Adventures in Paradise is something of a visual departure for me; especially for a “beach shot” during a storm. It is very high key – blown out highlights all over the place; barely a dark dark to be seen. But I processed the look in what felt like 60 seconds flat – luminosity, saturation, vibrance– zip, zip, zip. I just did it and knew right away the result was what I wanted; done. So I asked myself the next logical question: “Why?” and had no immediate answer.
Well, next day I was talking with my sister Carol who lives back east, describing the picture to her, going on about how much I love driving on the beach when she said “You remember Uncle Alex’s dune buggy, don’t you?”
My Uncle Alex owned a bait and tackle shop down on Long Beach Island (better known to most folks as a part of The Jersey Shore). I’d long ago recognized the coincidence that I’d spent a lot of time on Long Beach Island in New Jersey when I was a kid, and now spent a lot of time on the Long Beach Peninsula in Washington. But; “A dune buggy?”
“Sure, they used to let dune buggies on the beach when we were kids. Then that hurricane came along and destroyed all those houses and they built jetties and buggies weren’t allowed on the beach anymore. Don’t you remember?”
“Uh… No.”
“Maybe you were too little… Uncle Alex had this bright pink dune buggy called Adventures in Paradise. The name was on the side.”
Then I remembered.
I remember a flamingo-pink jeep-turned-dune buggy with its name in Floridian-sky-blue-script on both sides with rod holders and a half dozen 10 or 12 foot poles rigged up, ready to go. I remember spinners, jigs and spoons with feathery tails hanging from an overhead tackle-board, and the whir and crunch of gears from the buggy’s mechanicals as we wheeled down the beach. And I remember surfing my arms in the rushing-by wind pretending to fly like a seagull that paced us.
Adventures in Paradise. Yup.
Of course, a big piece of why I love this place fell into place somewhere along in here. There are some amazing similarities – or points of congruency – even visual similarities – between this place and what were perhaps the best experiences and times I had as a child. Say 1955-60; pre-Kennedy, pre Nam. Pre the shit-storm of every dimension that was headed the world’s way. This place is like a cultural preserve – they aren’t trying to be fifties, they are fifties.
Places like this will be extinct soon. Portland and Seattle population predicted to double by 2038 or something like that? What if? Somewhere along in there, little pockets of a simpler time like this will cease to exist, gone like cultural passenger pigeons.
Enjoy it while ya got it.
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