Water Street cnr Avenue D
White, white outside, sheer, solid white, nothing to be seen. Looking straight down from 7H porch, there’s the shoreline and thick line of seaweed washed up high from HNate’s weekend storm tide. Otherwise thick fog.
Sunday morning, high storm tide in Apalachicola as well: riding around Our Town before returning to PSJoe for church, the thick seaweed line was up in the road at Ten Foot Hole and water still covering the road where it goes round under the bridge and becomes Water Street. The usual road blocks to stop “traffic” from going there, and pickup trucks going around the roadblock and splashing through the water anyway. In Apalachicola, you don’t tell nobody what to do.
Did I love the quaint, tumbling down fishing village more in 1940s and early 1950s when I first knew and loved it, or mid-1980s through the 1990s when we lived there; or more now twenty years on in its next life as a beautifully spruced up shopping boutique? Apalachicola’s history began as the third largest shipping port on the Gulf of Mexico, mainly cotton coming down the river to be loaded on sailing ships heading far away. Next, and through my lifetime, as a fishing village, source of the best oysters. Now, oysters basically depleted, lovely little shops, seafood cafes, hotels and B&Bs.
For me, Apalachicola has childhood memories, and teen memories, and my ages late-forties, fifties, early-sixties memories, no seventies memories but now eighties experience, and I love it period, lifelong. Weekend crowds of people and cars when there’s no place to park are good for the new type of business, but it’s best when the crowds are gone and there’s not a soul to be seen, as was so when we arrived in town forty-eight hours ago for our briefest visit yet.
Apalachicola still has the same magic it did a summer day in July 1984 when we drove up and parked in front of the rectory to stay. I remember saying, “Home! I don’t care if I never leave Franklin County again.”
For me, Apalachicola has childhood memories, and teen memories, and my ages late-forties, fifties, early-sixties memories, no seventies memories but now eighties experience, and I love it period, lifelong. Weekend crowds of people and cars when there’s no place to park are good for the new type of business, but it’s best when the crowds are gone and there’s not a soul to be seen, as was so when we arrived in town forty-eight hours ago for our briefest visit yet.
Apalachicola still has the same magic it did a summer day in July 1984 when we drove up and parked in front of the rectory to stay. I remember saying, “Home! I don’t care if I never leave Franklin County again.”
7H is perfect for us, but in retrospect, if we were closing on sale of The Old Place this morning, we might take the cash and run, escape to the Forgotten Coast and never come out.
The engine block goes with this car. Good luck changing those plugs.
DThos+
This may be a TAFB day, as I've been told that I'm getting a haircut.
The engine block goes with this car. Good luck changing those plugs.
DThos+
This may be a TAFB day, as I've been told that I'm getting a haircut.