The Salt Line, Vol. 112: The Pier of Theseus, Temporarily Closed

The pier of Theseus

Plutarch records that the Athenians kept the ship Theseus sailed home from Crete for centuries, pulling each timber as it rotted and fitting a sound one in its place, until the thing became the philosophers’ favorite argument: was it still the same ship? Escambia County has now taken up the question. A rehabilitation project is underway at the Lake Stone fishing pier in Century, and according to the county’s Parks and Recreation department the work includes “replacing old wooden piers and railings.” The pier is temporarily closed while it’s done. The county calls this routine maintenance, the least newsworthy phrase in public life and, on this coast, one of the rarest.

Some geography for readers at the beach. Century sits on the Alabama line at the top of Escambia County, and Perdido Key sits on the Alabama line at the bottom. The county begins at Alabama and ends at Alabama, and almost everything it builds in between is made of something the climate wants back. Down here, on both sides of the line, that means wood against salt: every dune walkover from Johnson Beach to Orange Beach, every dock on Old River, every railing a visitor has leaned on to photograph a sunset.

There are two ways to keep a pier on the Gulf Coast. The Athenian way replaces it a board at a time, while it is still standing and still dull. The other way waits for a storm to take every board at once, then holds a groundbreaking. The first is cheaper and safer and produces no news at all. The second produces excellent news and costs a town its pier for a season, or several. Public bodies know which one brings the cameras, and we in the press have trained them well.

So, a modest proposal. When the Lake Stone pier reopens, hold a ribbon-cutting for the railings: commissioners, oversized scissors, a photographer. Do it again for the next repaved road and the next replaced culvert. Reward the habit we actually need.

As for Plutarch’s question, anglers settled it long ago. The pier will reopen with new wood in it and be exactly the same pier, because a pier was never its lumber. It’s the same people out there at daybreak with a bucket of crickets, waiting on the bream.

The one promise always kept

This week’s list of road construction spots to watch in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties opens with a sentence of startling confidence: “Drivers will encounter traffic disruptions.” Official prose rarely commits to the future tense without a “may” or an “anticipated” standing guard, and here it is, unhedged, on the one subject where it cannot be wrong. First on the Escambia list is Interstate 10, being resurfaced from east of U.S. 29 to east of Davis Highway, a stretch plenty of beach-bound drivers from the east cross on the way in. Resurfacing is the road work nobody opposes and nobody thanks anyone for, which is a fair description of most good government. Leave early. The state has given its word.

Century, on the record

Also from the top of the map, a Century-based youth organization is seeking more than $1 million from the Escambia Children’s Trust to expand early childhood learning and family readiness services in northern Escambia County. Most of this county’s public argument happens within earshot of the surf: bridges, beach access, who parks where. A request from the end of the county with no beach is a useful reminder that the place goes on well past the last condo. The word “trust” in a public body’s name is usually aspirational. Here it’s a job description. Judge the plan on its merits, not its postmark.

The starry heavens, by ordinance

WUWF has posted Wayne Wooten’s astronomy report on the October skies of the Gulf Coast, and the particulars are his to tell. What I can add is where to stand. Kant wrote that two things fill the mind with ever-increasing admiration and awe: the starry heavens above and the moral law within. Walk to the water on the Key after dark, turn your back on the condos, and you get the first, with nothing in front of you but open Gulf. The second is handled by the county’s sea turtle lighting rules, which keep the beachfront dim through nesting season, making ours the only moral law enforced in amber. It is also the one view on the Key that comes with every unit, including the ones across the road.

Everything being looked after this week is newer than it looks: a pier fitted with new wood, an interstate laid down again a layer at a time. Everything in the October sky is older than it looks, light that set out long before anyone thought to sink a piling in Lake Stone. A place stays itself by replacing the parts it can and leaving the rest alone, and the hard part, in Athens as in Century, has always been knowing the difference.

— Chris

P.S. If you run a place on the Key or in Orange Beach and it’s on this site, it’s yours to claim and keep current, free, always: /submit/claim/