Just this time of year when I turned 12, I went to spend the summer with my grandparents in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. It was my first time away from home and I left a hell of a house to visit heaven on earth. The most remarkable thing about this pristine world was the sand. It was white as snow. Even with the sun shining bright and me sweltering in our car, I had to ask, "Is that snow?"

"Yes," my father said.

Of course it was sand. It was remarkable sand. It was everywhere, always underfoot, in the road, and especially at the beach, covering the dunes down to the road and back to the Gulf of Mexico.

Then, the Gulf was salty enough to sting your eyes and turn them red. That much salt made floating easy. While I had no fear of water, being little exposed to it, I loved standing up to my neck, bobbing up and down as the undulation of the waves carried me along in gentle motions.

Looking at my feet, I could watch the fish nibbling at my toes. I could use those toes to pick up sand dollars, and by bending my knee I could take the sand dollars out of my toes with my fingers. They were about the size of a silver dollar with intricate designs.

The water was crystal clear, and yet emerald green. Fort Walton Beach was part of what was called 'The Miracle Strip' and 'The Emerald Coast.' It was virtually unsoiled by man.

My friend Avery and I would get dropped off at the Wayside Park at the Gulf with a bag lunch, as my grandmother went about her daily chores; we'd walk the eight miles to Destin and back getting picked up in time for Granny to get home to fix dinner. The only thing Avery and I would see along the way on our walks, the green water, the white sand, and seagulls circling overhead.

One morning Avery came dashing into the house as I lazily ate my Special K. "The fish are in at the Wayside Park," he said excitedly. "Granny, can you take us to the Wayside Pier?"

"I've got a doctors appointment at nine and I've got to be at my Ladies Aide meeting at eleven. I don't think so."

"Drop us off at the Wayside on the way to the doctors. Pick us up on your way back. We'll be waiting for you to pick us up at whatever time you tell us. Please, take us."

Avery was a universal favorite, and he knew how to play adults in a magical way. They loved pleasing him.

Granny dropped us off.

"You be out here in this parking lot in 45 minutes, you hear?," Granny ordered.

"Yes, ma'am," Avery swore.

Now I ask you, what's the point in going fishing for 45 minutes? I didn't get it, but I played along with Avery. He'd borrowed my grandfather's fishing gear, and we headed out on the pier with a bucket of bait he'd brought.

We were going fishing. It turned out to be some of the most magical moments in my life.

With two hooks on a line and with both of us casting into the Gulf, we watched as a hundred fisherman on either side of us kept pulling in lines full of fish. The fish made a shadow in the water around the pier 30 feet below us.

Every time I cast my line into the water, two more fish came out almost immediately. Avery put the fish on a stringer as he popped them off my line, baited my hooks a new, and I cast again, two more fish. After fifteen or twenty minutes, and with eighteen fish on our stringer line that hung down into the water, Avery became distracted.

He left me on my own, walking to the end of the pier, where there was a bevy of activity. I followed him out to watch a man fight with a huge fishing rig, trying to bring a Tiger Shark onto the pier. It was four or five feet long and a mighty fish to behold. I'd never seen anything like it.

This was a magnificent event for a kid who, until that summer, had never succeeded at anything. That day on the pier at the Wayside Park in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, everything went perfectly. We went. We caught all the fish we wanted. We returned triumphant. It was magnificent.

We raced back to the parking lot to be there when Granny arrived.

"Catch any fish?" Granny asked, as we dropped the fish and the poles in the trunk.

"Yes, ma'am, a few," Avery confessed with his broad beautiful smile.

We were off and running, racing back to the house so we could unload. Granny almost peed herself when she saw all those fish in her backyard. That was the day I learned to clean fish like a pro. I got a lot of practice. I was always ready to go fishing after that.

"You take some of these home to your mom, Avery," Granny told him.

"Oh, no ma'am, these are for you. We have a freezer full at home."

I'd never been away from home before and it was a unique summer of peace and freedom. This was the summer that began the rest of my life. Everything happened the year I turned 12. Fort Walton Beach was only the start, a week after I turned 12.

I returned to Fort Walton Beach a few years ago. I know you expect me to go into a rant about BP and the destruction of the Gulf of Mexico, but no, I'll leave that for you.

When I returned for the first time since my teens in the year 2000, the water was a murky gray. The Wayside Park is there but hidden behind the Ramada Inn and the Gulfarium. The piers gone, taken down by a hurricane a few years back. The people are gone. There was no one on the beach and there were no cars in the parking lot the times I went back. If you don't know the entrance is there, you'll never find it. It looks like an access road to the businesses built along the highway.

The spot that was once full of people during daylight hours every day, is now empty. The pier always held dozens of fishermen, night or day, but the Ramada Inn is there now and there are people there night and day too, but no fishing.

The sand was still white then. The golden grass still grows out of the dunes, and there were still some dunes left. Mostly the dunes have been replaced by Burger King and MacDonald's and Wal-Marts and Home Depots that stretch from Fort Walton Beach almost all the way to Destin. Progress has come to the 'Miracle Strip.'

Anywhere you can build has been built upon; on stretches the military owns, you see some of what it once was. The rest is a shoppers paradise. If you got a buck there are hundreds of choices, and eat, there must be a thousand eateries on that stretch of road.

You can't really see much of your toes while standing in the Gulf these days. I haven't spent a lot of time looking for my toes lately. Thinking back, I can see my toes again, while standing in the Gulf. I can see the pier, the fish, the endless miles of pure white sand beaches, now the backdrop for American commerce. All I've got to do is remember, but for you, well, it won't be so easy. Maybe there are pictures and someone will erect a museum along the Gulf to show it at it's pristine best, the way I knew it the summer I turned 12 and I came alive for the first time along the Gulf of Mexico, before they covered it in concrete and built shops to temp anyone with a buck.

I'm told that the BP blowout will kill much of what's left of the Gulf, what isn't already dead. The idea of being too close to the beauty often kills it before anyone else gets to enjoy it. We wonder where all the wonder went, while we dig down to pay for the hotel room right on the Gulf.

"What a treat. A room right on the Gulf of Mexico. Let's go see the water kids."

"Excuse me, sir, which way is the Gulf anyway?"

"That-a-way," the Ramada Inn desk clerk pointed as the happy family strolled out through the parking lot in the direction the the point took them.

"…I thought it would be… cleaner. Well, there's a Pizza Hut out front kids, or do you want Taco Bell? They're both next to our hotel. This place has everything. There's a water park across the highway. I think we better swim over there. That water doesn't look too clean."

Brought to you by progress.

Love & Peace
Rick Beck