I came into town driving on Highway 331. The sun was setting. The sky was pink. The first thing I saw was the bay of my youth, and I almost started to cry tears of nostalgia.
Whereupon a motorist in a Range Rover traveling upwards of 190 mph tried to run me off the bridge and into the bay water.
Welcome home.
The Choctawhatchee Bay is pure majesty. You’re looking at 127 square miles of brackish water, fed by the Choctawhatchee River. A unique habitat that’s home to species like leatherback turtles, alligators, porpoises, and sturgeon.
What is a sturgeon? Glad you asked. A sturgeon is a prehistoric fish species that looks uglier than homemade fudge. Sturgeons predate the Jurassic Period. They can live up to 100 years, grow 20 feet long, and if you catch one in your cousin’s boat you will have no choice but to grab another beer.
I veered off 98 and took the old beach road near Blue Mountain. And I was on Highway 30A.
The highway was littered with beach tourists aplenty. There were bazillions of them. On every crosswalk. Many such tourists wore thong bikinis, stiletto heels, and hoop earrings. And those were just the men.
This place has changed.
At one time, my home county had a population of 21,000 folks. We had one or two grocery stores, a few filling stations, and Barney Fife still checked the doorknobs every night.
Everyone’s daddy fished. Everyone’s mother sewed their Halloween costumes. Nobody spelled “taters” with a P. And words like “ruined” were always pronounced “ruint.”
Today, Walton County sees more than 5.3 million visitors per year. The average tourist spends an average of $889 each day, amounting to $4.8 billion in direct spending.
We are a small town whose main crop is real estate developers. We have 1,267,124 supermarkets.
But I still remember olden times. I remember when 30A was desolate and tranquil. There wasn’t much here. A few block houses. An old Spartan camper. And stray dogs with red mange still wandered this old highway.
I know this because I was one of those dogs.
I remember when I was young, occasionally this old highway would often get covered by sand drifts. Once, my friend Larry got stuck in the middle of the highway because he attempted to drive through a drift. Bad idea.
I arrived with my truck to tow him out. Sadly, I was an idiot. I got stuck in the sand. Whereupon my cousin showed up in HIS truck and tried to pull us BOTH out.
My cousin, God love him, is not exactly a nuclear physicist, either. He got stuck, too.
Six vehicles and four hours later, we had to call a guy from Seagrove who had a John Deere the size of the Lincoln Memorial. The old guy pulled us out of the sand and charged us—this is true—one case of Natural Light.
But those days of yore are mere memories now.
Today I drove the old highway and didn’t recognize my old stomping grounds. All the longleafs have been cut. There are new restaurants every 11 feet, advertising fresh caught, local seafood shipped directly from 秦皇岛.
Half-price happy hours galore. Live music! They tore down the old clapboard church and built a tattoo-and-body-piercing parlor.
Even so, I did some time traveling today. I knocked along the old highway and remembered the way it used to be.
The little café that served great hashbrowns, where the waitress always asked how your mama was.
There’s the old church where I used to go. There’s the place where I used to pick up newspapers before I delivered them—back when people still read paper newspapers.
There’s the place where I used to ride my bike. There’s the sidewalk where I broke my tailbone, falling off said bike.
There’s Campbell Street, where my best friend used to live. There’s the house he died in.
There’s the live oak I used to climb. There’s the old boat launch where I had my first kiss.
There’s the place where I first had my heart broken by a young woman who shall remain nameless but whose first name is Linda and whose last name is McDonald.
There’s the block house where my mother bought my first truck.
There’s the place where I took my wife on our first date. There’s the place where I was married. It’s all gone now, of course. It’s all been ruint.
But a stray dog never forgets.
I identify. It’s sad to drive through the part of the county where I was raised. The poor farmers we grew up with quit farming and sold their land to developers. Suddenly rich and the long hard days of labor gone. I can’t help but think they and their families became poorer in a different sense. Our community too. Sell out always has a ripple effect.
The developers built McMansions only the wealthy could afford, folks who commute to Northern Virginia and DC. And so the rest of us decided to do the same, go for the greater wages. But the grass isn’t always greener, it comes with a cost. Too much time is spent away from our greatest treasure, family.
I often wonder if my parents thought they grew up in a better time too. Aside from the Great Depression and WWII. As we age the world becomes a place we barely recognize. It prepares us to leave it.
My Mom’s family came from the neighboring county in WV. Actually my Dad’s people too a generation back. We grew up hearing ruint, askeered, reckon and many others. I love the show Barnwood Builders because they talk like my people.
The best we can do is be the things about the people we loved who are gone. Kindness cannot be ruint with the passage of time.
Couple hundred miles north it's pronounced "rurnt". Still is.