Lessons of a Proper Beach Bum

This piece would extend to a publication such as Wrightsville Beach Magazine or other local publications. It is a personal account of growing up in Wilmington and Wrightsville Beach, NC. Through a first-person account it underscores the history of this beach town while also examining how growing up in a southern coastal locale can be more than just sand and waves.

Tags: Wilmington, NC, Wrightsville Beach, NC, The Lumina

I learned to drive a boat before I learned to drive a car. I learned that a bathing suit and a t-shirt can be proper dinner attire. I learned that it is perfectly acceptable to have hurricane parties as long as you put the children under the dining room table. I learned that girls can fish just as well as boys, and that the Coastguard will call my parents no matter how much I beg. I learned that no matter how old I get, sitting on a dock, staring out over the water, is the best – and cheapest – therapy possible. I learned that no matter how far inland I go, the smell of salt water in the air will always remind me of where I have been – and where I always want to come back.

I was born and raised in Wilmington, NC, so close to Wrightsville Beach that I was allowed to ride my bike to weekly sailing lessons.  My family has called Wilmington home for three generations, so I was not only expected to live the legacy but to understand the legacy.  To be from a beach town to some extent is exactly what anyone might assume, but to be from an old Southern beach town presents a dichotomy all its own.

I grew up learning to appreciate the ease that comes with living in such tranquil surroundings while still being expected to uphold the virtues of a true Southern lady. So though you might find me still in my bathing suit at dinner hour on a humid July night, you would never find me in jeans at my grandmother’s for Sunday lunch.  And though you might believe me if I told you I could bait a hook faster than any boy on my street, you would be wrong if you believed I ever called one of them on the phone anywhere in the vicinity of my mother.

Yes I learned the beauty of being a step away from the water, but I also learned the tradition in which Wrightsville Beach and Wilmington are steeped. And in that I learned I was expected to grow up with a love of the sea Ernest Hemmingway would appreciate and an attention to Southern decorum that Emily Post would approve.

For me this comes to life in memories of my grandmother recounting her days at Wrightsville Beach. Her summers were spent paying a nickel to ride a trolley car to The Lumina, the original beach club of the era. There she would spend all day swimming in the waves and sunning on the shore and all night dancing with men in white tuxes and tails to the sounds of Big Band masters like Guy Lombardo and Louis Armstrong. And though The Lumina wasn’t around by the time I was making my first trips to our playground, those stories still made me revel in the tradition that I was continuing. I never wore a gown and pearly gloves to a beach party, and I don’t recall dancing with any men dressed in tails.  But I did dance, and I did swim and I did enjoy the magic that my grandmother experienced decades prior.

I see this in our albums of photographs dating from the late 1920s up until just this summer, all of which depict my family’s days at the beach. As I look through, I observe that with the progression of time, the people in the photographs change, the styles of bathing attire evolve and the shape of the shoreline bends.  Yet there are some things in these pictures that never alter.

My grandfather will be holding a high ball with bourbon and water because you just don’t mix good bourbon with anything else.  My grandmother will be eyeing him to make sure there is a cocktail napkin under that high ball because you just don’t serve a drink without a napkin underneath it.  My mother will be setting out a plate of deviled eggs or ham biscuits because if we have a beach picnic without at least one of those delicacies, the world as my family knows it will end. And my uncles will be letting me do or have something I’m not supposed to have, which typically amounts to a beer in a bottle, not a glass.

Though time changes the face of these memories to a certain extent, the sentiment is always the same.  There have been, and still continue to be, so many moments with the sea as the backdrop for my many family adventures.  In many ways, it was those moments – those long standing traditions – that made me who I am, maybe even more so than the location itself. It’s as if the beach set the tone and the history set the standards. And in the end being there with my family made the person.