The Salt Line, Vol. 89: An Airport Getting Its Second Gate, Two Unbeaten Teams Sent to Mobile to Settle It, and a County Politely Requesting Your Dead Batteries
The Coastal Standing Committee on Whatever Washed Up This Week was called to order at 6:12 p.m. at the picnic table nearest the trash can, quorum being achieved the moment a third folding chair arrived. Minutes of the previous meeting were approved without reading, because nobody read them. The chair noted for the record that it is September, which on this coast means every resident checks the tropics before checking the weather, the water is finally the temperature we all pretend it is in June, and the parking lots have gone quiet enough that you can hear a cooler wheel across a boardwalk from two hundred feet. Old business: none. New business: below.
✈️ Motion to Acknowledge That Gulf Shores Now Has an Airport With Two of the Things Airports Have
The committee recognizes that the Gulf Shores airport is expanding after a record summer of passengers, and that the expansion includes two full gates, improved concessions, additional parking, expanded curbside drop-off, and — the committee wishes this entered into the record verbatim — an outdoor patio.
Two full gates. Atlanta has something like two hundred of these and not one of them is pleasant. Gulf Shores is putting in its second and adding a patio, which means somewhere in the planning process a grown adult looked at a terminal diagram and said: what if, instead of a hallway that smells like carpet glue, people waited outside, in Alabama, in the actual air. You will still be delayed. You will be delayed outdoors, with a beverage. Motion carries.
🏈 Resolution Regarding Two Undefeated Teams and One Spot at the Top
Orange Beach travels to Mobile tonight to play LeFlore, and the arithmetic here is not complicated. The Makos are 3-0 overall and 1-0 in Class 4A, Region 1. LeFlore is 3-0 overall and 1-0 in Class 4A, Region 1. The two of them are currently sharing the top spot in the region, which is a thing the standings permit and football does not.
The committee has no jurisdiction over Mobile, no influence over the officiating, and no realistic hope that either roster reads this column. It notes only that our half of the beat plays in maroon, drives about ninety minutes each way to do it, and gets on a bus tonight with a perfect record in its hands. Everyone else in Region 1 has spent a week hoping this game takes as long as possible and ends 0-0 in a thunderstorm. It will not.
🚧 Discussion of Cones, Their Return, and the Inevitability Thereof
Construction on Pensacola Beach Boulevard resumes next week, with Escambia County temporarily closing lanes and shifting traffic.
Here is the part the committee wants you to sit with: they waited. Somebody with a clipboard looked at the calendar, looked at Labor Day, and made the conscious decision to let the summer get out of the road first. That is restraint. That is a county understanding, in its bones, that narrowing a beach road in July is how you end up on the news for a different reason entirely. The reward for that restraint is that the lane closures now belong to us, the people who live here, which is how it always shakes out and honestly how it should.
Between you and me, there is a workaround. If your reason for driving toward a beach is to look at water rather than at a flagger holding a sign that says SLOW, the cam is live right now and it has never once shifted you into an oncoming lane.
🔋 Unanimous Consent on the Drawer
The Solid Waste Disposal Authority of Baldwin County is holding National Battery Take-Back Day on Sept. 12, to raise awareness about the danger of throwing batteries in household trash and recycling bins.
The committee acknowledges the drawer. Every house on this coast has the drawer. It contains eleven AA batteries of unknown charge, two of the flat round ones from a bathroom scale you no longer own, a swollen thing out of a 2019 vape, and four of the little 3-volt discs that go in a car remote, all of which have been quietly rolling around next to a corkscrew for years because everyone in the household independently concluded that throwing a battery away felt illegal. It was! Sort of! You were right! Saturday is the day the guilt has an address. Bring the drawer. Bring the whole drawer.
🐴 Point of Order on the Name of the Rodeo
A benefit rodeo is being held for a horse rescue and the girls it works with at a ranch in Elberta, and the committee wishes to state clearly, for any visitor who has been on this coast less than a week, that the phrase “Escambia County rodeo” in a Baldwin County story is not a typo, a hoax, or evidence that you have driven the wrong direction on 98.
There are two Escambia Counties. One is in Florida and contains Pensacola. One is in Alabama and contains Atmore. They touch. They share a name, a state line, and a deep mutual disinterest in explaining any of this to you. Add in an Escambia Bay, an Escambia River that cheerfully crosses between them, and a high school named Escambia, and you have a regional naming convention that has defeated stronger people than us. The rescue is in Elberta, the cause is horses and kids, and the committee suggests you go to the thing rather than litigate the letterhead.
⚾ Report From the Ballpark, With One Bad Wednesday Attached
The Blue Wahoos lost 9-2 to Biloxi on Wednesday, which was the first time the Shuckers had beaten them since July 19 — a detail that manages to be both a compliment and a bruise. Thursday, Pensacola answered 7-2, behind a start from Luis Moreno and home runs from Aiva Arquette and Max Williams, and struck first for the first time all series.
Nearly two months without losing to one particular opponent, then one loud Wednesday, then a Thursday that put it back where it belonged. The committee finds this an appropriate model for most problems.
🪑 Adjournment
That’s the meeting. An airport is getting a second gate and a patio, a county wants the contents of your junk drawer, and two 3-0 teams are about to make one of them 3-1 in a town that isn’t ours. Somewhere between all of it, the water off this key turned the exact color it spends ten months a year advertising, and roughly nobody is in it.
The committee moves to adjourn to the patio. The committee is aware the patio is not built yet. The committee is going to go sit outside anyway, which was the whole idea in the first place.
— Chris
P.S. Know a restaurant, charter, shop, or event we don’t have yet? Add it — free, Florida side or Alabama side: /submit/
