Beaches have a history, and they want you to know their secrets. To learn them, all you must do is open yourself to the whispers of the wind, the murmur of the gulls, and the sound of the waves crashing on the shore. The question is: are the things you associate with the beach, a holiday, festivity, the expectations of happiness, fond memories of the past, in your mind, or are they somehow imbued into the landscape itself?
The past, as William Faulkner famously said, is never dead, it is not even past. Perhaps because I’m steeped in Southern literature, with its emphasis on a sense of place and the importance of location in our lives, I tend to see and hear things that may or may not be there.
Once, when I was ashore in Baltimore, I visited the grave of the Romantic and Gothic writer, Edgar Allen Poe, (1809-1849). Not surprising, on that late fall afternoon, I felt his presence. I also had the same feeling in Paris at the grave of Oscar Wilde (1854-1900). It’s a shame that I wasn’t in Baltimore on Poe’s birthday. If so, I could have hung around until midnight to see if the mysterious woman, dressed in all black, appeared to place flowers on his grave as she reportedly did for so many years.
After flunking out of the Military Academy at West Point, Poe, like Mississippi’s piano-thumping Jerry Lee Lewis, another limit-pushing iconoclast, married his 13-year-old cousin who soon died of tuberculosis. Scholars have since speculated that her death led to his most recurring literary themes: a preoccupation with mourning, mysticism, spiritualism, and reunification after death. In Poe’s writing, there are often hints of shadows, suspicions, and memories of a world just beyond this one. Ironically, such are the feelings that I often experience on beaches around the world. It is, no doubt, my imagination, but some beaches seemed “charged” with memories of long-ago events, of happiness, and even abject sorrow.
For this to be true, it would be necessary for us to somehow leave our lingering “essence” behind us when we depart a place. This, in turn, logically leads to questions about life after death which, unfortunately, only the dead can answer. During the 19th century, and even later, spiritual “mediums” duped many intelligent people into believing that they could conjure up their long dead loved ones by various nefarious subterfuges. Perhaps the most famous example would be Mary Todd Lincoln, the unfortunate widow of Abraham Lincoln, who spent untold dollars trying to reach her beloved son, Willie, beyond the grave. She even kept and believed authentic a photograph of the deceased president standing protectively behind her after it was exposed as trick photography.
I’m not into the occult. After all, I believe what the Bible says in Hebrews 9:27: “And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes the judgement.” I also believe we only leave three things behind us when we die; “Ongoing charity, beneficial knowledge, and righteous children who will pray for us.” Still, I can’t deny that I was once aware of the beaches’ “knowing” phenomenon while sleeping on the shore at St. Tropez, France, about 30 clicks east up the Mediterranean from Toulon. This was ground zero for Operation ANVIL, the World War II invasion of occupied France which took place on 15 August, 1944, about two months after the more well-known invasion at Normandy on the Atlantic. As the sun came up that morning, I was almost overwhelmed by a feeling of sharing the beach with thousands of allied soldiers as they waded ashore under heavy German gunfire. The feeling was so intense that I packed up my few belongings and left. I won’t even try to explain the voices in my head when I later visited one of the huge American cemeteries just off the beaches at Normandy.
Thankfully, not all beach “vibes” are ominous. When I was a kid, it was my ambition to go to the amusement park at Pontchartrain Beach in New Orleans. I would listen to the park’s commercials on radio station WNOE, owned by James A. Noe, formerly governor of Louisiana, while I worked at the gas station in Lumberton:
You’ll have fun,
You’ll have fun,
Every day at the beach,
You’ll have fun,
You’ll have fun,
Every day of the week.
You’ll love the thrilling rides,
Laugh ‘till you split your sides,
That’s Pontchartrain Beach!
For me, the main attractions of the park were the wooden roller coaster, the “Zephyr,” and a more modern, looping steel one named the “Ragin Cajun.” Although the park closed in 1983, a victim of poor attendance, the old beach site “speaks” to me even today when I drive along the lakeside seawall. I can hear the roar of the coasters and the screams of the children as they make the “loop the loop.” Sadly, several of the parks smaller rides were moved to a park in Gulf Shores, Alabama, where they were destroyed by a hurricane in 2004.
There’s also a certain public beach at Orange Beach, Alabama, one of the few where access is not choked off by high rise condominiums, that always “sings” to me, and gives me a fuzzy, happy feeling. This is because it’s the location where, a couple years ago, during the COVID crisis, I performed the wedding ceremony for Ashlyn, my eldest granddaughter. We had to get a permit from the city to be legal, and the wedding party was limited to ten because of health restrictions. I was focused on the wedding ceremony, facing the ocean, and not paying attention to what was behind me, when I was shocked by rather spirited applause coming from at least forty or fifty people assembled on the balconies of the two condos on either side of the beach access. I hear the applause every time I walk across that beach. Is it just in my mind, or is it mystically hanging in the air? Beats me. Two random thoughts: are all the words ever spoken still floating around in the air? And, if they are, what would happen if we heard them all at once?
