Scout Moves

I’m channeling my father when I speak in the dialect that includes phrases like “git ya’ some.” He usually used it when forcing fresh tomato slices in the summer. “Git ya some tomata,” he would say, and I would flinch because the notion of just eating a slice of tomato was not appealing. Still isn’t. But git ya’ some shrimp and grits for sure, especially if you live along the Gulf where shrimp are currently plentiful and presumably not contaminated.  Quite a few restaurants here offer this rustic and delicious dish, and I enjoy what they deliver to the table, but I also like making it at home. I pick up fresh shrimp at Goat Feathers on 30A and crack open my Ina Garten cookbook and get to work. Why would I use a recipe from a cook from the Hamptons and not one from Emeril Lagasse (a local, turns out) or Chef Paul Prudomme, you wonder? Because I want to, and because there is no one recipe that is considered standard. I have many cookbooks on the shelf from all of the above chefs (Ina...

I’m not afraid to address this subject because I don’t intend to mention names of politicians. I’m simply addressing the nature of politics on the beloved 30A. Florida is a red state generally, although in the 2020 election, the vote was approximately 52%/48% on the side of the GOP, which means a large swath of the population voted for a democrat. The swath does not encompass Walton County, however, which went 75%/25% hoping for a GOP win. As is true in most places, politics does not come up in daily life. You can conduct all your personal business as a resident—buy groceries, pick up some material for a project around the house, stop for some pet food, etc. You can enjoy a nice walk or bike ride, spend some time at the beach, have dinner or lunch out, chat with the neighbors across the fence, and politics will never be mentioned. There is so much more to living. During the 2020 campaign, though, locals picked their teams and showed their colors out in the open. As you can imagine, the...

I mean, key lime pie. Who doesn’t love it? Locals and regular visitors can tell you exactly where to get it and who makes the best one. Why is it so prevalent here, you might wonder, given this is not a tropical location? I’m not exactly sure, but I suspect it’s because people come here wanting FLORIDA, with palm trees and lazy days and key lime pie, like all of Florida is south Florida. Photo by Jasper Nance We are not South Florida, more like Lower Alabama, but locals have figured out that planting palm trees in pine tree territory and selling key lime pie in pecan pie territory satisfies the desires of the visitors. I’ll confess, while I don’t care about palm trees, I do like a good key lime pie. My favorite comes from the freezer at Goat Feathers seafood market on 30A between Gulf Place and Blue Mountain. Funnily enough, that stuff comes from a pie maker in Georgia .  That said, what I make in my own kitchen isn’t bad, either. Most recipes are the same, although some will subst...

If you’re asking why people on 30A are so mean, it’s likely because you encountered some unpleasant characters in a local Facebook group or a neighborhood app. That’s where the trolls live, under an Internet bridge where they can reek havoc without significant consequences. Also, a  lot of people on local social media groups are not actually locals. For example, recently someone responded to a tourist’s question inquiring if places were starting to close because of an increase of Covid cases. The woman replied that this is a red state where, if people die, it’s God’s will, and she was serious despite the fact a four-year-old just died in Florida because of Covid. This particular jackass lives in Georgia. The real residents of 30A, I have found, are very friendly and welcoming. Shop owners, restaurant workers, people taking a stroll on the beach—they are just plain nice. They are happy to greet neighbors, and they recognize visitors as people who contribute mightily to the financial...

If you move from a metropolitan area—or even metropolitan adjacent—to a small town, you're going to miss something. You'll miss being able to "run over to" certain stores, as in, "I'm going to run over to Pet Smart for a few minutes," and it really does just take a few minutes. You'll miss recycling pick-up and reliable FedX deliveries with drivers who don't get stuck in traffic for an hour and a half. You'll miss assuming an Uber driver is just around the corner or that one will be available for you at the airport.  This list can go on and on depending on your stage of life and can include the quality of public schools or the accessibility of the post office or the basic assumption that the populace is educated enough to accept vaccinations as real science and not some Bill Gates plot to take over the world. One of the things I missed after moving to this small-town environment was the immediacy of culture. Where are the theaters? Where are ...

