Picture Post, Sunday February 18, 2007

Fort Walton Beach, Florida. December 1984.

Lovely Wife and I were married in August of 1984, and moved to Ft. Walton immediately after. I was an assistant manager for Johnny's Pizza House, based in West Monroe, La., and they had a unit in Ft. Walton that they needed management personnel to work in.

I may have told the story on this blog before, but in short, they closed the restaurant down for the winter, and ended up not opening it back up the next year. They sold the building.

Consequently, Lovely Wife and I lived in Ft. Walton Beach for only a little over three months. But that's ok, we enjoyed it, and since I worked nights and Lovely Wife didn't have a job while we were there, we would get up most mornings and spend a few hours at the beach before I had to be at work.

The Ft. Walton Beach, Destin, and Panama City Beach area of the Florida panhandle has some of the most fantastic beaches you will ever see. The beach is almost as white as sugar. In fact, on a cold winter day like the one pictured here, you can let your mind almost be convinced that the dunes are huge snow drifts; the sand is that white.

These pics are from the last time we went to the beach. We then headed back to Louisiana to try to catch up with the movers in Bossier City, La., where we moved to from Ft. Walton.

Like most east coast and Gulf coast areas, Ft. Walton Beach has a barrier island. This pic was taken from the bridge over Santa Rosa Sound, and the buildings you see are the hotels and condos that line the beach out on this barrier island.
Sea oats on a dune, against the red-orange sky.
I had climbed up onto a lifeguard platform when this other couple walked onto the beach. They add life to what would have otherwise been a pretty, but static shot.
The sun disappears on our last beach sunset as citizens of Fort Walton Beach.
Our final sunset here was a doozie. Looking at, scanning and preparing these slides for today filled me with a strange mixture of emotions. Seeing Lovely Wife and me from back then, the reminder of the beauty and just how cold it was that day. I'm so glad we took the time to spend one last evening watching the sun go down. It was a fitting end to what was essentially, for us, a three month+ honeymoon. Not many people are so blessed.

Driving all through the night to meet the moving company truck, was one of the most miserable, cold, and difficult nights either of us have ever spent, even up to today.

But that's a story for another blog post.

P.S. Did y'all get a load of Lovely Wife's and my humongous, round, 1980s glasses?