On Saturdays, it often occurs to me that carloads of people are driving south along the many highways that lead to Gulf Shores so bursting with excitement that every cow pasture and roadside restaurant become a landmark heralding another step toward the final destination. Conversely, there are just as many cars heading north filled with people in the early throes of post-vacation depression, wondering why they can’t live where they’ve just spent the past week.
Compared with other states like Florida and California, or even South Carolina and North Carolina, Alabama’s coastline is tiny. For much of the state, the beach is synonymous with a little 30-mile stretch that starts in Orange Beach and ends at the west end of Dauphin Island. But what it lacks in quantity, it makes up in quality. Alabama has the best beach on any coast and most of the tourists who come here know it.
Those of us who are fortunate enough to live here watch them come and go in weekly batches. The faces become familiar after just a few days, and you even get to know some of them a bit. And then they vanish, usually forever. Life in a resort community has but two seasons – tourist season and the offseason. It is a bipolar existence.
Last winter, a shadowy glimpse of a coyote on a cold, windy night convinced me to walk my two dachshunds with a loaded pump shotgun slung over my shoulder. So empty was it in our little community near Fort Morgan that I never encountered anyone to ask me why I was armed. There is a certain creepiness about the darkened houses with the north wind howling down the empty street.
In June, lights are on in every house and voices drift through the darkness from porches as vacationers enjoy the warm, salty breeze blowing in from the Gulf. The only threat to my little dogs is that friendly people will make them sore from too much petting.
It amazes me how so many locals and even the semi-local vacation home owners become cranky curmudgeons regarding tourists. It is true that they can do annoying things – slowing to a crawl and turning on their blinker at six different driveways on Fort Morgan Road before finding the right one, getting in the way as fisherman try to move down the Gulf State Park Pier rail to fight a fast-moving king mackerel or bullish redfish. But how could I really harbor too much disdain when I was once a tourist myself. Not so long ago, it was me that arrived full of hope and promise one Saturday and departed heartbroken the next. And I see myself and my family in some of the faces that turn up on the beach.
Of course, some tourists earn the enmity of locals. My wife was walking back from the beach one day and heard loud voices coming from one of the porches. “I’ll bet they’re from Louisiana,” she said to herself. A quick check of license plates on the cars parked beneath the house confirmed her suspicions.
Without a doubt, those who travel here from Louisiana are louder and drunker than the rest. A friend of mine who officiates beach weddings told me, “If you have to tell them to put down their beer and cigarette to start the service, they’re from Louisiana.”
But then again, so are my sweet, soft-spoken neighbors who own the house across the street. They do nothing more offensive than dote on their granddaughter who, in turn, dotes on my dogs every time I walk them. And so is tender-hearted Deb, the dachshund rescuer who has taken in six of the little short-legged dogs at last count. There’s always a degree of truth in stereotypes, but they cannot be universally applied.
Summing up the shortcomings of Louisiana visitors is a bit like the late Jimmy Hinton’s take on deer hunters. Hinton (the longtime chairman of Alabama’s Conservation Advisory Board) said, “As one of Bear Bryant’s friends told me, not all deer hunters are SOBs, but all SOBs are deer hunters.”
And then there is the tourist obsession with sharks. They walk onto the Gulf State Park Pier talking about sharks; they ask everyone fishing if they’ve caught a shark. They run to the rail when someone spots a shark. They are like broken records, “Shark, shark, shark, shark, shark.”
For the record, most of us fishing there think that sharks are loathsome swimming garbage cans that secrete their urine through their flesh and skin, steal fish off our lines, and wreck our tackle. We are forbidden to catch them or do anything to reduce their numbers around the pier for fear tourists will hear about sharks in the waters off Gulf Shores and go elsewhere. Sharks are an unending nuisance. When I tell tourists this, they still don’t get it.
But the truth is, the tourists who come to Gulf Shores have far fewer shortcomings than those who visit places like Fort Walton and Panama City. They come here because they want to vacation in a quiet, peaceful place. They want a place they’re not embarrassed to take their families. And in that mission, Gulf Shores shines.
So, whether they come from Fort Payne, Clanton or Butler, or whether they’re from Illinois, Arkansas or Michigan, and sometimes even Louisiana—with a few exceptions—they’re considerate of their temporary neighbors and respectful of property. For the most part, I can leave my chairs and canopy down on the beach without worrying about anyone stealing them.
They’re mostly nice, fun-loving, unpretentious people. They’re honest, decent folks looking to relax for a week in what most of us would gladly call paradise.
And I guess I’d like to think that makes them a lot like me.
About the Author: Robert DeWitt has worked for more than 30 years as a reporter and columnist in Alabama and has won numerous awards. He was a member of the staff at The Tuscaloosa News that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for coverage of April 27, 2011, tornado. He is a native and lifelong resident of Alabama.
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