The Salt Line, Vol. 50: By the Numbers — a Water Park Measured in Acres, a Flight Suit Contract Older Than the Jets, and a Return-to-School Date the Kids Can Already Smell
Fifty volumes. That’s a nice round number, and around here a nice round number is the only kind that ever gets finished on time. Everything else is 4.76 miles, or $5.3 million, or “through Aug. 6, probably.” So this week, in honor of the milestone, we’re doing it by the numbers — the news laid out as figures, because down here the digits tell the story a good deal faster than the paragraphs do. Grab a number.
5
Acres of water park announced for the Margaritaville Resort that just officially broke ground at The Wharf in Orange Beach. Five acres. Of water park. Built at The Wharf, which is a marina, which is a thing that already touches a large and completely free body of water called the Intracoastal Waterway. We are, in other words, pouring a brand-new lake next to a lake so that people can pay to look at the second one. I love it here and I have no notes.
43
Years a Pensacola shop called the Sewing Box made the Blue Angels’ ceremonial flight suits before losing the contract. Forty-three years. That’s four decades of stitching the suits worn by the fastest, shiniest ambassadors we’ve got, ended by — presumably — a spreadsheet that looked at forty-three consecutive years of flawless work and thought, but have we truly considered a different one. The Angels will get their suits from somebody. The somebody just won’t have been doing it since Carter.
26,000
Homes and businesses in Baldwin County left without power as August’s storms rolled through. Twenty-six thousand dark thermostats, all at once, on the exact afternoon it was 94 degrees. This is August introducing itself. It does this every year, arrives like an uninvited cousin, knocks out the AC for two hours, and then acts like nothing happened. The power came back. The cousin never apologizes.
Aug. 6
The date Gulf Shores says it will wrap up nighttime lane closures on Alabama 59 for its widening project. Set your watch by it. Actually — don’t. It’s a road project, and the first law of Gulf Coast road projects is that the finish date is a mood, not a contract. The cones have views. The cones have opinions. The cones are not, in my experience, in any particular hurry.
Aug. 7
When Escambia County schools throw open the doors for orientation and open houses, some as early as 9 a.m. This is the county’s official, notarized announcement that summer is over — delivered, per tradition, while the heat index is still comfortably assaulting the triple digits and the Gulf is a bathtub. The kids can smell it coming. So can the parents, who are behaving suspiciously well in the crayon aisle.
5–3
The final score as the Blue Wahoos dropped their series finale to the Knoxville Smokies on a five-run sixth inning. Here’s the cruel part: the Wahoos went deep twice and still lost. Two home runs, one L. That’s the baseball version of catching every green light on the way to the airport and still watching the jet bridge pull back — the lights were never the problem.
Fifty volumes in, here’s what the week’s numbers actually add up to: we’re widening one road, closing a couple more, and pouring five fresh acres of water park onto a coast that is, geologically speaking, already a beach. The Gulf Coast doesn’t grow so much as it renovates — always mid-project, always three weeks from done, always a cone or two shy of finished. The Angels will get their new suits. The kids will go back on the 7th whether they’ve made peace with it or not. And those Gulf Shores cones? Gone by August 6th, they tell us. I’ve circled it on the calendar. In pencil.
— Chris
