Tropical Storm Cindy arrived in South Georgia and along the Florida coast at essentially the same time my wife and I were leaving for Panama City to celebrate her milestone birthday. No, I can’t reveal which one. Some things you just don’t ask.
As the tropical storm approached, we thought twice about whether, no pun intended, to take a chance and go on southward despite the obviously shaky atmospheric conditions.
We threw caution to the wind and went on for at least two good reasons:
The condos and large hotels in Panama City Beach are not in the habit of allowing cancellation of your reservations simply because of a threatening weather forecast. They know that the forecast could be wrong, and that given time, the sun will shine again.
Also, we don’t look like beach-goers, do we? What I mean is that none of our toes has touched a grain of sand in years. The rip tide flags were flying high, keeping us marooned even if we had wanted to go snorkeling or sun bathing.
Like many our age, we go to Panama City to eat and to watch people do what people do.
Mary Lee, having grown up in South Georgia, has been going to Panama City Beach for most of her life, as have many of her counterparts who grew up in that region. The old beach town is less than a two-hour drive from our house in deep southwestern Georgia. When you say “going to the beach” and you live in this area, that automatically means Panama City Beach.
We Southwest Mississippi natives of modest means mostly vacationed along our state’s Gulf Coast, which was a far better venue in its golden era of the 1940s through the 1980s, in my opinion, than it is today with all the flashy casinos and little else.
Many of us recall with great fondness such long-standing but now long-gone businesses as the Buena Vista, Edgewater, Great Southern, Sun-n-Sand, Broadwater and White House hotels; Gus Stevens’, Friendship Club, White Cap, White Pillars, Angelo’s and the Sea-n-Sirloin restaurants and bars; and touristy theme parks and goofy golf outlets on seemingly every corner. I even remember the quaint Sun Tan Motel, where our family seemed to stay most summers for a few days.
Many reasons could be blamed for the demise of those institutions, but Hurricanes Betsy, Camille and Katrina are largely responsible for the huge vacation-related changes along the Mississippi Coast.
Gulf Shores, Ala., began attracting more and more Mississippians as it developed after 1950. Then along came the explosive growth of Destin, Fla., a more glitzy destination which has grown now into a vacation mecca for many Mississippi families.
Back to that weather report. The rain may well have been falling in torrents and the ocean roiling at full churn, but that did not seem to adversely affect the number of motorists along Beach Front Drive on Panama City Beach. Mary Lee pointed out that families who work all year for a week at the beach are usually not going to cancel their trip even if the weatherman says to do so.
Easily the elder of these Gulf Coast destinations, Panama City Beach appears to be thriving economically. The Holiday Inn people have just opened a new high rise on the beach equal in comfort (and price) to any of the other large entities of that sort. I saw for the first time a stand-alone package liquor store operated by Wal-Mart. (I didn’t get a chance to see how its prices compared to the Sam’s Club package outlet in Pensacola, which has the lowest I’ve ever seen.) Surely, it can’t be long before Wal-Mart starts selling cars.
From the preponderance of automobiles ladened with kayaks, bicycles, golf clubs and other accoutrements of the tourist trade pouring through Lucedale and the southeast Alabama cities of Dothan and Eufaula lately on a daily basis, plus our own experience, it appears the southern vacation industry will thrive again this summer, as usual.
