Miscellaneous Stories Chapter 10
Late Winter/Early Spring 1967 to October 1967 - Jacksonville Beach
I lifeguarded in Jacksonville Beach and George lifeguarded at the Atlantic Beach Hotel pool. I remember coming home one afternoon to our apartment on 1st Street to a full scale party. Some of my Jax Beach lifeguard buddies had beer, girls, and music going. It seems like there were @ 20 people there. George kicked someone(s) out of his bedroom and we joined the party. Mary Beth Staub stepped through a rotten board in our upstairs landing once. Dad fixed it for us on one of his Beach visits. He always looked out for us kids, sometimes too much. He loved us and couldn't help helping even when he shouldn't have.
I dated a couple of girls from Lake City (Debbie Landrum and Lark Sasso). They belonged to a sorority, E Phi, who came to the beach every summer for a couple of weeks. They always came down to the lifeguard station in Jax Beach and after a day or two cut a lifeguard out of the herd and it was game on. Lark Sasso had a reputation for loving and leaving and was interested in me. I decided I didn't want to be one of her conquests, I don't know why, she was hot. It was a matter of pride, I guess. After ignoring Lark for a week, she and a girlfriend were fixing dinner for George and me one night at our apartment when we got home from work. She said, " I know you don't want to date me, I'll leave if you want." Right! Lark and I dated for a month or so. One of her Lake City boyfriends stole my coil wire from my VW one night when I was in Lake City. People weren't so mean in those days. I had to repace it with a spark plug wire and drive back to the beach on 3 cylinders. Like many of my other relationships, I screwed it up. I didn't show up with the other lifeguards in Lake City for a planned date. I was exhausted and broke. I should have called her ahead of time. She got all fixed up and ready to go out and no David. I think she was getting tired of me anyway. I was sorry though. I liked her a lot. Sometimes we would drive to Lake City, go to the Lake City Drive In movie theater, get up the next morning and go scuba diving somewhere in a spring, and then drive back to the beach for 10 o'clock roll call for Beach Patrol.
We had numerous toga parties at our apartment. I remember covering George up with palm fronds in the morning when he was still asleep on the couch. Herman and I broke in on him once while he was in bed with a girl. We were all drunk and laughed and laughed. George really wished we would get out, which we eventually did. George was also dating Phyllis McNeal. Her brother, Richard, who was a football player and big, punched George once for saying something not nice about Phyllis. Phyllis had an old white Jaguar sports car, which was pretty cool. I can still see that car in front of our apartment.
Ossi's Grocery in south Jax Beach sold 3 quarts of Busch beer for $1. There was a deposit on the bottles (25 cents) and $1 for the case box. Ossi wasn't picky about ID's. We did a lot of business there. Gasoline was still @ 50 cents a gallon, I think.
We had lots of beach parties in North Seminole Beach in the oak hammocks between the road and the beach. No one bothered us and we didn't bother anyone. Everyone had their own blanket and we mostly made out with our dates and sang and told stories and generally harassed each other. Sometimes we would borrow new trash cans from Chao Hardware to mix up Purple Passion in. We would clean them and return them the next day. Some skinny dipping went on too.
We surfed every chance we could get, before work, during work, after work, and on days off. I had a 9'10" Allen noserider. An itinerant photographer from California did a story on Jacksonville Beach in the summer and it was published in the November 1967 issue of Surfer magazine. There was a picture of me, Herman Brame, and a couple of other locals.
