July 6, 2007

-- On Sunday morning there was Baptist preaching going on near the pool, across the road from us. Occasionally we’d hear a choir singing, but most of the time was taken up by a man with a thick Southern accent shouting about Jeeesus into some sort of amplification device.

It was mildly irritating.

Toney cooked breakfast, a conglomeration which featured eggs, sausage, onions, and green peppers. Yum. I ate roughly my own body weight in the stuff, and it was good.

The boys wanted to go to the beach again, and Toney said she’d take them while I showered. And as soon as they left I could feel a disturbance forming in the lower quadrant. There was a definite swirling pattern to it, and a recognizable eye, which meant I’d probably have to deal with it.

I performed a mental review, and realized I hadn’t had a sit-down since we left home on Thursday. Now here it was three days later and I was eating eggs and peppers, all willy-nilly. Who did I think I was fooling?

I briefly considered the bathroom inside my parents’ camper, but ruled it out. It’s one of those airplane toilets, perfect for one thing, but not the other. I had visions of hoses backing up, catastrophic bowl-striping, and the Secrets hollering about the funk for all the world to hear: Ohhh God, it’s even in the curtains and the upholstery!!

So I walked to the bathhouse. Well, I started out walking, and ended up walking real fast. It was almost one of those Ryan’s Steakhouse situations. I raced to the stall all the way at the end, and it was over almost as soon as it started. 

And outside the window above my head I heard a group of what sounded like ten year old boys snickering. Apparently I’d interrupted their Wiffle Ball game. Simply excellent.

When I finished with my shower everyone had returned from the beach, and Toney said she wanted to get out of the campground for a while. It was turning out to be the hottest day yet, and there’s only so much sitting on lounge chairs a person can take. I suggested we get lunch somewhere, and they all said it was fine with them.

The oldest Secret said he wanted to go to a seafood buffet called Crabby Mike’s, and I said, “Um no, I was thinking more along the lines of Chick- fil- A.” Lunch at Crabby Mike’s would probably cost us seventy-five bucks. And what am I, Ted Turner here?

So we went to Chick- fil- A, and it was closed. And not only was it closed, but there was even more preaching going on in the parking lot. A makeshift stage had been erected, and there was a sign that said something about a youth ministry. Lots of people were milling about, and there was another man with shoe polish hair hollering about the Lord into a microphone.

The hell, man?!! I’d come for chicken, not eternal salvation. Wotta rip-off. 

Of course I knew Chick- fil- A isn’t open on Sundays, but had forgotten, I guess. I’m all out of practice living above the Mason-Dixon Line , and shit. Toney said it’s so their employees can have Sunday off to go to church, and that triggered a lengthy rant.

“Why don’t they hire Jews?!” I shouted, “They could have Saturdays off, and serve chicken on Sundays while the Christians are in church. Everybody wins!!” Toney laughed this off, but I wasn’t joking.

On one of our previous visits to Myrtle Beach, my parents had taken us to a sparkling new mall. It was several years ago, but Toney and I both remembered it as having the Greatest Food Court in the World. She asked if I could remember where it is.

Needless to say, I had no clue. So I fired up the cell phone and called my Mom, who told me we were only four or five miles away.

Yeah, but it wasn’t all that great. The food court was OK, but had somehow grown to legendary status in our brains; there was no way for it to live up to the hype. The boys got pizza, and Toney and I hit one of the Chinese places. None of it was anything outstanding.

But the industrial-strength air conditioning in that place was very welcome indeed. And after we finished our eh lunches, we decided to walk around for a while, to extend our time inside the coolness.

I saw a woman eating a cookie the size of a steering wheel, and her free hand looked like a first baseman’s mitt. I’m not sure what was going on there. Perhaps she’d had an encounter with a poisonous sea urchin? I just don’t know.

And we passed a couple of compression chambers, or somesuch, out in the middle of the mall. According to the signs you could crawl inside one, and high-pressure water would “massage” your body, through sheets of heavy plastic. Relieve your stress, it said, while staying completely dry. Seven dollars for five minutes(!). 

Have you ever seen this? I never had. One was in action when we got there, and it looked like the woman was lying inside an automatic car wash. I snapped a picture with my cell phone, but it didn’t turn out very well. Here it is anyway.

When we passed by a few minutes later the person who worked there was attempting to pack an enormous black woman into one of the chambers, and I wanted to stop and watch. I mean, seriously. But her husband or boyfriend was standing nearby, and he looked like Tupac. So we just kept walking.

We stopped at a grocery store on our way back to the campground, and Toney did a little shopping while I checked out their beer cooler. I finally bought a six-pack of something called Palmetto Pale Ale, which turned out to be the tastiest beer of the whole trip. Good stuff.

When we returned to the camper we had new neighbors in front of us. It was a man and a woman, and a daughter roughly the same age as the oldest Secret (neither would look the other in the eye). They were from Wilmington, NC, and a lot of fun.

I ended up bullshitting with the guy for extended periods during the rest of our stay, and he had a mixed-drink permanently attached to his right hand, like that dude in the Trailer Park Boys. His wife was really nice as well and, against great odds, all of us hit it off.

That evening he came running over all excited, sloshing his bourbon and Coke on the grass, and asked us to come see something. He called it a “moon plant,” and it supposedly blooms after dark every night. Then the petals fall off when the sun comes out in the morning, and the cycle starts all over again. 

We stood there, and the blooms were actually opening up as we watched. It was like time lapse photography, and completely amazing. I’d never seen anything like it. Are you familiar with this freakiness? What the crap’s a moon plant??

Around 9:30 we walked back to the beach, to try to set off those fireworks again. It was windy, but not nearly as bad as the night before. Lots of people were already down there bombarding the ocean. So we staked out some land for ourselves, and set up our bottles.

But the matches wouldn’t stay lit. It was very frustrating, and I was growling like a dog. We tried everything, but the flame would get blown out every single time.

Then I saw a big hole in the sand, and got an idea. Maybe we could shoot the bottle rockets from the bottom of that bitch, and block the wind? And that’s exactly what we did. We shot every one of them out of the bottom of that hole, and a splendid time was had by all.

As we were walking back to the camper, Toney asked if I’d noticed the kid standing off to the side. She said she thought we were using “his” hole. 

What the??

We then found ourselves engaged in a lengthy conversation about holes on beaches. And I’m going to need your opinion on this one. 

It is my contention that a person relinquishes their right to a hole on a public beach the moment they abandon it. Toney says that if a person builds a hole, it belongs to him. I say possession is nine-tenths, dammit. And she says the digger is the owner.

What’s your opinion on the complicated politics of beach holes? Or any of the other crapola I wrote about today, for that matter. Use the comments link below.

And I’ve got lots of non-Myrtle Beach stuff starting to pile up here, but the weekend’s going to be monopolized by, um, visitors. So I’ll just have to get to it as soon as I can.

See you guys on Monday.



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