Sometimes a summertime fling is a more serious thing

Her name was Alison Barry, though I’m not quite sure if that’s the proper spelling. It’s been a very long time since I’ve written her a letter and I’ve lost the address. Even Google can’t find her.

Alison appeared on the beach one hot July day in the mid-’70s with her blond hair, tanned legs and her tantalizing Tulsa accent. She appeared to be more of a Norse goddess than a teenaged Okie in my eyes.

I was 15 at the time and spending two weeks at Mexico Beach with my hometown friend, Jimmy Rule, and his family from Marianna. The Rules had rented a cottage right on the beach that had a commanding view of Cape San Blas and the Gulf of Mexico. The next year, the Rules built their own house at Mexico Beach but, during that magical summer, they thankfully rented a place just three blocks from Alison and her family’s rental.

Each morning, Alison and her first cousin -- let’s call her Meryl because time has totally erased her name from my mind -- brought their blankets and towels down to the beach to sunbathe directly in front of our house. Mexico Beach is a sleepy little resort town compared to its rowdy, older cousin down the road in Panama City Beach. Jimmy and I were the only guys who were the same age as Alison and Meryl, which not only leveled the playing field but tilted the field unfairly in our favor.

Jimmy and I decided to entice the angels from Oklahoma by setting up the stereo on the front deck and blast some soothing love tunes. They included “White Punks On Dope” by The Tubes, “Cold Gin” by Kiss, “We Are the Dead” by David Bowie and “Trash” by The New York Dolls. We had no idea what we were doing and, to be honest, we were a little intimidated.

One of the problems of growing up in a small town like Marianna is that, when you reach dating age, all of the girls remember every stupid thing you have ever done since kindergarten. You could be secretly known as The Idiot Who Got A Marble Stuck In His Nose And Mrs. Williams Had To Dig It Out. Or, maybe, you went by The Moron Who Peed His Pants And Then Clogged The Bathroom When He Tried To Flush His Underwear Down The Toilet. I’m pretty sure my secret name was He Who Once Ate Live Ants On A Dare For 25 Measly Cents. There are just some things you can’t live down in a small town.

I quickly learned that fine summer that girls from Tulsa don’t arrive with a list of your most mortifying moments from Marianna. They have different baggage in tow.

Shine a light

Alison was the one who made the first move.

After growing weary of hearing one too many songs by Lou Reed or Jobriath, she finally walked over and said, “Do you guys have any albums by J.J. Cale or Jackson Browne you could play?”

As luck would have it, I had dragged along a copy of Browne’s “For Everyman” album because I liked the humorous song “Redneck Friend,” which featured Elton John on piano and Dave Lindley on slide guitar. Alison had recently attended a concert by Browne in Tulsa, so that led us into a conversation about music while Meryl and Jimmy sized each other up. Things went so well that we made a date to walk down to The Pier in the evening. I decided to wear my older brother’s football jersey from Marion Institute military academy to make me look more macho — and more like I was in Alison’s league.

The Pier was a public park that was a 10 or 15 minute walk from the Rules. Around sundown, all the high-school kids from Wewahitchka and Port Saint Joe gathered to talk about absolutely nothing, smoke cigarettes and drink forbidden cans of cheap beer. In those days, the legal drinking age was 18, so there was a definite trickle-down effect going on.

When the Fourth of July rolled around, the four of us pooled our money. We ordered a bottle of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill Flavored Citrus Wine from one of the Wewa boys who drove a dangerously fast Plymouth Road Runner.

“How did someone like you end up with prettiest girl on the beach?” the Wewa wine connection said with contempt as he handed over the Strawberry Hill sugar water.

I wanted to tell him that it was just dumb luck, timing and Jackson Browne but I just shrugged and said, “I dunno.”

Then I turned and headed off with Alison, Jimmy and Meryl to the dunes down by the canal. Who cared if the dunes were just piles of sand, dirt and shells dredged up from the bottom of the canal, they were the perfect spot to hide out and make out.

After spending three days swimming and frolicking in the surf, Alison and I had gotten close enough to feel the hormones surge, if you know what I mean. I was hoping for real fireworks on that Fourth of July as we slurped down the lukewarm, sickeningly sweet Strawberry Hill and then stretched out in the sand by the canal. Things were moving hot and fast until suddenly the night became as bright as the light of day.

A fishing boat that was passing by in the canal turned on its spotlight and we were the groping star attraction. The fishermen hooted and shouted as we scrambled to put ourselves back together again. Talk about killing the mood.

After the boat made its way out into the Gulf, Alison sat up and somberly told me all about her mother. Mom had committed suicide just a few years earlier.

“The last thing she told me before she killed herself was for me not to lose my virginity before I got married,” Alison said. “She made me promise.”

I was way too young to grasp how sex and death could ever be connected, especially in the same sentence. All I knew was that the prettiest girl on the beach was also one of the most troubled girls on the beach. I hugged her as she softly cried. It was not the life-changing Fourth of July I originally had in mind.

There stands the glass

Alison cried again when we said goodbye on the beach the next week. The summer romance came to a sudden halt but we promised to keep it alive forever through our passionate letters. A few weeks later, a package arrived in the mail in Marianna from Tulsa. It contained a cocktail glass that was etched with the Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill logo. I treasured it as much a Faberge Egg even though my mother said it was tackiest thing she’d ever seen.

Every month, I saved up $10 or $12 to make a long-distance call to Tulsa from a pay phone next to the Hardee’s in downtown Marianna because my father refused to finance my romance. This went on for nearly a year until one day Alison asked if I wanted to talk to her new friend, Reggie, who just happened to be at her house. In her room.

“Here, say hello to Reggie,” Alison said in a chipper voice.

I probably would have given a warmer greeting to Dr. Josef Mengele than I did to Reggie.

That was the last phone call to Tulsa. The letters quickly slowed to a trickle. Alison and her family did not return to Mexico Beach the next summer so I was spared that awkward reunion. The Strawberry Hill glass was soon filled with pennies and dimes.

Alison never completely vanished, though. She popped up when Elvis Costello’s bitter little ballad “Alison” came out in 1977. There she was again when Joey Lauren Adams walked across the screen in director Richard Linklater’s retro-’70s comedy “Dazed and Confused” (1993). Her ghost was everywhere when my friend Jimmy Rule died of AIDS in the early ’90s.

I still can’t listen to Jackson Browne’s “For Everyman” without picking up the faint hint of strawberry wine.