On the Gulf

Introduction: An Opening to the Sea

ix INTRODUCTION An Opening to the Sea If I could have one part of the world back the way it used to be, I would not choose Dresden before the fire bombing, Rome before Nero, or London before the blitz. I would not resurrect Babylon, Carthage or San Francisco. Let the leaning tower lean and the hanging gardens hang. I want the Mississippi Gulf Coast back as it was before Hurricane Camille. All through my childhood and youth, north of Jackson , up in the hills, one happy phrase comes down intact: “the coast.” They’ve just been to the coast . . . they’re going to the coast next week . . . they’re fishing at the coast . . . they own a house at the coast . . . let’s go to the coast. . . . When? For spring holidays? next week? . . . Now! What was magical about it? In the days I speak of, it did not have a decent beach. Strictly speaking, it was not even a sea coast. The islands that stood out in the Gulf— Horn Island, Ship Island, Cat Island and the rest—took the Gulf surf on their sandy shores: what we called “the coast” was left with a tide you could measure in inches, and a gradual silted sloping sea bottom, shallow enough to wade out in for half a mile without getting wet above the waist. x / Introduction A concrete sea wall extended for miles along the beach drive, shielding the road and houses and towns it ran past from high water that storms might bring, also keeping the shore line regular. Compared to the real beaches of Southern California, or Florida, or the Caribbean islands, all this might seem not much to brag about: what was there beside the sea wall, the drive along it, the palms and old lighthouses, the spacious mansions looking out on the water, with their deep porches and outdoor stairways, their green lattice work, their moss hung oaks and sheltered gardens, the crunch of oyster shells gravelling side roads and parking lots . . . why was this so grand? Well, it wasn’t “grand,” let that be admitted. Natchez was grand. New Orleans had its seductive charms securely placed in a rich Creole history. Still, nothing gave Mississippians quite the feeling of our own Gulf Coast. We came down to it driving through plain little towns, some pretty, some not, went south of Jackson through Hattiesburg. The names come back: Mendenhall, Magee, Mount Olive, Collins, Wiggins, Perkinston. Somewhere in there was D’Lo, curiously pronounced Dee-Lo. In all of these, people of an Anglo-Saxon sameness in names and in admirable qualities, were pursuing life patterns thought out so long ago they could never be questioned since. A day or two to piece the relationships together and anyone from Carrollton or Winona or Pickens or Vaiden could pick up the same routine of life there as in the ancestral home. Introduction / xi But soon there was the thrilling smell of salt on the breeze increasing until suddenly there was Gulfport and straight ahead the harbor with its big ships at rest and to either side the long arms of the beach drive stretching east to Biloxi, west to Pass Christian and Bay St. Louis. There were names foreign to our ears, the mystery of these almost foreign places, easy in their openness, leaning toward the flat blue water, serene beneath the great floating clouds. That first thin breath of sea air had spread to a whole atmosphere. There was no place where it wasn’t. What to do in a car crowded with friends on holiday from school but drive straight to the water’s edge and sit there breathless, not knowing which way to go first, but ready to discover. I must have come there first with girls from around home, or friends from college in Jackson. Someone would have borrowed the family car. Occasions blur into one long sighing memory of live oaks green the year round, and the pillared white houses the trees sheltered, set along the sweep of beach drive, boxes of salt water taffy to chew on, and little screened restaurants advertising SHRIMP! ALL YOU CAN EAT FOR 1. Gumbo, too, “made fresh every day.” Jax beer. Prohibition lingered for a long time inland, but the coast never paid it much attention. Names alone would tell you that they wouldn’t. French and Spanish were here from the first...