One of the main reasons people move to Florida is the weather. People are tired of winters, or maybe they never liked winters to begin with. They want more sunshine than northern skies provide, and they want to walk on the beach without wearing a coat and scarf. Well, welcome, but don’t be fooled by the palm trees—January can be chilly. I get the attraction, although I only ever tired of winter when it dragged on past March. Otherwise, I appreciate the change of seasons. Yet, here I am living full-time in the Florida Panhandle. I have noticed on some social media pages mostly aimed at vacationers that people from other places will ask about the weather as they plan their visit here. First, let me say that in this grand time of the 21st century, if you can afford to come here for vacation, you probably have the same access to the Internet that those of us living here have.  Snark aside, predicting the weather here is tricky. I was warned about that before we moved here, but I didn't...

damn it!! This is what I want to scream at everyone when I am out among the people. I look around at the thousands of people on the road, on the bike paths, on the beach, in stores and restaurants, and I assume the majority are not vaccinated.  In Walton County, our vaccination rate is abysmal. From the CDC tracker as of July 11 The percentage of residents over 65 is good, but the rest of us are slackers. The local emergency management people post weekly numbers of vaccinations, and we seem to have plateaued among residents age 12 and above, and there is just no reason for it. There are excuses for sure—politics and a mistrust in science, which is often caused by politics. And let’s not discount the power of misinformation spread by certain media outlets—here is a prime example found on a car here in Walton: And now our governor, in an act of gross incompetence combined with pandering, is promoting merchandise that says “Don’t Fauci My Florida,” while our infection rates climb. So,...

 Some unusual wildlife we have found in our yard, other than black bears: A young king snake—originally in the pool and then placed in an empty lot across the street. They eat rattle snakes so are considered beneficial. A legless lizard—or glass lizard because it will leave its tail behind if it has to. Originally on the cobblestones, then in the pool, and then released in the empty lot across the street. These things will eat snakes, too. A soft-shell turtle. They can turn their necks around to bite you as you hold them by the shell. We fished it out with a skimmer net, and a kind neighbor removed it to the bay. You can eat them, but I'm not inclined. A blue jay, which is not unusual, but this one was perched on the windshield wiper of my car. It remained there as I drove very slowly down the street and as I turned the corner, still driving very slowly to protect him/her. I was approaching a stop sign at a busy road where I could not have driven so slowly when the bird finally fel...

Florida is home to six Air Force bases, and three of them are in the Panhandle—Eglin, Hurlburt, and Tyndall. Pilots stationed at these bases do regular flights back and forth across the Gulf, on some days seemingly all day long. There are days when they fly low so they sound as if they are intent on dive bombing civilians sitting out in their back yards with their dogs, and there are days when they are pretty high over head. You can still hear them in that case. Some fighter jets will be moved to a base in Virginia for training after severe hurricane damage to one of the Florida bases, so maybe things will quiet down a bit. I don't have the full skinny on this other bit of military noise yet, and it may be unrelated to the Air Force, but some military installation nearby does regular bomb testing, or in civilian terms, "they blow up shit," a phrase I have heard more than once here. Or maybe I have just said it—maybe it's just my own interpretation of what's going ...

  Not SRB, but it sure feels like it sometimes. When you visit 30A and the surrounding area in January, traffic might not be an issue. It’s a small town with a small town’s worth of population. But come in the summer or during spring break or during fall break, and you’ll find yourself sitting in traffic, along with the residents who have learned to time their outings around when the visitors might be out on the roads. For example, do not go to the grocery store on Sundays! As I said, it’s a small town—I use “town” for lack of a better term. Santa Rosa Beach is actually an unincorporated area of Walton County. The roads were built to accommodate several thousand people going from A to B. Now it’s a huge destination for visitors, and the full-time residential population is growing quickly, but the roadways have not necessary been adjusted for the influx.  You can widen Highway 98 all you want, adding lanes and stop lights and drainage systems (this has been an ongoing project f...

