Beach Blog #7

     A cloudy, rainy day at the beach can be both a blessing or a curse. It depends on your situation. If you're a child or parents of young children it ranges from terrible to worse. Both those categories would probably be more entertained at a pediatric dentist's office. But, if you're a middle aged couple who's chosen to take time for themselves, it doesn't get much better.

Panama City, FL.

    We decided to venture out for a seafood lunch and a movie today.  Turns out, the nearest movie theater was about 10-miles down the road in Panama City with plenty of beachside eateries.
     Okay! "Let's feast on a big seafood platter & find us a good movie," we agreed.
     The movie's the heavy part of this post. I'll have more on that to come. But first, the food. We're all about the food and 'When in Rome,' we're all about the seafood. If we were in Iowa, it'd be all about the pork. But this is Florida, so bring on the fish!

Seafood Platter, The Back Porch, PCB

We googled 'restaurants near....." and found our lunch spot. Oysters, shrimp, scallops, fries, cole slaw, raw oysters, water & tea.
     But who in their right mind, more than once a year can share, and I mean split absolutely everything, and still afford lunch at these prices. For cryin' out loud! The ocean's less than 100-yards away! Still, it was really good. I taught T how to eat raw oysters. It went something like this.
     "Dip your oyster in the sauce mix I made, put it on a cracker and eat up," I told her.
     "Can I cut it half?" "No, you don't cut a raw oyster in half. You just gobble." "I don't know if I wanna do that," T said with a scrunched up nose.
     But to her credit she did. Then she asked, "do they come any smaller than this?" I ate the rest of them.

Raw Oysters!

     The giant seafood platter included a whole lot of cholesterol, but it sure was good. I'm not sure good enough for the price, but it's been awhile since I'd had a chance to gobble fried oysters with a cocktail sauce heavy on the horseradish. Zing!

     Like I said, we were out to have lunch and see a movie, but we had ample time to kill. We thought.
     The clouds were forming again, rain was in the forecast and we couldn't wait to spend some quiet time at the beach all the while watching a movie that we'd wanted to see for quite some time. But first, we took a breezy very humid almost sticky walk across the street to Pier Park.

Pier Park, PCB, FL

     I've told you I'm cheap. Bless her heart, Teresa just rolls her eyes and goes with it. So when it cost three dollar PER PERSON just walk on the pier, I said "really?"
      We found a free staircase to the beach and took a picture of the three dollar pier. I mean. Six dollars to walk out over the ocean? C'mon.
      From the free walkway, we walked. It was then that we saw no less than half a dozen cheap places to eat. Next time, we agreed.
     We thought we had plenty of time and in truth we did, until we rounded the corner and saw them.

Rainy Day Movie @ the Beach

     The geriatrics! The Snowbirds! I don't know how much you can zoom into the picture at the left, but if you can.... There's not a solid head of hair amongst them. Somewhere in there, I'm pretty sure there's a 'fanny pack' or two.
     "Oh no," I said first.
     "Yep, I could've told you to expect this," T laughed at me.
     "How 'bout you get in line while I smoke?"
     "Be right here. Not going anywhere soon," she said.
     Over and over again, we heard the same sentence at the ticket counter, "Two seniors for ____." But you know what, either  they didn't a senior discount or we got the discount too! Their price for admission was the same as ours. I think they got a discount at the concession counter, but I didn't have the nerve to ask.
     Now to the movie, we saw The Post with Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks. Great movie. Set in 1971, it's before our time. We were both barely teenagers. We recognized some of the names, knew the story, but didn't have a dog in the fight for those times. But all these fanny pack toting, thin haired, blueish haired, Rockport wearing movie goers did.
      It was incredibly enlightening to sit in a packed movie house with this group of strangers who lived, really lived in the early 1970s. To be brief, Meryl Streep plays the role of a woman who was a pioneer. I mean she broke through an intangible, the type of barrier that the women in the audience knew all too well.
      So many scenes in the movie show Katherine Graham, the owner of the Washington Post as portrayed by Streep, as completely invisible. She's the owner of The Post, but the subtle scenes show her, as apparently most if not all women were thought of in that time, as simply nothing.
      I didn't catch on to the scenes' meanings until Streep stood up for herself in a most ladylike way. It was at this point, the women watching the movie started the clapping, an applause that grew louder and louder.
     That's when I told Teresa that we were surrounded by so much more than older folks. These were moms and dads who remember these times and experiences.
     So if you get a cloudy day or if you can go to see The Post, the whole story is great. But in this time of anger and protest, this movie really exposes the fight that our own mothers had to conquer, which is surprising for me. Surprising for me because I can't possibly imagine my mother being invisible.
     I suppose she could share some stories, if only I stopped and listened.
Bill Robertson, full on seafood--eatin' bird tonight.