Some beaches give off both positive and negative vibrations. For example, there’s a beach in Villefranche sur Mur, France, that both makes me laugh and fills me with concern. My granddaughter, Ashlyn, above, then a senior at Oak Gove High School, was visiting me while I was in language school. One day, she decided to go swimming at a local beach, very close to Monte Carlo. She was enjoying her outing until she looked around and realized that she was on a topless beach, which are very common on the Rivera. She quicky found a beach with more familiar customs.
Likewise, I was very proud of my son, Benjy, now a teacher and the softball coach at Oak Grove High School, when he served, in high school, as an ocean lifeguard at Newport Rhode Island’s Sachuest Beach, on the Atlantic, and the most popular one in the city. I was very proud to see him all tan and “Hollywood,” perched atop his red lifeguard tower, surveying his domain, cool behind his “shades;” however, I knew enough about history that I kept seeing, or did the beach keep telling me, about the destruction caused by the great Hurricane of 1938 which tore through this exact area, killing over 700 people throughout southern New England.
In the distant past, I’m also convinced that beaches have “led” me to make spur of the moment purchases which have become lifelong treasured possessions. There’s the gold St. Christopher’s Medal, the patron saint of sailors, that I picked up on Pattaya Beach, Thailand, even though I couldn’t afford it at the time. Likewise, the gold four-strand “puzzle ring” which hasn’t left my finger since I bought it on the beach in Souda Bay, Crete, when my take-home pay was $90 per month. My personal library wouldn’t be complete without the “camel saddle” stool that I picked up on the beach in Alexandria, Egypt, just across from the ruins of the town’s famous old lighthouse, one of the ancient wonders of the world. And what would I do without the wooden carved, three-dimensional picture of Jesus that I just had to buy on the beach in Recife, Brazil. Did these objects speak to me, or was it the beaches whispering in my ear - “Buy, Benny, buy?”
Beaches also encouraged my love of literature. When I was in Monterey, California, my walks on the beach led me to read the complete works of John Steinbeck. I was familiar with the “Grapes of Wrath” (1939), of course; but I had yet to read such wonderful works as “Cannery Row” (1945), “East of Eden” (1952), “Tortilla Flat” (1935), and “Sweet Thursday” (1954), all of which depict life in Monterey County. Unfortunately, there are no sardine canneries in Monterey anymore. It’s just a tourist trap, except for the wild, windswept beaches fronting Highway 1 along the Pacific Ocean, the scenic route between San Francisco and Los Angeles. I’m afraid that very few motorists have the time to stop and hear what the beaches have to say. It’s their loss.
One of my favorite beaches this time of year is Waikiki in Honolulu. I have spent more than one Christmas day strolling among the steel guitars and ukuleles playing carols in the grand old Royal Hawaiian Hotel, a pink edifice on the beach in the shadow of Diamond Head, the volcano crater whose observation post lets you see all over Oahu. The whole area is steeped in history. This is the beach, for example, where the “real Duke,” not John Wayne, Duke Paoa Kahanamoku, is credited with popularizing and elevating the sport of surfing. Known as the “Father of Modern Surfing,” he reportedly did “everything but walk on water.”
Just up the hill is the palace of Queen Lili’uokalani (1838-1917), the last sovereign of an independent Hawaii. She traditionally wrote “Aloha oe,” the “national anthem” of Hawaii, while imprisoned in the second-floor bedroom of her palace after the failed counter-revolution of 1895; however, that’s not correct. She originally wrote the song in 1878, and copyrighted it, after observing a young Hawaiian woman giving her male lover a flower lei during their parting. As time has passed, and Hawaii’s statehood movement has grown, the song has come to be regarded as a symbol for the loss of Hawaii’s independence to American colonialism.
I love all the beaches of Hawaii, especially those on the windward or Kaneohe side, but I’m not sure Hawaii likes me. I’ve entered the state dozens of times, both by ship and by air, and for whatever reason, I’m usually plagued with a migraine headache upon arrival. I’m not sure of the cause. It could be the flora or the fauna, but it’s always fleeting. I also recently bought on Amazon a Hawaiian Bird of Paradise potted plant for my summer patio, and I’ve closely followed the enclosed directions, but it has refused to bloom. I know that I should have bought the flower in person, on the beach. It could have told me what to do.
In Hawaii, “aloha” means both “hello” and “goodbye.” Whenever I walk the sands of Waikiki, especially when I’m about to leave for somewhere else, Queen Lili’uokalani’s masterpiece plays on a continuous loop in my head. Is it my memory playing the song, or is it the shifting, drifting sand saying “goodbye” to another pilgrim?
Sweet memories come back to me,
Bringing fresh remembrances
of the past.
Dearest one, yes, you are mine own,
From you, true love shall never depart.
Farewell to thee, farewell to thee,
The charming one who dwells in the shaded
bowers,
One fond embrace
‘Ere I depart.
Until we meet again.
Light a candle for me.
—
Benny Hornsby of Oak Grove is a retired U.S. Navy captain. Visit his website, bennyhornsby.com, or email him: villefranche60@yahoo.com.
