abandoned ramshackle farm house falling into the weeds because the price would be right. Mom was afraid that he was serious, so she sent her mother with him.
My dad found a house, a mobile home actually, and soon after his retirement and Scott's graduation were behind us, we made the land of our dream beach vacations our year-round home.
"But if you left it up to me
Everyday would be
A holiday from real
We'd waste our weeks
Beneath the sun
We'd fry our brains
And say it's so much fun out here
But when it's all over
I'll come back for another year."
- Jack’s Mannequin, Holiday From Real
This is how I became a "Damn Yankee." When I entered school, I quickly found out that fat, nerdy kids from "up north" were not all that welcome in the South. It was, and in some quarters still is, a "true fact" that the South was gonna rise again and throw off the yoke of Northern oppression once and for all. The war was still being fought in the playgrounds and schools, in the streets and at the bus stops. Needless to say, I got picked on a lot.
Soon after our arrival, I discovered something that was to be my escape from the harsh realities of my existence for many years. To some extent, it still is. Soon after we moved, I discovered Dungeons & Dragons. Some of my sixth grade classmates were trying to learn how to play the game and nobody could understand the rules, so they gave me the books and asked me to read them and teach them the rules, then serve as Dungeon Master. Ah, the benefits of being the nerdy kid in class. I was so used to being picked on that I declined at first, thinking D&D was some new version of "snipe hunting" or some other trick they were trying to play on me. They finally convinced me that it was no joke, they just didn't know what half of the words in those books meant.
As time passed and I grew older, I began to discover my surroundings in this place I now called home. It wasn't long before we realized that living in the town where we had passed so many dream vacations, and as I related yesterday some of those dreams were nightmares as well, didn't necessarily mean that we would be on a year-round vacation. My dad soon began to work full time, since living in a resort town, while cheaper than living in New Jersey, was a bit more expensive than he had originally thought. My parents didn't' own a house in New Jersey, and they didn't have any kind of "nest egg" from which to draw. My brother's college tuition also became a financially drain since he wasn't able to hold a job for any length of time. When he dropped out of college, the tuition bills were still there and they were soon added to the medical bills for the care of his bi-polar disorder.
As a teenager, I discovered the benefits of living in a resort town. There always seemed to be something to do. While I continued to play D&D, I got a job as a pool attendant/life guard at our neighborhood pool, eventually bought my first car, a '79 Mercury Cougar with a LOT of horses under the hood, and broadened my horizons while using the car to explore my surroundings. There have always been a number of songs that, while they were written about other places, places far away like California and New Jersey, have always captured the essence of what is was like to grow up in Myrtle Beach.
"We stand up in the Palace like it's the last of the great pioneer town bars
We shout out these songs against the clang of electric guitars
You can see a million miles tonight
But you can't get very far."
- Counting Crows, Mrs. Potter's Lullaby
"Beyond the Palace hemi-powered drones scream down the boulevardThe girls comb their hair in rear view mirrors
And the boys try to look so hard..."
"The amusement park rises bold and stark..."
"Kids are huddled on the beach in a mist."- Bruce Springsteen, Born To Run
I spent my teen years in Myrtle Beach driving way too fast in a car with an engine that was way too big. It didn't take me long to figure out that my Cougar could win drag races. Though I was never one for thrill rides, even when we vacationed in Myrtle Beach, we used to go to The Pavilion Amusement Park, which is gone now. I was horribly embarrassed once when my mother dropped a bag of fudge on the haunted house and forced them to shut the ride down, turn on the house lights, and find her fudge! As for the beach, I learned that once it started to get dark, the tourists would pack up their things and head for their hotels to shower and change clothes to go eat in the local seafood restaurants in Murrells Inlet. Once they left the beach, the locals took over. I spent many nights on the beach with friends until long after the sun had faded and darkness had covered the surf and sand. As for The Palace, it was built too late for me to enjoy much of its short heyday, but I did get the chance to see STYX in concert there. I actually made it onto the stage and sat on its edge while James Young gave me repeated high-fives.
"The ghosts of the tilt-a-whirl will linger inside of your head..."
