The Salt Line, Vol. 68: The Docket — Foley Invents Bowling for Bulldozers, a 'Perpetual' Trophy Comes Home After 53 Years, and the Argonauts Take the Field Pre-Represented
Minutes of the Committee on Coastal Matters, Perdido Key–Orange Beach Annex, convened Thursday at the usual bench — the one that gets shade after nine. Quorum was achieved when the third member arrived with a thermos. Wednesday night’s storm was entered into the record as “present and disorderly.” Old business was tabled, then quietly thrown away. New business follows.
🚜 Agenda Item One: Foley Announces Bowling, but the Ball Has a Steering Wheel
The City of Foley will host the Gulf Coast Heavy Equipment “Roadeo” on September 25, a full 8-a.m.-to-5-p.m. working day of municipal machinery competing at precision tasks — and the city’s own promotional photo shows, I swear this into the minutes, a skid steer squared up on a rack of bowling pins. Nine hours. Of bulldozer sports. Named with a pun. The Committee has reviewed the evidence and finds this to be the best idea any local government has had all fiscal year, and the Committee has watched several local governments try. Motion to attend passes unanimously. Motion to let a Committee member drive one fails on the advice of counsel.
⚖️ Agenda Item Two: Speaking of Counsel — the Argonauts Retain Some
Michles & Booth is now the official law firm of UWF Athletics and the university’s first-ever uniform patch sponsor, which means West Florida’s athletes will now take the field wearing a law firm. The Committee offers no joke here. The Committee merely reports, as a neutral finder of fact, that a college football team now enters the stadium pre-represented — which, given what routinely happens to a quarterback’s blind side, is less a sponsorship than sensible estate planning. Ruling: noted, filed, and billed in six-minute increments.
⛵ Agenda Item Three: A “Perpetual” Trophy Finally Acts Like It
Hear this one like a saga, because it is. The Pensacola Yacht Club women’s sailing team won the 89th Knost Ladies Championship, bringing the Knost Perpetual Trophy back to Pensacola for the first time in 53 years. Fifty-three. The trophy left town while Nixon was president and has spent the entire intervening half-century being perpetual for other people. Generations of Pensacola sailors were born, learned the water, and taught their kids the water while that hardware toured the rest of the Gulf. The Committee rules that the trophy is henceforth grounded and may not leave the county again without a signed permission slip and a chaperone.
🪑 Agenda Item Four: The Fairhope Furniture Attempts Unsupervised Flight
Wednesday’s storm — the same one that had half the coast checking whether the power was out or the house was just sulking — was caught on surveillance video rearranging the patio of a Fairhope ice cream shop, tables and chairs departing for wherever the sky felt they belonged. And look, between us: this is August on this coast operating exactly to spec. Every patio chair down here lives one green radar blob away from a career in aviation, and every local knows the 3 o’clock sky check the way other regions know their bus schedule. Ruling: the sky acted within its rights, the furniture is found blameless, and everyone is reminded that “chance of afternoon storms” is not a forecast here, it’s a personality trait.
⚾ Agenda Item Five: The Wahoos Play Tuesday’s Game on Thursday and Split the Difference
The Blue Wahoos went 1-1 in what amounted to a doubleheader against the Knoxville Smokies, and the first of those games technically started on Tuesday — it just took until Thursday for the weather to allow it to finish. At this point the schedule at Blue Wahoos Stadium is less a calendar than a suggestion box. The Committee, which also has a backlog, extends its professional sympathy and observes only that winning a game two days after you started it still counts, and honestly describes most of our home-improvement projects too.
🌿 Agenda Item Six: The Oil Spill Buys Gulf Shores Something Nice
Gulf Shores is putting oil spill settlement money into Laguna Cove Nature Park, opening early next year with new public access to Little Lagoon — a shoreline where public access is currently, in the city’s own phrasing, “limited at best.” Sixteen years on, the worst thing that ever happened to this coastline is out here quietly funding boardwalks and herons. The Committee issues its rarest finding: approved, no notes. Somewhere a pelican is getting a park out of this, and the pelican did not even have to attend the meeting.
There being no further business, the Committee adjourned at the first distant thunderclap, thermos in hand, chairs stacked and weighted — we all saw what the sky is capable of this week. It was a week when a trophy finally learned the meaning of “perpetual” and a baseball game took three days to happen; adjourn accordingly. All remaining disputes are hereby tabled until September 25, when this column relocates to Foley to watch a skid steer attempt the 7-10 split.
— Chris
