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Managing Editor Scott Wright has been with The Post since 1998. He is a two-time winner of the Society of Professional Journalists' Green Eyeshade Award for humorous commentary. He is also the author of "A History of Weiss Lake" and "Fire on the Mountain: The Undefeated 1985 Sand Rock Wildcats." He is a native of Cherokee County. The
Wright Angle That trip to the beach was work By Scott Wright I am having a hard time convincing anyone of this, but I actually did get a good bit of work done during my recent trip to the Alabama Gulf coast. I left for Orange Beach on Oct. 6 and returned Oct. 9, just in time to see my previously top-ranked Crimson Tide ignominiously returned to the level of mere mortality on the football field. (Most popular bumper sticker in Columbia, S.C. last week: “Honk If You Sacked McElroy”.)Anyway, while I was down there, I covered the Piedmont game on Thursday, Oct. 7. I prefer the offensive side of the ball, so the 7-7 halftime score had me a little bored. But after a combined 71-point second half, I was glad I hadn't snuck out early. The Bulldogs and Gulf Shores Dolphins put on one of the most impressive scoring displays I have seen in years. The only bad news for me was that I had to interview Piedmont coach Steve Smith following a tough, 43-42 loss in overtime. Despite being emotionally dejected, Steve was all class, as usual. Still, I'm glad I wasn't sitting beside him for that 350-mile bus ride home. The next day, I drove up and down Highway 180 gathering info about the BP spill, something I had been aching to do since May. I interviewed store clerks and waitresses, scoured the local papers, and jotted down several pages of observations. The subsequent story, titled "Beaches try to recover from 'summer that wasn't", appeared on the front page of the Oct. 11 edition of The Post. I learned plenty of interesting facts about the spill that have gone largely unreported. For example, many restaurants still do not have locally-caught fish on the menu; BP continues to spray oil dispersant into the Gulf whenever “big pockets of oil” appear offshore (How often is that, exactly? No one could tell me.); and, sometime later this week, BP will begin mechanically cleaning the sand along Orange Beach with a new-fangled contraption that looks like a cross between a bulldozer, a phone booth, and a treadmill. I met a couple from Pennsylvania, Brian and Teresa, who relocated to the Gulf coast in early spring and opened a Pittsburgh Steeler-themed restaurant in Gulf Shores. Unfortunately for them, BP was doing a little drilling offshore at about that same time. A couple of weeks after Brian and Teresa opened for business, their well-laid plan got waylaid by 200 million gallons of goop. Their place is on the top floor of a four-story condo unit that dates to the mid-1960s. There's neon lighting in the windows, several layers of paint on the walls, and cold beer on tap. (I didn't see any gambling or prostitution going on. I guess those activities are alleged side-effects of alcohol sales only in north Alabama.) In their back room, where Steelers games are watched religiously on Sundays in the fall, amid walls filled with Black and Gold memorabilia, patrons come face-to-face with what Brian assured me is the world's largest Terrible Towel. If you're not a Steelers fan, that's not such a big deal. But I am, so it is to me. Anyway, Teresa informed me that I was one of the few people to see her husband's new decorations, thanks to BP. But she also told me that, after months of rejections, her husband's oil spill reimbursement claim had finally been approved a few days before. "Some of the workers in the claims center started coming in, and they helped us get our claim filed and then approved," she said. "Thanks to them, we've got enough money to last us until this time next year." On Friday, I spent a couple hours walking amongst the masses gathered at the 39th Annual National Shrimp Festival. The block party is held right on the beach and features live music, fresh (?) seafood and arts and crafts. It's the last big tourist event of the season in Gulf Shores, designed to tide local businesses over through the winter months – perhaps never more so than this year. All in all, the trip was one of my best ever to the Gulf coast, and I've taken a bunch of them over the years. This time, I drove down not knowing what would still look familiar, thanks to BP and all that oil. What I found was the same, beautiful place that I remember, along with a bunch of good folks who've had a truly awful summer, and who hope like hell we won't forget about them when we start making vacation plans in 2011. |