"And the ferris wheel junkies will spin there forever instead."- Counting Crows, Mrs. Potter's Lullaby
When I was in college, my roommate came to Myrtle Beach during the summer with his church youth group. They went to The Pavilion and were enjoying the rides when something unexpected happened. He had just gotten off the ferris wheel when he heard screaming and a commotion. Turning around, the discovered that several people had fallen from the ride. A teenage boy was killed and two girls were injured when they fell from the car, which they were rocking at the time of the accident. When I was in the seventh grade, an eight grade girl that I vaguely knew from school was killed while riding the "Black Witch" roller coaster at the Magic Harbor Amusement Park. I spent much more time at Magic Harbor while growing up here than I ever did at The Pavilion, but after several high profile deaths, the park was razed. The grounds are now considered haunted.
“You know I gotta get outBut I'm stuck so tight
Weighed by the chains that keep me...
Hangin' around this town on the corner
I been bummin' around this old town too long
I been hangin' around this town on the corner
I been bummin' around this old town for way too long.”
- Counting Crows, Hangin’ Around
One of my favorite "haunts" during my teen years was the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Waccamaw Drive. Though the area was destroyed by Hurricane Hugo in 1989 (the storm surge reached the level of the yellow awning on the left - I'm planning a Hugo photo post in a month or so with many of the photos I took right after that storm), it was rebuilt fairly close to what it looked like during my teen years. The 24 hour diner at Sam's Corner has been serving its "World Famous Hot Dogs" since 1957. This corner is still a favorite hangout for locals teens and tourists. Recent visits have proven that I still "have it" (whatever "it" is) on the air hockey tables and skee ball machines in The Pavilion Arcade. My first job was about 300 yards from this corner, selling "Hawaiian Shave Ice" from a little wooden shack. Also, while I was in college, my favorite surfing spot was about 100 yards south of this intersection, and I could often be found there as early as 5 a.m. trying to catch a few waves before I went to work at Village Hardware.
"Down on the boulevard they take it hard They look at life with such disregard
They say it can't be won
The way the game is run
But if you choose to stay You end up playing anyway
It's okay...
The hearts are hard and the times are tough
Down on the boulevard the night's enough
And time passes slow
Between the storefront shadows and the street lights glow
Everybody walks right by like they're safe or something
They don't know..."
- Jackson Browne, Boulevard
My post from last night, about my traumatic head injury at age three, really got me thinking about a lot of my memories. Memories, for me, are often tied together by fragmented images, sounds, and smells, and are often associated with some of my favorite songs. After I went to my new place of employment to fill out necessary paperwork and pick up a shirt for work tomorrow (I will let you all know how things went when I get home around 11 p.m. Eastern Time), I went on a little photo safari, armed with my memories, my camera, and my ipod. This post is the result of that. It's disjointed and fragmentary, much like my memories. I'm sure I will be sharing more of those memories of more specific events and places in the future.
"We can give thanks for our health and happiness, the support we receive from our families and friends, some wonderful memories and the excitement that each new day brings." - Queen Elizabeth II
I spoke to my former color guard instructor this evening. She is overwhelmed with the responsibilities the new director is loading onto her shoulders and despairing that she will be able to handle them all, along with college, and working as a waitress at her father's restaurant. I told her that I knew she could do it. More people are starting to learn of my career change, and I've had several somewhat awkward conversations with people over the past few days. It's still difficult to answer when they ask what career I'm pursuing now, because I don't consider retail my career and I haven't earned any money from writing yet. Isn't that a prerequisite for calling it a career?
When I spoke to the manager that will begin training me tomorrow, he told me that he will be calling the other manager tomorrow to set up an interview for the management training. I hope that works out, because once I am trained, the store I where I hope to become assistant manager is much closer to my house, and the pay would be much more suitable to financial survival.
Thank you, faithful readers, for your support and encouragement. You have all made the journey of this summer so much easier for me than it could have been. You have allowed me to write, to change, to grow, to revisit the days of my youth, and now, to see the ocean again as I did when I first became a "Damn Yankee" (someone who moves from the Northern U.S. to the Southern U.S. and stays south of the Mason-Dixon Line). May we have many more journeys together.
"It's been so long since I've seen the ocean... I guess I should…" - Counting Crows, A Long December
