Every once in a while, switching channels between innings in the Braves baseball game to avoid commercials on a $25 set of six high quality towels made from virgin cotton in the Nile Valley or hearing aid ads, one comes across a flashback to one's misspent youth.
The host of Watters World on the Fox News Channel recently sent his ace interviewer Johnny to one of the Spring Break beaches in the Sunshine State that produced memories from the black and white TV eras of the 1950s and 60s.
In Lewis Grizzard’s 1991 best seller “You Can't Put No Boogie Woogie on the King of Rock and Roll” Villard Books) the following article has a familiarity to a trip taken in April 1958 by yours truly, Stump (GT), future Reverend Bob (RK), and an unnamed juvenile delinquent who would eventually become an expert stock car driver. The stories today are similar to the 1991 version by LG except that the girls in 1959 wore one piece bathing suits, gasoline was 29 cents a gallon, we slept on the beach and didn't have enough money to spend on any local girls at the Steak N’ Shake. Thanks, Lewis G for the trip down memory lane:
"Daytona Beach, FL.-I had business here. They gave me a room on the top floor of the new Marriott Hotel, which sits on what Daytona always has claimed is "The World's Most Famous Beach."
"I looked out the window and, jutting out into the sea, as it has for who knows how many years, was the old dance pier. I would have thought a new hotel or a restaurant that serves salads with odd names and raw fish would have taken its place by now.
"Daytona was paradise in my teen years. We came here by the droves on spring break or to celebrate such momentous occasions as finally getting out from under the principal's nose.
"I was here in 1963. Me and Clay and Dickey and Charles. We drove my mother's '58 Pontiac to town, and we stayed, the four of us sharing a single room, in a motel named the Palms, or the Blue Shell, or maybe it was Sea Breeze.
"Motels at the beach used to have names like that. Then, they were replaced by names like Marriott, Hilton, and Hyatt, not even hotels at all, but hotels. Motels are mostly out today, I suppose, gone with the Coppertone Girl and Blatz beer for ninety-nine cents a six-pack.
"June of '63. Charles and I found the dance pier. The music was loud and, Lord, the girls in the short shorts. what was the dance back then? The Twist? The Pony? The Monkey?
"I don't remember motel names, and dance crazes fade. But not girls in short shorts. So we hit on two.
"Where y'all from?" I asked, using my cleverest opening line.
“We're from here," said one of the girls.
"Daytona girls. Local girls. What luck. Local girls, we reasoned, had to be at least a step faster than the visiting sunburned beauties from South Georgia or Michigan. We couldn't understand girls from Michigan, anyway.
"I did the talking. "Look," I said. "We've got some beer back at our motel room. Why don't we go there?"
"Lewis, you rascal. "Sure," said one of the girls, "but we need to get something to eat first."
"We took the girls to the first Steak'n' Shake restaurant I ever saw.
"When was the last time these two girls ate? I kept asking that question through the cheeseburgers, the french fries, and the chocolate milkshakes, with extra whipped cream and two cherries, about three bucks' worth for each girl. This was 1963, when three bucks could nearly fill your gas tank.
"When the girls finished eating, I said, rakishly, "Y'all ready to go to the motel now?"
"One of the girls said, "We have to go to the bathroom first."
"That was twenty-seven years ago. We still haven't seen the two Daytona girls again. I did learn a valuable lesson that night, however. I learned not everybody you buy a cheeseburger for is going to go back to your motel room with you.
"I wondered if the old dance pier was still teaching young men such truths like that in the nineties. I hope so."
Cheeseburgers are a lot more expensive now than they were in 1963.
(But at least we didn’t have to worry about getting shot!)
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If you have additional information about one of Mr. Summers' articles or have suggestions or ideas about a future Chattanooga area historical piece, please contact him at jsummers@summersfirm.com)
Jerry Summers