Simonton Says

Visiting Celo, fleeing the bureaucracy

I catch glimpses of Camp Celo through the children. They describe it to me.

There’s the South Toe River, sloshing over rocks, coming through the Black Mountains and the Blue Ridge. That’s where they swim.

There’s Anna, 15, in her barn boots feeding the chickens. Or working in the garden, which supplies much of the camp food and which is planted in fanciful curving rows.

Books at the beach: A laundry list

We slipped away from the egg-yolk hotel on a hot, bright morning last week. We found a little condo at Crescent Beach near St. Augustine. Finally, relaxation at the beach could begin again. And I remembered what I had meant to tell you.

My mother used to entertain my father at the dinner table by reading out loud certain portions of my grandmother’s letters. My grandmother wrote weekly. In her letters, she never failed to list each item of clothing she had hand-washed that day. My father never failed to find this litany of teddies and slips amusing.

In the spirit of my grandmother, herewith is a laundry list of sorts, not of clothing, but of beach reading. It may not include the long, lazy novels recommended by newspaper feature writers, but it’s idiosyncratic enough for me.

The egg-yolk hotel

Sitting poolside at an unnamed St. Augustine hotel.

Nearby is what the hotel calls a tiki bar. It sells hot dogs, hamburgers and an impressive array of mixed drinks.

Next to the bar, a well-amplified guitarist, a skinny guy in a white T-shirt, plays Jimmy Buffett tunes. I wish I could say they are mellowing me, but the fact is that this hotel is not quite what I had bargained for.

On the beach in Ponte Vedra

Warning: The following posts are about a vacation (with a little politics thrown in). If you prefer other fare, come back next week.

Contrasts are illuminating.

This past weekend, my family drove down to Jacksonville. We stayed the first night in a friend's little place there. A retired sportswriter and copy editor, he had shelves of books on sports. What caught my eye, however, was his framed poster of Elvis advertising Elvis' last scheduled concert, the one he never made it to. Our friend also had a framed picture of himself in his younger days, looking rugged and charming.

Not your father's Oldsmobile

Hurtling down the interstate on the way to Florida, we passed a car that looked just like mine. It was a wide, older-model white Oldsmobile. It was filled with people, and the back end seemed to be riding low.

We slowed down to take a look.

What kind of people drive a car like this, I wondered.

Summer ripens

On June 21 we turned on our air conditioner. Why do I tell you this? Because it’s important. Each year, it signals the end of something.

Each summer when the heat descends, my family relaxes into it. We push the windows wide open, pull off some clothes and turn on the box fans. We drink iced drinks and let the sweat trickle down. We shift into a lower gear.

On those summer nights, the outdoors is tantalizing. Two streets away, the night air is awash in gardenias. Their deep, clinging scent wafts up from the tiny front yards of my neighborhood.

It's summertime, and the living is ... different

First day of summer. Mob scene at pool. Lifeguard chewing out a kid for cursing at him.

This was two weeks ago, in late May, but it felt like the first day of summer. Atlanta public schools had just ended. What better way to mark the beginning of summer than to visit Candler Park pool?

But first, we dropped by the elementary school. The hallways echoed. The children’s artwork had already disappeared from the walls. Here and there, a teacher was packing away books in a half-empty classroom.
A teacher dressed in overalls was sitting cross-legged on the floor, talking with two others.

In the kindergarten classroom, a little yellow sign hung from the ceiling. It said “Ms. Cox’s cuties.” But that day, the cuties were nowhere to be found. The school was like an elaborate stage set being taken apart.