The 25th Annual Beach Bum parade took place yesterday evening. This used to be Tybee Island's celebration of itself before tourist season. Then Carl Haaisen wrote a book called "Tourist Season" and all hell broke loose. Tourists decided that anytime is a good time and about the only time that they're not on the island is the last two two weeks of January and the first week of February. Otherwise, they are here and Tybee no longer has the place to itself.
Well ... there is the "Bored Meeting" the daily celebration of life on the island in front of Fannie's on-the-beach but that's going to hell too and it's Roma's fault! She and O Johnny (not to be confused with Johnny O) got into "merchandizing" selling hats, T-shirts, koozies and even underwear. It's disgusting.
Roma hosts something called "Romatherapy" on Monday's which is girls day. I am not a girl though I attend. I may as well be a hermit crab crawling into a pink shell to get in touch with my feminie side. As I said even the Bored meeting is going to hell.
In fact, Johnny O and Trolley Joe started an alternative Bored Meeting on the Pier. So far it is men only and Dean who runs the Pier and the Mafia on Tybee, hires really good looking girls with obvious natural assets to bartend so that we keep coming back.
Jenny Orr who runs Fannie-on-the Beach counters this by bringing "Boo" back. Boo is like greatest bartender ever invented. Boo's assets are also natural though they are very different from the ones of the girls on the Pier. Meaning that Boo has both brains and a personality. And she does an incredible imitation of Roma!
None of this has anything to do with the 25th Beach Bum parade.
Last year there were 20,000 people who showed up for the annual water fight. I remember my friend and her daughters were here, as was Jeremy and Marie and we all strolled from my house to Butler Avenue with our water guns. When we were about ten feet from the parade, I just stopped and said out loud "Hell no!" and I turned around and went back home.
The whole thing had been taken over by tourists.
But last night my same friend showed up with her daughters asking if we could order a pizza.
Nobody can drive anywhere on Tybee when the Beach Bum parade is happening (or Piratefest, St. Patrick's Day, the Christmas parade or whatever other parade Tybee is having that week).
"No," I told her. "We have to go to Nick and Val's for food."
So I returned to the Beach Bum parade for the first time in years. I was wet before I walked outside of the house. I was wetter with each step that I took. By the time we made it to Nick and Val's we were soaked. But the food was really good!
Afterwards we came home and Dedra had broken into my house. She is fleeing "up country". She has something to do with the country's educational system but I'm too frightened to ask about this. She may be a terrorist.
All of this got me to thinking.
What needs to happen is that the Beach Bums need to get back together and start a new revolution. We need to succeed from Chatham County (they're broke anyway). We need to succeed from Georgia (who in the hell is this Nathan Deal guy and seriously ... we elected a Congressman to be Governor?). We need to succeed from the United States (too many people are moving here from everywhere else).
I was an almost original Beach Bum for like three weeks. Jack threw me off the team because I tried to actually play softball one night. Jiggs couldn't spell my name right for the roster so he seconded Jack's motion. Nancy, Jack's wife, tried to intervene on my behalf but none of the other "original" Beach Bums cared.
So I turned my attention to more important things though I can't recall any of them at this moment. Oh yeah ... I became Chaplain of the Breakfast Club around this time.
Anyway I think that we need to have a called meeting of the Beach Bums to discuss all of this stuff.
That wouldn't work. The City Manager would send Hodad to put a "Stop Work" order on the gathering which is "Standard Operating Proceedure" on Tybee. Tybee now stops most everything ... except parades.
Then again it might.
Beach Bums don't work anyway.
