C
EXCERPT
BEST
SUMMER
EVER
HUFFINGTON
05.26.13
CULTURE
BOOKS
♥
I had a car, but on most days in
that fall of 1973 I walked to Joyland from Mrs. Shoplaw’s Beachside Accommodations in the town
of Heaven’s Bay. It seemed like
the right thing to do. The only
thing, actually. By early September, Heaven Beach was almost
completely deserted, which suited
my mood. That fall was the most
beautiful of my life. Even forty
years later I can say that. And I
was never so unhappy, I can say
that, too. People think first love
is sweet, and never sweeter than
when that first bond snaps. You’ve
heard a thousand pop and country
songs that prove the point; some
fool got his heart broke. Yet that
first broken heart is always the
most painful, the slowest to mend,
and leaves the most visible scar.
What’s so sweet about that?
♥
Through September and right
into October, the North Carolina
skies were clear and the air was
warm even at seven in the morn-
ing, when I left my second-floor
apartment by the outside stairs.
If I started with a light jacket
on, I was wearing it tied around
my waist before I’d finished half
of the three miles between the
town and the amusement park.
I’d make Betty’s Bakery my
first stop, grabbing a couple of
I was a twenty-one year-old
virgin with literary aspirations.
I possessed three pairs of
bluejeans, four pairs of Jockey
shorts, a clunker Ford (with a
good radio), occasional suicidal
ideations, and a broken heart.”
still-warm croissants. My shadow
would walk with me on the sand,
at least twenty feet long. Hopeful gulls, smelling the croissants
in their waxed paper, would circle
overhead. And when I walked
back, usually around five (although sometimes I stayed later—there was nothing waiting for
me in Heaven’s Bay, a town that
mostly went sleepybye when sum-