At The Beach

Pontchartrain Beach. Those were the days. I tell ya. Summer evenings spent walking the midway, riding rides and playing arcade games. The innocent laughter of a sixth-grade girl-friend as Seals & Croft harmonized "a short music from the family next door" on the Music Express ride. And everywhere the salty smell of the lake subtly mingled with cigarette smoking and extraordinary whiffs of cotton candy.

e had it jack back in those days. Every summer meant Bible School at our church, and if you kept a perfect attendance record for the full week, the honor was a youth trip on Saturday to the amusement park situated in New Orleans East. The green is gone today, a dupe of changing times, but the memories of it are blissful checks I`m allowed to get on a bank where I no longer take an account.I loved the roller coasters; the air and afterwards on the Rajun` Cajun. I was frightened of the Wild Maus but rode it anyway so as not to let on, despite the rumors of two, four, six, (sometimes eight) people supposedly losing their lives during previous fateful forays on that precarious example of German engineering long before my time. And most of all, I held a particular set in my bosom for the cryptic ride known as the Haunted House. It was hokey, and not really scary at all-positively B-grade movie horror at its best. But it was the perfect home to show your courage in presence of that sixth-grade girlfriend, and maybe a gateway toward earning a stolen kiss-if your timing was right.You stood in line across the presence of the building, usually across both sides depending on the crowd, and one position of the edifice had a fake cemetery (at least I believe it was) replete with several tombstones draped in Spanish moss. Each marker told a story meant to move the passersby, stories of doomed lives and the dubious deeds performed by those supposedly buried there. Over time I have forgotten most of the quotes, but one I can still remember today due to the fact that during my younger days I had no thought of what it really meant:

Ma loved PaPa loved womenMa caught Pa with two in swimmingHere lies Pa.

What did `in swimming" mean? I had no clue back then. But it was a tombstone, and the lettering is alleged to be your last testimony-the thoughts you wish others to think you by. Pa is remembered because he refused the beloved of Ma and preferred rather to know other women. And, after Ma caught him with two "in swimming," she set him to remain here in face of a goofy carnival ride. What a legacy! Love him or hate him, he was only being Pa.I`ve thought about that a lot as I`ve grown older-not about Pa and Ma, but about my own tombstone I`ll sleep under one day. What testimony do I want to lead behind me for others to learn about down through the ages? "He was a dear father." "He loved his wife." "He went to church on Sunday." "He worked hard all of his life." Those are all right and I suppose I`ve done my best to meet those testaments, but then again, so do many others. Those things are expected of all of us and to do less than admirably in those convictions would lessen you as a person. You can readily sum all of those up with "He did what he was alleged to do." That may be adequate for some people, but to paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, the convictions we trust in most when we`re young are hills we read our future from, yet when we are old they can easily get the caves in which we hide.Paul wrote his own epitaph at the end of his second letter to Timothy, and it is one I prefer to do my last to aim toward: "I have fought a serious fight, I have ruined my course, I have kept the faith:" That may not be as interesting as Pa`s last line, but in the way of convictions it covers a lot more mileage when all is said and done.