We arrived in Florida on a recent Saturday after spending the night in Hattiesburg. I had planned to drive all the way through, but KM said she had hit the wall, and I acted disappointed but really wasn’t. The next morning we left by nine, refreshed and ready for a week at the beach.
We got to The Back Porch restaurant and were told there would be a 20-minute wait. I waited ten at the bar, ordering a beer for me, and a virgin Pina Colada for KM.
We were seated at our table, overlooking the clear, then-green, then-blue water of the Gulf, and the sugar-sand, dotted with sunscreen lathered bods and tents and sandcastles. KM wore her Razorback T-shirt from the last Cotton Bowl we were in. We were seated next to a table of four from Alabama. They were having a conversation with the guy at the table behind them, who was a Mississippi State fan.
This was about three and a half hours before the kick-off of our game with Alabama that day in Fayetteville.
The Crimsonites spotted KM and her T-shirt, and wanted to talk about the game. Me, not so much. One guy kept saying how they would be fired up after losing to Ole Miss. Finally, having my fill, I said, “Well, we are actually glad you lost that game because we know you’ll be ready to play, too, so we won’t be looking ahead to Georgia like we normally would.” This seemed to confuse them and they stared at me quietly, as if trying to process the unthinkable. Finally one of the women at the table said, “I never pull for Arkansas. I used to work at Walmart, and they didn’t treat me good.”
“Well,” I replied without thinking.
“What?” she asked.
“Well, they didn’t treat you well.”
I felt a sharp pain in my right leg from a quick kick. In front of me, KM was giving me that look.
And next to me, the table of Tide all glared like I had shrimp crawling out of my ears.
Then the guy from Mississippi State laughed pretty loud, which made KM kick me again, and unlike the Hog’s kicker, she is very accurate and hit the same spot.
“Why are you kicking me? He’s the one who laughed.”
That scenario pretty well ended any chance of making new friends with these people. They didn’t say more and soon left, as did the guy from Mississippi, but he smiled and winked as he walked by.
We finished our chargrilled Amberjack and twice-baked potatoes, and virgin and non-virgin beverages. I limped out to the car and we headed east on Highway 98, toward Blue Mountain Beach and the house called Summer Winds. We had six days ahead of sun and surf and seafood; golf and laughter; and, oh yes, a football game in a couple of hours, against some angry elephants and their Hall of Fame, overachieving, type-A, obsessive leader. It would be an understatement to say I didn’t like our chances.
Five or six hours later I was indeed depressed, thinking about an ex-Walmart worker, and all those other happy Tide fans. It must be nice to be that good at something, I thought. But ten minutes later, as I stood on the deck, 40-yards from the surf and looking out at the stars, that was the furthest thing from my mind.
Best line of the week so far came from Bob when Dennis said, “I’d like to go look at some old ruins.”
Bob: “Get a full-length mirror and stand in front of it without any clothes on.”
Jay Edwards is editor-in-chief of the Hamilton County Herald and an award-winning columnist.
Contact him at jedwards@dailydata.com