Monday Memories - At the Beach

For the 74th edition of Carnival of Genealogy: Swim Suit Edition, my mom provided me with a story about a family vacation, in which she saw the ocean for the first time.

"Ok '64 - so I would have been how old? 10? I turned 10 in August. See, I had the Red swim suit and your Aunt June had the blue swim suit. I they had the little white anchor embroidered down at the hem line. I remember that. We got those right before the trip. Everybody got new swim suits. Lloyd and Larry had matching swim trunks and Roy and Charlie had different ones.

And, the pictures were taken - we were going to Merritt Island, FL to visit my Aunt Katherine and Uncle Milton. Cape Canaveral? Uncle Milton worked at the military base there - I think it was Cape Canaveral. So we were going down there to visit them and they lived on Merritt Island. And it was a long drive by car. So, what mama and daddy did was they fixed up the back seat with pillows and stuff to make it like a little bed back there. 'Cause it was a Ford Galaxy 500. And those were big cars back then, you had big roomy back seats. So what we did was, we left out late at night so that, hopefully, us kids would sleep through the whole trip.

We didn't know about seat belts then. They were not required. There were six kids - there were not six seat belts. And I don't think there were even seat belts. But I think mama told me one time that daddy just pushed them down in the seat.

Now, I do know that we stopped at least one. 'Cause they woke me up to eat fried chicken. And did not like bein' woke up. And then, I think they woke us up at the state line - it might have been the next mornin'. I remember bein' confused 'cause it didn't look any different. And I do remember it was daylight when we finally got to Uncle Milton and Aunt Katherine's.

I don't know how long we stayed, but I do know it took a while - well, I know we kept having to be reminded to shut the door, 'cause she had air conditioning. And we'd never had air conditioning.

I remember when we drove to the beach, I couldn't understand why it took so long to get to the beach 'cause we were already in florida. And we were on an Island! But we had to go over these loooong bridges to get to the beach. And that we the first time I ever saw the island. And we had a wonderful time - except for [your] Grandmama. 'Cause she just kept saying "don't go out over your heads." There were six of us, and she was scared one of us was going to drown.

And I don't know if it was your Uncle Lloyd or your Uncle Larry, but one of them had no fear of the ocean whatsoever. 'Course, I was good and never went out over my head. The other thing I remember about the beach - I mean, about going to Florida was, in the afternoons, you couldn't go outside because the mosquito trucks came by. And that's mostly what I remember. I don't even remember comin' home, I just remember goin' down there and havin' fun."