One of the appeals of this place is the food—because the entire area has become such a draw to vacationers, and so many of those vacationers come from metropolitan areas where great restaurants are plenty, 30A has great restaurants. I won’t attempt to name them because I’ll leave most out by mistake and ignorance. Also, we moved here during the Covid pandemic, and although too many people around here claimed such a thing didn’t exist, we are just now getting out and trying new places. First, when I say “vacationers,” I’m including the people who have second homes here and visit here quite often throughout the year, not just people who come here for a week or two in the summer. The second-home types generally have means, so their standards are means-worthy, and that’s why I believe there are so many remarkable restaurants here. There are people who will pay high prices to eat good food. That means locals have to pay high prices, too, of course, but some places quietly offer 10% discount...

When we moved here, friends said good-bye and wished us well in our new life at the beach. We would be living just a mile from one of the most beautiful beaches in Florida, after all. But in the Panhandle, you’re really living in the woods. Communities are surrounded by acres and acres of woods that have yet to be developed, and by lots of forest preserves that will hopefully remain in a natural state. Thus, the bears. And thus, coyotes and rumors of mountain lions and lots of snakes and eagles and bugs that bite, hard. Pine trees stretch for miles, and the forest floor is covered in palmettos. These forests are managed by local agencies that conduct controlled burns now and then to prevent wildfires, and mulch for landscaping is generally dried pine needles that come in bales. A little story about how these forests might not always be benevolent: a few weeks ago, two people stole a car in Tennessee and drove it to the Panhandle. As the result of a police pursuit on the highway, the ca...

When we first set out to live in Florida, we expected wildlife someone from Ohio would assume, the stereotypical animals. There would likely be alligators in the lakes, and there are definitely snakes, and  there are small lizards that turn bright green, and we would encounter large birds like herons and pelicans. But no one told us to look out for black bears. In the Panhandle, you're basically in Alabama, more so in a pine forest than in the tropics. But still, black bears? We bought a house on the edge of a forest buffeted by just one other house, and before we had even moved in, one of our new neighbors mentioned in passing, simply in passing like saying "sometimes the trash collectors comes super early in the morning," which is true, "By the way, we have a bear family in the neighborhood, so..." So? So, what? What does that mean, and how does that affect us, other than requiring we keep our garbage in locked cans?  Our first encounter went like this. One ni...

I grew up near the southern tip of Lake Michigan, and we would occasionally go to the Indiana Dunes Lake Shore to spend time on the beach. That was my introduction to sand, and I can't tell you today what it looks like. Sand, I guess. It's soft, it sticks to your skin, you can build castles with it. Sand. Here, the sand is noticeably different, and one of the first things new visitors say when first setting foot on the beach is "The sand is so white!", followed by, "The sand squeaks!" Both things are true, and here's why. After the last ice age, minerals, specifically quartz, from the Appalachian mountains began washing down rivers and finding their way to the Gulf shore. Waves washed over them and ground the quartz into crystals—if you place the sand under a microscope, you can actually see the crystals, so they say. This sand is just as good for making castles, and it still sticks to your skin, and it has the added advantage of being home to ghost crab...

I am reviving my old blog, which served me well for several years, but then Facebook grabbed the attention of all the adults I knew in what we had come to call Blogville, a collection of bloggers who weren't selling anything, weren't cooking anything, weren't persuading anyone of any point of view. We were just talkers, and we talked to each other in paragraphs. But as I said, Facebook—and then we started talking in snippets, and sentences, and memes. Well, now  I am ready to talk in paragraphs again. My main point today—Scout moved. After 30-something years in Ohio, we moved to Florida, deep in the Panhandle along a county road known as 30A, which follows a beautiful stretch of beach that, turns out, is unique The sand is white and so sugary that it squeaks when you walk on it. That white sand underneath the water captures light from the sun and reflects back as emerald, and it's all enough to make you weep from the beauty.  This place used to be known as the Redneck R...