Beach Music

And summer dreams of sea and shore

My family used to take vacations to Florida every summer. We’d stay in some little motel at St. Petersburg Beach or adjacent “Treasure Island”: some place that would cost my father from $12-$15 a night depending on whether it included a kitchenette. One place, the Imperial, was a hot pink color. Makes you wonder.

When I was fourteen, Dad “won” a promotional gift from Long-Lewis Ford, one of our local car dealers. The gift was a three night, four day stay at a nice hotel in Palm Beach, FL, a short drive up the coast from Ft. Lauderdale. The only caveat to the trip was you had to listen to the “land deal” pitch.

A pitch that took up the entirety of one of those three days.

Still the accommodations were free and the beach was brown and shell-filled, because this was the Atlantic side of Florida, the Gulf side sporting beaches of white silt-like sand.

For the next three summers, Dad found a way to win more free trips to Palm Beach and Ft. Lauderdale, which of course meant listening to more land deals. A man on a quest to provide his family with free vacations occasionally loses sight of the greater goal, and his family starts wondering about his dreams.

For you know, on one of these pitches, a salesman named “Artie” actually sold my parents a patch of land in some new subdivision. I used to remember its name, too, but for the sake of what does come to mind, let’s call it Long Boat Key (it’s really Lehigh Acres).

None of this really matters to my story, except to say that my parents loved a good deal but weren’t always the savviest of dealers. They eventually sold that plot of land — a plot we never actually saw, much less visited or sailed a boat from.

None of us knew a damn thing about boats. You know the old joke about Jewish people and boats, don’t you?

None of this really matters to my story, except to say that my parents loved a good deal but weren’t always the savviest of dealers. They eventually sold that plot of land — a plot we never actually saw, much less visited or sailed a boat from.

But on one of these Florida ventures, I had a definite mission — not to find land, but to locate a copy of a record album — vinyl’s early days — that I couldn’t find in my local record shops of department stores.

The record was The Book of Taliesyn by the notorious British hard rock band, Deep Purple.

It wasn’t even that I loved Deep Purple, or hard rock. I preferred Santana and poppier AM sounds. But once at a friend’s house, I heard a song from this record, “Anthem,” which fit the bill for any true romantic boy of fourteen. Here it is:

So imagine me, with my Beatle bangs, white cut-off shorts, red knit shirt, and buckled saddle oxfords sans socks, wandering the boardwalks around some vague town in Florida, searching for this record.

Not exactly an Odyssey, but at least I caught on to my goal in less than ten or twenty years.

As our family cruised the four-lane boulevard one hot afternoon, I saw a sign for a store, set off on a parallel street.

BEACH MUSIC, it proclaimed.

Sometimes you just know something before you ever really know it. And what I knew then was that I had to get into that store. I knew my record awaited.

I have to add here that my poor parents had already indulged at least ten other such stops, having to watch my hopes build, and then listen to me yell, and endure my sullenness when those proved to offer nothing of real value to me. You’d have thought I was enchanted, bound to some wild ship or something, waiting for a siren’s blast.

Beach Music, though, fulfilled me.

I didn’t look when I entered, but in the rarest of decisions, I asked the clerk, a nice-looking blond-headed, long-haired guy in his twenties, my burning question:

“Do you have a copy of The Book of Taliesyn, by Deep Purple?”

I never asked K-Mart clerks such questions, and even some clerks in true record stores looked at me like I was “that kid” when I finally asked them for the record after searching myself.

But this guy.

He could have been my friend forever, and I wish I remembered his name now.

“Sure, we have that.”

And he showed me.

Maybe I overpaid for it, since this was a specialty music store at the beach that carried records that no one could possibly want.

Would $7.99 sound outrageous? Remember, these were 1971 prices, and that album was at least three years old.

I don’t know who was happier or more transformed in that moment: the clerk, my parents, or me. Whatever relief my parents felt, though, turned to greater frustration as now, of course, I couldn’t have cared less about the beach, the ocean, any land, or that magical word, “vacation.”

My only mission was to get home and play my precious record.

Which I finally got to do, four days later.

And on the second or third play, I accidentally bumped my turntable, and the needle scratched the end of “Anthem.”

Years later, I found another copy. I still have both albums on my downstairs vinyl shelf. I need a new needle for my player — have needed one for maybe twenty years. One day, maybe I’ll get one and play all the old music, beach/non-beach, again.

Until then, I added a copy of The Book of Taliesyn to my Apple Music library yesterday. It made me happy to do so, except for one thing:

The search was too easy; I didn’t have to leave home, and right now, I miss the days when I had to, when I could.

I even miss my parents shaking their heads at me and wondering what was going on with this usually sane and reasonable boy.

If they could see me, if only they could see me. They’d see that I am laughing, and sometimes crying, “when the night winds softly blow.”