The Salt Line, Vol. 82: A Ballpark That Lost Power Before It Lost the Game, a Football Schedule With Thursday's Final Already In It, and Gumbo Judged Competitively
Every so often the mailbag fills up faster than the news does, and this is one of those weeks. What follows are letters from readers. The letters are made up. The news inside the answers is not — every one of them links to the real story, so you can go check my work and then come back and tell me I was too easy on the credit union.
✉️ “Dear Salt Line: I paid for nine innings and got a slideshow.”
You and everybody else in the ballpark Thursday. The Blue Wahoos waited out a lengthy stadium power outage and then lost 4-1 to the Columbus Clingstones. The lights went out. The lights came back. The offense did not.
That’s four losses in a row, and — this is the part that hurts — it comes directly after a 19-3 stretch. Nineteen and three. That’s not a hot streak, that’s a team briefly becoming a different sport. Now we check the standings hourly, like a casserole. Somewhere in Pensacola there is an electrician who fixed the actual problem in the building Thursday night and has been quietly waiting for credit ever since.
✉️ “Dear Salt Line: I looked up this week’s football schedule and it already told me who won. Is my computer broken?”
Your computer is fine. NorthEscambia’s high school football schedule for the week opens under the heading FLORIDA / Thursday with Godby 21, Pensacola Catholic 10 and Pine Forest 38, Crestview 29, which are not schedule entries. Those are results. The top third of that page is a history book. From the middle down it’s still a schedule, where Escambia is at Tate, Northview is at Graceville, and Jay is at Central with the outcome mercifully unknown.
I love it. It’s the most honest artifact of a Gulf Coast football week there is: half of it already happened, the rest happens Friday, and nobody involved has time to reformat anything before kickoff.
✉️ “Dear Salt Line: My nephew’s school just built a stadium. Should I be impressed or suspicious?”
Impressed. Snook Christian Academy in Baldwin County is playing its first season in the Alabama High School Athletic Association, and Friday night is its first game in a brand-new stadium — first season and first home field arriving in the same week, which almost never happens in that order.
Understand what this means. There is a set of aluminum bleachers down there that has never held a bad call. A scoreboard that has never displayed a deficit. A field with no legend attached to any particular yard line yet, no spot where somebody’s uncle swears he saw the greatest run in school history in a year nobody can pin down. Friday night, all of that starts. By Christmas there will be a story about that field that has already been improved twice in the telling. This is how it’s supposed to work.
✉️ “Dear Salt Line: My brother-in-law says his gumbo is the best on the coast. I would like this settled by a neutral party.”
The neutral party convenes September 12. The 6th Annual Gumbo Shootout is at the Hadji Shrine in Pensacola, which is the correct venue, because a gumbo competition requires a building with an enormous kitchen and a high tolerance for grown men who have opinions about roux color.
Note the number: sixth annual. Six years is long enough for this thing to have developed a bracket, a defending champion, and at least one cook who has not spoken to another cook since 2023. “Shootout” is not a marketing word here. It is a description of the emotional temperature of a room where somebody has just said the word “tomato” out loud.
✉️ “Dear Salt Line: My credit union is changing its name and I feel a way about it.”
That feeling is valid and there is nothing you can do with it. Per Inweekly’s Buzz, Gulf Winds Credit Union is rebranding as TruWorth Credit Union while acquiring Madison County Community Bank, a deal that pushes the Pensacola-based institution into South Georgia, South Alabama and all of North Florida.
So the business logic is airtight: you cannot be named for the Gulf breeze and then go operate in South Georgia, where the wind is just wind. Fine. Correct, even. But “Gulf Winds” told you exactly where you were, and “TruWorth” could be a credit union, a protein powder, or a mid-tier sedan. Somewhere in a conference room, a slide deck won an argument against the weather outside the window.
✉️ “Dear Salt Line: I want to exercise, but only ironically.”
Foley has you. The Walk This Way: 80’s 5K & Block Party is bringing a full throwback setup to Historic Downtown Foley, meaning you can run 3.1 miles in a headband, in September, in Alabama, and be handed a block party as compensation.
A 5K with a costume theme is the last honest athletic event in America. Nobody there is chasing a personal record. Everybody there is chasing a photo. The finish line isn’t the end of the thing, it’s the halfway point of the party — a structure I’d like to see adopted by more sports.
That’s the mailbag. A ballpark that lost the lights and then lost the game, a schedule that has already been overtaken by events, and a brand-new field in Baldwin County with no history on it yet — all in the same week, which is a decent little summary of early September on this coast: some things winding down, some things starting cold.
Friday night the lights go on all over both counties, and this time nobody has to wait for them. Bring the jacket you won’t need. It’s September in name only down here, and it’s still ours.
— Chris
P.S. Know a restaurant, charter, shop, or event we’re missing? Add it — free, Florida side or Alabama side: /submit/
