The Boats Never Left the Lift

A Perdido Bay Saturday

The boats never left the lift last Saturday afternoon. That’s not how these things usually go for me — most Saturdays have a run in them somewhere. But this one was different by design. It was a day for family and friends, in the kitchen, on the porch, and eventually out at a neighbor’s dock in the Town of Perdido Beach.

I’d started the morning across the coast on Dauphin Island at the Alabama Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo — not fishing, but watching the weigh-ins and catching up with Dockside merchants while the boats came in. My daughter was there too for the University of South Alabama’s Marine Sciences division, interviewing anglers and visitors about their fishing habits. Proud-dad note: watching your kid help measure the health of this water is its own kind of catch. On the way back home, we stopped at Gloria’s Produce — cash only, the way the good stands still are — for watermelons. Alabama grown, still warm from the field. They are also extremely proud of their boiled peanuts that they fix up in four large pots in the corner of the stand. We ate a pound of the regular style on the way home across the Causeway. Worth every dollar of the cash-only.

The menu was simple and wholesome, on purpose. Mallory with Fairhope Cheese Post laid out a board big enough to feed everyone. I did not get to bring any leftovers home. We let Joe Patti’s peel, devein, and steam the shrimp. Buffalo Rock just started running Porch Beer down from Birmingham — light, crisp, and named exactly right for a July cooler. We had a few on ice next to the watermelons. Nobody was going to work too hard, and nobody did. From the kitchen window you could see the bay sitting flat and patient. It would keep.

Somewhere in the afternoon we all ended up out on the dock without anybody suggesting it. Family in four generations, friends who long ago crossed over into family, neighbors who’ve shared this stretch of water for years — all of us drifting the same direction, toward the water, the way you do when the day’s got nothing left to prove. That’s the part I enjoy. Not the running. Not the fishing. The gathering.

The best days on this coast end just like that one did: an evening breeze, Otis Redding drifting across the water, and generations of old neighbors watching the light go gold over Perdido Bay. The boats stayed home, and the day was lazier for it.

So I’ll ask you the same thing I’ve been chewing on all week — what does the end of a perfect day on the water look like for y’all?