It is in the dead of winter that my mind wanders during household chores. While doing something in the bed room, my eye caught sight of something that sent me back in time. On my night stand there stands a small, lonely trophy. It is from the Broadwater Beach Hotel in Biloxi, Mississippi. It is the first swimming trophy I ever won. I was 7 or 8 years old.
I remember our first trip to The Coast. (In Jersey you might go ‘down the shore. In the South, we go to the Coast.) It was in the early or mid 1960s. It was late summer, and in those days most cars didn’t have air conditioning. They had manual, roll down windows and those funky vent windows. Ours was one of those cars. Even going 65 miles per hour with all the windows down, it was incredibly hot. The drive to the hotel seemed to take forever. The Gulf of Mexico was at the other end of Mississippi. It might as well have been on the other side of the world. Those were the ‘pre-interstate’ days. Eisenhower’s Interstate system of highways was still under construction so much of the trip had been on state roads featuring a million small towns with speed traps, stop lights, stop signs and the occasional hay-baler or tractor. We stayed at a place called The Sun and Sand Motel. It’s neon sign proudly proclaimed that the motel featured air conditioning, color TVs and a swimming pool. It was right on the beach. The pool was really nice and was kind of pinched in the middle. If you looked at it from above, it looked like the number 8. There was a small foot bridge over the waist of the pool.
On arriving at the motel, we all leaped out of the car and quickly changed into our ‘swimmin’ suits’. In a mad dash, The Goob, Sweet Pea and I raced across the parking lot to the pool. We all jumped in. Mom, running right behind us tried desperately to keep up, but she was no match for blazing speed of three kids who had been cooped up in the sweltering backseat of a 1961 Buick for two days. She was shouting at The Goob to stop and nearly losing her mind. The Goob was only about 3 or 4, and he didn’t yet know how to swim. He always had to wear a life jacket in the pool. In his rush to get in the pool he had neglected to put his life jacket on and Mom had noticed this as he dashed out the door. On this day, at the Sun and Sand in Biloxi, Mississippi we learned two things. One, we found out that The Goob had figured out how to swim and two, under the right circumstances, Mom will jump in the pool completely clothed. It should be noted here that years later, on diving into a very cold pool, the Goob once claimed that he had forgotten how to swim. I have viewed him with considerable suspicion ever since.
In addition to learning that the Goob could swim, on this trip we discovered The Broadwater Beach Hotel. The Broadwater Beach Hotel was a vacation experience like none other. It was an oasis. It was just as enchanting as the Emerald City but without dwarfs, with much better food and a lot of swimming pools. It had a swim up bar where you could get a Shirley Temple or a Cherry Coke and all you had to do was tell them your room number. There was a little trolley that toured the entire resort so that you didn’t have to walk the expansive grounds in the heat. One day the Goob went missing. He spent a whole afternoon riding around the facility on the Trolley while Mom lost her mind again. The Broadwater had not one but two 18-hole golf courses. They also had a baby sitting service where they would send someone’s grandmother to baby sit for you. The restaurant was amazing and when you are on vacation, you can have pancakes with sausage every morning if you like. Across the highway, the Broadwater Beach Marina was home to huge boats and small yachts that, to a small boy’s mind, clearly must have been owned by millionaire cotton farmers. Though we stayed at the Sun and Sand Motel on our first visit to The Coast, after that we always stayed at the Broadwater Beach Hotel.
The Broadwater Beach Hotel was a well thought out resort. While Dads spent afternoons playing golf, the Broadwater made sure that the moms and the kids visiting had plenty to keep them occupied and happy. The moms hung out at the pools with kids while chatting and enjoying drinks in the shade. The kids engaged in all manner of fun things. There was shuffle board, badmitton, and Tennis. On what must have been our second or third day of our first visit to the Broadwater, we discovered something that would change our lives.
We discovered there was a daily swimming race for the kids.
Because we were water rats, Sweet Pea, The Goob and I won every race we swam. In the year since the Goob had figured out how to swim, he had become to be pretty good at it. By the end of our stay, they just had us swim the length of the pool and gave us a trophy just so other kids would have a chance to win a trophy in the races. It was this experience that kick-started our adventures in competitive swimming. I enjoyed pretty good success, as did Sweet Pea. The Goob, however, was different. As usual, he was a bit of an over achiever.
The Gulf Coast was a magical place. Back in the 1960s, the Mississippi Gulf Coast was a ‘happening place’. Discretion was the watch word of the day. There was a gambling ship that operated quietly off shore. Gus Steven’s was the nightclub where everyone went for entertainment. Many of the top entertainers of the day played there. Jayne Mansfield played there and lost her life on the drive to New Orleans. The golf courses were green, manicured and wonderful. From Mary Mahony’s restaurant on the highway to the barbecue shack on the other side of the back bay, the food was incredible. Gulfport and Biloxi were the Crown Jewels of the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Featuring gleaming white beaches made from sand dredged from the bottom of the sound and brown water every bit as as muddy as Sardis Reservoir, the Mississippi Gulf coast relied on illicit gambling, great golf, copious amounts of liquor, amazing food and tremendous entertainment to draw people from all over the South.
A visit today to the Gulf Coast is different. The Sun and Sand Motel disappeared in the wind and waves of Camille. All that remains of the sweet, discrete and southern elegance of The Broadwater Beach Hotel is a dusty trophy on my night stand, the ruins of a once grand marina and a fading memory. Gus Stevens closed many years ago. The sleepy, sweltering coast of white sand and brown water is now home to crass casinos and cheap, disgusting fast food chains. Rather than relaxing in southern charm and comfort, today a visit to the coast is like a bad visit to Vegas. The local flavor has been smothered by the sheer weight of the gambling establishment. Gambling in Mississippi, it seems to me, is a lot like Kudzu: It chokes out everything else in the area and beneath the glitter and glamour of it’s sprawling foliage, lies the eroded remains of a better time.
Sixty some odd years on, I still have my trophy.
The next post will be just as good. Don’t miss it.
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