| TRAVELS OF DURSMIRG VOLUME IV THE ROGUES OF ST. AUGUSTINE AND OTHER SOCIAL MISFITS Chapter 27 |
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The local sun worshipers dazed in a transfixed state with their glistening bodies drenched in an odiferous stench of
stinking coconut oil roasting their epidermis to various shades of burnt umber littered the beach to capacity on
weekends.
Interspersed and standing out like sore thumbs at the beach scene were the Canadians with their painfully lily white
skin to get their monies worth of the hot Florida sun and take on the shades of a steamed lobster. They would be
painfully burnt to a skin peeling crisp.
Every weekend horseback riders and drunken dragsters raising sand ran over a sunbather or two and made their
limp bodies even limper. Amazingly this same show would be repeated week after week.
Beach buggy beaters rusted to rattling wrecks and big wheeled Bubba pick-um-up trucks spin their wheels and carry
the hooting hollering beer bottle busting Bubbas out to dazzle the beach bunnies and other sweating humanity.
This hodge-podge of beach going aficionados always had their token Yankee first timers down from the Midwest with
their painfully white skin just like their Canadian cousins.
Invariably these neophytes to these briny beaches would take this opportunity to douse the road dust from their
family autos with this limitless free supply of salty sea water and in a few days wonder at their vehicles premature
aging as the sea salt accelerates red rust, peels off chrome and renders door locks useless.
Two or three vehicles each weekend would be caught by the flood tide. As the waves that wash the beach at low tide
when the beach is widest come sliding in slowly washing higher and higher up the beach. The unnoticed parked car
has a seemingly harmless wave wash beneath its wheels.
(A cup of flowing water can move a ton of sand.)
By the time the second wave has passed beneath the axles it is almost always too late.
Cemented in wet sand up to its hubcaps, the car no matter what its horse power is like a whale stranded on the
beach and out of its own environment.
Usually by the time that the owners come to grips with their perilous situation, it is just too late.
Revved motors and frantic pushes are of no avail now.
Each successive wave sucks the car down-down like a snake swallowing its prey. If not extracted by the time of the
next tide not even the roof top of the foundering vehicle will be visible. Left there to rust beneath the shifting sands
of St. Augustine beach the car has become a net loss and total liability.
A cottage industry had sprung up to take advantage of the plight of these naive victims.
Cruising the beaches in grossly oversized knobby wheeled Bubba trucks some of the enterprising locals armed with
a hundred feet of ¾ inch nylon anchor line spliced into its ends with snatch hooks would volunteer their services.
Their fees were scandalously high at highwayman rip off prices… (But time was of the utmost essence.)
These beach going industrious enterprising locals could possibly trace their gynecological heritage back to a direct
link with some pirate ancestral lineage.
For those that paid the operation was quick and simple.
With the rope attached from car to truck, the truck would race off and stretch the ¾ inch nylon line to its limits of
tensile strength and then set the brake. Now the tow rope would be exerting more than 10,000 pounds of pull and
usually just some rocking of the stranded vehicle would send it flying up the beach; snatched out of the clutches of
the sand and sea.
For those that didn’t pay it was a slow and agonizing farewell to their family car.
This is the new St. Augustine beach pier. The old wooden piers over the years met their fate at the
hands of Mother Nature who sent high seas pounding in and reclaimed the beach in a never ending
battle to restore things back to the environment.
In the photo the tide is nearly high, but when the water goes out with the ebb tide the beach becomes a
twelve lane wide superhighway filled with motor vehicles and sunbathers.
next chapter
stinking coconut oil roasting their epidermis to various shades of burnt umber littered the beach to capacity on
weekends.
Interspersed and standing out like sore thumbs at the beach scene were the Canadians with their painfully lily white
skin to get their monies worth of the hot Florida sun and take on the shades of a steamed lobster. They would be
painfully burnt to a skin peeling crisp.
Every weekend horseback riders and drunken dragsters raising sand ran over a sunbather or two and made their
limp bodies even limper. Amazingly this same show would be repeated week after week.
Beach buggy beaters rusted to rattling wrecks and big wheeled Bubba pick-um-up trucks spin their wheels and carry
the hooting hollering beer bottle busting Bubbas out to dazzle the beach bunnies and other sweating humanity.
This hodge-podge of beach going aficionados always had their token Yankee first timers down from the Midwest with
their painfully white skin just like their Canadian cousins.
Invariably these neophytes to these briny beaches would take this opportunity to douse the road dust from their
family autos with this limitless free supply of salty sea water and in a few days wonder at their vehicles premature
aging as the sea salt accelerates red rust, peels off chrome and renders door locks useless.
Two or three vehicles each weekend would be caught by the flood tide. As the waves that wash the beach at low tide
when the beach is widest come sliding in slowly washing higher and higher up the beach. The unnoticed parked car
has a seemingly harmless wave wash beneath its wheels.
(A cup of flowing water can move a ton of sand.)
By the time the second wave has passed beneath the axles it is almost always too late.
Cemented in wet sand up to its hubcaps, the car no matter what its horse power is like a whale stranded on the
beach and out of its own environment.
Usually by the time that the owners come to grips with their perilous situation, it is just too late.
Revved motors and frantic pushes are of no avail now.
Each successive wave sucks the car down-down like a snake swallowing its prey. If not extracted by the time of the
next tide not even the roof top of the foundering vehicle will be visible. Left there to rust beneath the shifting sands
of St. Augustine beach the car has become a net loss and total liability.
A cottage industry had sprung up to take advantage of the plight of these naive victims.
Cruising the beaches in grossly oversized knobby wheeled Bubba trucks some of the enterprising locals armed with
a hundred feet of ¾ inch nylon anchor line spliced into its ends with snatch hooks would volunteer their services.
Their fees were scandalously high at highwayman rip off prices… (But time was of the utmost essence.)
These beach going industrious enterprising locals could possibly trace their gynecological heritage back to a direct
link with some pirate ancestral lineage.
For those that paid the operation was quick and simple.
With the rope attached from car to truck, the truck would race off and stretch the ¾ inch nylon line to its limits of
tensile strength and then set the brake. Now the tow rope would be exerting more than 10,000 pounds of pull and
usually just some rocking of the stranded vehicle would send it flying up the beach; snatched out of the clutches of
the sand and sea.
For those that didn’t pay it was a slow and agonizing farewell to their family car.
This is the new St. Augustine beach pier. The old wooden piers over the years met their fate at the
hands of Mother Nature who sent high seas pounding in and reclaimed the beach in a never ending
battle to restore things back to the environment.
In the photo the tide is nearly high, but when the water goes out with the ebb tide the beach becomes a
twelve lane wide superhighway filled with motor vehicles and sunbathers.
next chapter
