Boomer Beach Memories!
Volume: Sigh.
Issue: There are no issues while baking on a sunny beach day.
Date: June 1, 2021
“Laughter is like a small vacation.”
—Joan Rivers
Boomer Beach Memories!
As I sit here on a Gulf Coast beach in the Florida sun and the temperature rises from hot to broil, I am reminded of some of my scorching, sweaty beach times from yesteryear. My overheated brain wanders to reminiscing about my younger “lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer” spent on various other beaches. Hopefully my reliving my beach adventures will jog your beach memories—and this reminiscing includes an invitation to share your Summer Blasts from the Past in our next July newsletter!
So here goes on my beach oldies but goodies….
Teenybop Times at East Coast Beaches:
As we got closer and closer to the beach, I loved to open the car windows—I remember the joy in catching that first whiff of salt air!
I remember spending hours during Memorial Day weekend shopping at Sears and Kmart trying to find a bathing suit to hide my Thunder Thighs!
My parents were so strict—no lipstick til I was 16, no shaving my legs til 16, no dating til 16, no dating non-Jewish guys (age 16 or above)! When I was 16, my parents let me go to Ocean City, MD, for the weekend for the first time with some of my best girlfriends. Of course we hung out at the beach with some of the guys from high school we knew...they were real jokesters. When I got home from the beach, I threw my suitcase on the bed; my mom opened my suitcase to gather my clothes to wash and there on top of all my stuff were a pair of men’s tidy whities! It was not such a funny joke to my mom!
When I went to Ocean City with my friends Terry and Debbi, we all bought the same black and white striped tee and proudly walked the OC boardwalk declaring to the beach buddies that we were Gal Pals—same sneakers, same jeans shorts, same stripes tees. (We felt safer in our conformity—if Terry and Debbi looked cute in the tees, then maybe I looked cute?!)
One summer I bought a portable battery-powered record player (remember records? remember record players??) and brought it to the beach. It was great spreading out a blanket, lying in the scorching sun, listening to “Do You Want to Know a Secret” on my Beatles Please, Please, Me album—until George’s voice started to slow down and I realized—OH, NO!—the hot sun was melting my record! That didn’t please me!!
1962: Remember coating your beach body with Johnson’s Baby Oil? It kept our skin glistening and we thought it added to our great deep tan!! 2021: Now we know we weren’t just getting a tan, we were deep frying ourselves in the sun, kind of like Instapot-Melanoma!
College Times on Gulf Coast Beaches:
In the summer of 1967, between college semesters, my close friend Jill and I took a summer road trip from Maryland to California. On Padre Island, Texas, in the Gulf of Mexico, we decided it would be cool to drive our car onto the sand about six feet from the water, sleep on the beach, and wake up to the sunrise. Well, after we parked our car, Bodacious Benny and Delicious Dave came walking down the beach and invited us out to Kody’s Place, a nightclub holding it’s grand opening farther up the island. We all walked up the beach to Kody’s, where we ate, drank, and danced the night away. Benny and Dave walked us back to our car at 6:30am and, yes, the tide does come in at the Gulf of Mexico and there was our car surfing the morning waves! Last night’s dinner: free; the dancing: free; the car tow with salt-water engine flush: $350! (and $350 in 1967 = $2,798.47 in 2021!)
…and West Coast Beaches
During this California road trip to LA, Jill and I ran out of money and we stopped in LA to work for six weeks to make some cash. I still remember the Fourth of July on Redondo Beach, where fires were legal on the beach. In the blackness of the night, as far as your eye could see up and down the endless stretch of beach, a line of fires lit up the sand in an ancient ritual, one long string of young people, faces glowing in the firelight, talking and laughing and drinking and dancing and kissing. A golden fire ritual to remember.
While in Redondo Beach, some guys invited us out to the beach to see the grunion run at night. Grunion? Fish. After several hours of night-watching at the shore, the count was: grunion: 0, groping attempts by the guys: plenty!
So those are some summer beach memories from me!
Sending healing and hugs,
Irene