The Salt Line, Vol. 55: An 1877 Tall Ship Parked Downtown, a 21-Year-Old Who Used the Interstate as a Runway, and a Concert Legally Required to Reach Eleven
Welcome to The Salt Line, Volume 55 — the only Gulf Coast news roundup filed from a picnic table currently registering a surface temperature best described as “griddle.” Some weeks the news has a theme. This week the news had numbers, and they refused to sit still, so I’ve stopped trying to write paragraphs and started just reading the meter out loud. What follows is the week, by the digits, in the order most likely to give you emotional whiplash.
Keep an eye on the number eleven. It comes up twice, and it’s not the same eleven.
🌡️ Readings From the Thermometer and Other Instruments of Suffering
Heat index the sky intends to reach Saturday and Sunday: 105. Not the temperature. The index — the number the weather assigns when the actual temperature feels it isn’t doing enough emotional damage on its own. Scattered afternoon thunderstorms are also expected, which is August’s way of offering you a glass of water and then throwing it at you.
Age of the ship currently parked at Palafox Pier: 149. The tall ship Elissa, built in 1877, is the official tall ship of the state of Texas, and it has sailed all the way to Pensacola to be docked downtown through Sunday, August 9. A boat older than the internal combustion engine came to visit, and half the town won’t walk two blocks to see it because there’s no drive-thru. I’ve seen it. It has more masts than the entire modern Gulf Coast leisure fleet combined and exactly zero cup holders. Ten out of ten.
🎓 The Youth Are Doing Numbers
Age of the pilot who landed a plane on I-10 this week: 21. Flight instructor Emily Shelton set an aircraft down on the interstate near 9th Avenue and walked away with the Sheriff’s Medal for “exceptional airmanship,” which is the single most understated phrase produced on the Gulf Coast this year. Twenty-one years old and already better at parking than most of us are at anything. I merge onto I-10 at forty and consider it a personal triumph; she treated it as a runway.
Combined runs in a baseball game the Blue Wahoos won: 24. Final score 13–11, settled by a three-run walk-off bomb in the bottom of the tenth after Pensacola spent nine innings apparently deciding defense was optional and would be revisited later. A 13–11 baseball game is not a baseball game. It is a track meet that a scoreboard wandered into. Somewhere a pitching coach is lying face-down on a dugout floor, and I respect that man’s honesty.
Date the kids can already smell coming: August 12. Elementary orientations wrapped up Friday, which means the first day of school is Wednesday, and every child on this coast is currently walking the beach like a prisoner counting sunsets. Enjoy the last of it, kids. The sand isn’t going anywhere. It never does. I’ve been trying to get it out of one specific beach chair since June.
🎀 Civic Matters, Sorted by Their Most Important Number
Hour of Monday morning at which Gulf Shores cuts the ribbon on its new high school: 11 a.m. — sharp, on August 10. A brand-new high school, ceremonially opened at the exact hour every teenager who will attend it would prefer to still be asleep. There is something perfect about scheduling the celebration of a school for late morning in the one week before it’s legally required. Remember that eleven. We’re about to reuse it.
Volume to which the amplifiers in Orange Beach are contractually sworn: 11. The Expect Excellence Music Department is bringing “Dream On Vol. 4,” a classic-rock tribute, to Orange Beach in late August with a stated intention to turn the amps “up to 11.” I want to be clear that this is a different eleven from the ribbon-cutting eleven, and it is a superior eleven. One eleven opens a building. This eleven opens an eardrum. If you must be surrounded by exactly eleven of something this month, choose the loud one.
Number of survey responses your county would sincerely appreciate: as many as possible. Escambia County, Santa Rosa County, the City of Pensacola, and the Emerald Coast Regional Council are all jointly asking residents to fill out a Fair Housing Survey to help identify barriers to housing. Four separate governmental bodies formed a coalition to send you a questionnaire. That is more institutional coordination than it takes to launch a satellite, aimed with great precision at the sentence “how do you feel about housing.” Fill it out. Somewhere a committee is refreshing the results page.
So here’s the week, totaled: a heat index of 105, a boat of 149, a hero of 21, a slugfest of 24, and two entirely different elevens doing two entirely different jobs. Add it all up and it doesn’t equal anything — which is exactly right, because that’s August on the Gulf Coast. The numbers don’t have to make sense. They just have to be large, loud, and slightly on fire, and this week every single one of them delivered. See you at the eleven. The good one.
— Chris
