MAC GORDON: Coastal cuisine beats the waves

Tropical Storm Cindy arrived in South Georgia and along the Florida coast at essentially the same time my wife and I were leaving for Panama City to celebrate her milestone birthday.

Which milestone birthday?

That’s like asking for the code to open the vault at the World Bank in Oslo. Some of those great information leakers in Washington, D.C., might be of help, if you simply must know. They are capable of telling all on just about every sort of information, so why not my wife’s milestone birthday number?

As the tropical storm approached, we thought twice about whether — no pun intended — to take a chance and go on southward despite the obviously shaky atmospheric conditions.

We threw caution to the wind and went on for at least two good reasons.

The condos and large hotels in Panama City Beach are not in the habit of allowing cancellation of your reservations simply because of a threatening weather forecast. They’ve seen these rodeos before, so they know that the forecast is likely wrong anyway and that, given time, the sun will shine again, even if a hurricane has arrived, done its damage and moved on.

Also, we don’t look like beach-goers, do we? What I mean is that none of our toes has touched a grain of sand in years. The riptide flags were flying high, keeping us marooned even if we had wanted to go snorkeling or sun bathing.

Like many our age, we go to Panama City to eat and to watch people do what they do.

Mary Lee, having grown up in South Georgia, has been going to PCB for most of her life, which, at this point, has reached a certain number of years. One particular seafood dive has been her favorite cafe for most of that time, so that’s our usual lunch place.

For dinner, Captain Anderson’s restaurant is the Panama City no-brainer. It is close to being the oldest one there, and by far the best, so far as we know. My recommendation is usually the pompano, but this time the broiled red snapper landed on my plate. I realize that Anderson’s attracts many tourists like ourselves, so if you know of another restaurant that is PCB locals’ top choice, please advise.

Back to that weather report. The rain may well have been falling in torrents and the ocean roiling at full churn, but that did not seem to adversely affect the number of motorists along Beach Front Drive. Mary Lee pointed out – correctly, no doubt – that families who work all year for a week at the beach, especially those with small children, are usually not going to cancel their trip, even if the weatherman says to do so.

My thought was that if June 20 traffic was at this slow of a crawl, what would the July 4th and Labor Day weekends be like? We don’t have the nerve to go back and find out.

Panama City Beach appears to be thriving economically. The Holiday Inn people have just opened a new high rise on the beach equal in comfort (and price) to any of the other large entities of that sort. I saw for the first time a standalone package liquor store operated by Wal-Mart. (I didn’t get a chance to see how its prices compared to the Sam’s Club package outlet in Pensacola, which has the lowest I’ve ever seen.) Surely, it can’t be long before Wal-Mart starts selling cars.

Based on this latest Gulf Coast experience and the number of cars pouring through, say, Eufaula lately, headed north and south, it looks like the money-makers in Panama City will be ringing the cash registers again this summer, early and often.

Mac Gordon lives near Blakely. He is a former reporter for the Albany Herald. He can be reached at [email protected].